Beautiful Sinner

The first night, Damos had slept in my chamber for his own protection. He took the bed, and I took the floor between him and the door. The second night was for the same reason. I remember what happened distinctly, but yet through the haze of events, it almost felt as though I had been drugged...

After the woman had left Aria Fori, I returned for my room. Venor at some point followed me, emerging once it was safe, to query on what had occured. As I began to recant some of what I'd learned, Damos poked his head in. Venor's arm slung around him in a fond manner. I am not quite sure what the relationship between the two is, but at the time I had figured it was something of a carnal bent.

I advised Damos not to leave the house that evening. News he did not take well and turned, slinking away. Too, I told Venor he ought to bring Damos to his room. But when I said as much, the Magistrate stepped into mine and shut the door. Presumably with the inclination to sleep with me. I refused and sent him away, a rejection he did not take kindly and kicked the door on his way out. Then I retrieved the musician myself. Creating a pallet upon the floor, I slept there the first night, between him and the door, with a blade beneath the pillow. Damos slept in my bed.

Come morning I rose before him, and slipped away for morning business and to discuss with Tza what I knew so far. When I returned, I found him in the kitchen. We had tea, and spoke at length. Small talk. As the cooking staff returned, I led him back to my room. I wanted to get more informationi out of him. He stopped on the thresh over the door, and I pushed him lightly into the room so I had room to close it. The look on his face was strange.

We spoke of this woman and Damos for ahns, who later in my inquisition, I would learn was named Noemi. Still, he seemed to skirt subjects the more I cajoled him. "I am afraid to say anything," he said, insinuating himself into my arms unexpectedly. "Don't be afraid, who would I tell?" was my murmured reply, resting my chin to the top of his head in an empathetic and soothing gesture. The closeness, or maybe it was the smell of his hair, I know not. But it was a strange sensation. Like no other drug I had ever experienced. I suddenly wanted him.

I took the musician to my bed that night. Late into the evening and early into the next morning, I indulged in him. Whether it was absolution or damnation he provided, I will never fully know.

To snare a butterfly..

I had slipped away from Venor somewhere between the Stadium of Blades and the Teiban Sul Market on our way to find a cafe. Way leading onto way, I figured he'd find me. He had that ability I learned. Finding me in a crowd like a moth to a flame.

But for now I had made my way to the Kalonike Cafe in the Metellan District. The door shoved open, it jingled merrily, ironic given the narrow eyed glances I'd been subject to upon arrival. I was no stranger to this place but the red carpet was hardly rolled out. It is a haunt of business men and the lower but respectable castes alike. It was here I found Kyron.

Kyron and I go back a ways. We traveled from the Sardar together once in the same caravan. Though, we aren't, by any stretch of the imagination friends. To the contrary, I know he loathes me. My existance, my grip on the Anbar, drives him mad. The fact he cannot do much about it, even madder. He's tried to move into the district, and push out some of those that pay me for the privilege of being there. Their dismissal of him and his inert power likely has done nothing good for his arrogance. He hates me, but he doesn't disguise it. In the end, I suppose I respect a man that's not afraid to hate me. It's an honest and pure emotion, perhaps the only one in human nature that can't be tainted nor corrupt. He is one of two men I know, if given the opportunity, would lunge at the chance to see me fall from my throne.

Yet, I had been given a tip that he was here. There were questions I needed to ask and answers I hope he had. There were women missing from my district, many of whom owned businesses, and too a sudden mass of murdering among the High Council. Were the two related? I don't know.

Claiming the chair opposite him, we talked, and I got very little in the way of information I needed. Typical of Kyron, he was going to require more cajoling than I was interesting in dishing out. It was then they came through the front door. The woman from Tendora's Tit. I didn't recognize her at first, she wasn't dressed in pink. She was also accompanied by a man. They talked quickly and heatedly, the woman looking in my general direction more than once, then suddenly left the cafe. I made arrangements to meet Kyron later, and shoved up to follow the duo out into the street. There was something suspicious about her.

Crossing the street, it was then I saw her again. The man she'd originally accompanied with her collapsing abruptly to the cobbles. Before I could get to them, another man had helped her carry her consort down the road. He dropped his dagger, which I retrieved and now wear in my belt.

Then, with his perfect timing, my moth found me again in the crowd. We began to walk through the Metellan, and though I'm not sure why or how, we took a wrong turn and made it into the Trevelyan. The Trevelyan is its own animal. It is not my district, and the small villainous group of men that govern it, there is no love lost between us. They would like nothing better than to murder me in a dark alley in a mob, to take what I've spent so long building. As of now I have monopoly of the majority of import and export to Ar, through channels of corrupt officials. A thing they'd like to see shaken loose.

I told Venor to look less like a Magistrate, and though we were tailed for a while, we made it out and back to the Metellan and ultimately back to Aria Fori. I was ready to go to bed, but he stopped me outside. The discussion we had was a confidential one.

Before we could get inside, a woman in bright ghastly orange appeared. It was none other than the woman from Tendora's Tit, and the cafe this afternoon. If I was suspicious before, I was more so now. Was she following me? Or Venor.

The Magistrate allowed her entry, and I not wishing to entertain went to my room to change. When I returned, Venor had left, and I was alone with the woman. A fact I wasn't over joyed for, but dealt with politely enough. There is a madness in her eyes. One that deepened when she talked of Damos and then heard his music fill the air as if on cue. While she talked, I watched her, manipulated her with button pushing, and there seemed to be a few sensitive subjects. One of which, the most notable, the subject of fear. She is looking for Damos, and too, she is looking for Venor's sister. The woman they call Amanita. He'd taken something from her. Something about vials. She tried to offer me coin to kidnap the musician, an offer I declined and before long she had left.

Amanita. It seems everyone I have run into of late is looking for this woman. I gather there is a reason. One I am simply not aware of at this point. With luck I will remedy that soon.

To Let The Evil In

"Are you going to invite me to stay, Magistrate?" I asked, enjoying the bounty of the garden he'd shared with me. "You are always welcome in my home, Savana," I heard in answer from his lips. An invitation. An open one at that. I wonder if he knows how seriously I take that invitation, and how much I may use it to my own desires. This garden was his respite, a flourishing of jungle blooms that I could tell he took pride in. As my hand closed around the bell of a fragile bloom, I was reminded of another thing of beauty. A man. And it took a certain amount of will power not to crush its vulnerable fragile petals in my hand.

Beautiful things are only beautiful from a distance. When you look up close, their flaws are more pronounced. Even a butterfly in all its colors is horrific upon close scrutiny. Its bulbous eyes and scaley wing tips.

I had gone back to Aria Fori in search of the Physician to tend my wound, but ended up staying longer than I had anticipated. I left him angry, confused, perhaps even a bit resentful of me. Absolutely frustrated.

"All I know, is that you get this little charge out of wrapping me up like a spring, and just letting me loose whenever it pleases you. Affection, then dismissal. Irritation, then humor. People sometimes think I'm hard to predict, but you're intentionally going out've your way to be unpredictable." He was right about that. I couldn't gainsay him and so I did not, but answered in earnest, "That's my job."

There is something endearing about Venor when he's unsure of himself. Perhaps it's because he is often so sure of himself, and so laden with his own arrogance, that to see him falter and take pause, pleases me. Once he had left, and after another glass of wine, I'd finally slept. But this night it was not as soundly as I had hoped.