Part Numero Uno

On the fifth day after Aog Ridir had penned his initial missive to his long-cherished, inwardly-vaunted friend who had been the subject of a heinous dismantling, putting her body and livelihood apart, the gloom-browed arm of the Accord itself sets foot on a stoop he'd once written about, just as promised. Despite her disfigurement -- or maybe because of it, Aog would say, if anyone asked (and they wouldn't) -- Css. Lacey Vadann was no less valiant, having just as much a noble air than she might have ever had, even when she could stand on her own. And that is something the Wizard had no crass rejoinder for, and it was all he could do to bandy a pretentious, top-heavy word or three about her; simply, Lacey shines too brightly, even for Aog to dim with the storms that breed in his wake.

A surprisingly-soft palm, no less sure of its strength despite apparently avoiding the wear of a road-weary life, swings down against rough, greyed jute. Aog pats free some dust from the face of a long manteau covering his robes proper. Can't be too filthy for the Countess, now can we, he muses, coughing for the ensuing puff of loose dirt. He curses his lapse in self-awareness, hoping hard that nobody had heard his outburst. It'd ruin the drama of his hailing!

And so, he folds his hand into a fist, hiding the grainy, earthy smears on his palm, and raps on the nearest hard surface he could find; any would do. At that moment, a chorus of cicada whirrs its dirge into the too-humid air. There's the first hint of a thunderclap from the long-away stormfront, like a heavy chest dragging across the ground some distance off. The knocking of his hand against hard, stolid stonework reports like a cudgel on mahogany: knock knock.

Css. Lacey Vadann cannot truly know if she hears the knock-- the quiet, sober air in the manor is easily disturbed by any sound, but her chambers (wherein she was dutifully taking her bitter medicines for the anemia) were located quite a ways from the imposing facade of her not so humble abode. Yet she thinks she hears it-- feels it, really. Something unfurls inside her, in her stomach, like the bud of a flower releasing perfume inside her, a mixture of pleasant and overpowering and shocking. Perfume much too strong for her liking.

When one of her nursemaids meekly peeks into the Countess' boudoir to inform Her Grace that she has a guest, Lacey does not permit the sallow, heavyset girl to utter a word. "I know," she murmurs, looking out into the bright slate sky through the grated window. "Send him in-- and give me a moment or so." "Yes'm." The stout nursemaid dipped her head and disappeared.

She adjusted the loose collar of her silken shirt, and gathered up her quilt about her forearm, bringing it up against her bosom. Noises, bright light, scents, temperature-- Lacey hated the acuteness of her sensitivities she'd acquired since it happened. In her youth at all those dreary functions while Mother and Father had other business to attend and all the children were sent into some small chamber with nothing to occupy them but a fireplace and a sleepy old matron in her rocking chair, the boys would sit next to each other on the divan and kick each other's shins while the girls (Young Ladies!) would titter about their sensitivities. Oh, how this had bothered her last night and she hadn't slept an ounce. Ah, how sickly this one had gotten because some inconsiderate servant had let a draft in. She couldn't kick any shins nor could she bear listening to that so she sat next to the old crone and her snoring and stared into the fireplace. More than anything, that was what had driven her, those days in the playroom. Of course, fate soon corrected Lacey's pitiable mischance and kindly restored her to a properly meek, feminine, and very aristocratic temperament.

Another maidservant quietly and reluctantly opened the door, not saying anything until the countess turned her long neck and looked over her shoulder from the window. She was bundled up quite nicely, up to her chest, and nodded (almost imperceptibly) once.

As she was rolled slowly down the polished corridors towards the entryway, her fingernails dug little crescents into her palm.
He can taste the dolor on the indolent, placid manor air as Css. Vadann is steadily wheeled at half-a-gait's ambling pace; it seems to intensify, in its way, as the direly disfigured girl is sent to meet her caller at the doorstep. The Wizard runs the flat of his tongue over his teeth, thoroughly regretting eating an early lunch before finally wrenching the attentions of his dear friend away from a window's immobile, unblinking visage. He fancies this is a favor done, and not a moment too soon, if the slothful rate of delivery is any indication. Maybe, he thinks, this is the result of her inculcation. Maybe the servant whose responsibility it is to trolley the Countess about has too many years to walk sprightly. Who can say? The Wizard spends a moment memorizing the tempo of Lacey's approach, unknowingly mimicking the woman's clench in his own palm, nearly perforating the tender flesh of his hand with carefully-manicured fingernails.

A curl-tipped shoe taps an irreverent syncopation in symmetry with the sluggish pace of Lacey's servant-girl, swelling impatience into the spaces between her every step, as if his consciousness is reeling about between the wheels of the Countess' chair. Aog iterates over an exhaustive list of preparations he'd made in his head to ensure their readiness. He'd bathed. He'd attempted to patch rips in his manteau. He'd gotten a decent night's sleep, having holed up in another stranger's bed the night before; no extra mead was had, however. At that, the Wizard effects a shallow hop on the balls of his feet, and there comes a weak sloshing from a weighty-looking sack, its burlap distended at the bottom by an unmistakably barrel-shaped semicircle. Goodly, he thinks, sucking his teeth again, he'd not forgotten either of the things she'd asked for: neither the mead, nor himself.

Aog takes a rattling breath into his chest, filling it with the imperturbable air of the estate. The cicadas' whirring surges to life again, and he can feel the pressure of the Countess' presence upon him. Not long, now. Nothing like the last few days.

She swallows, an even breath exhaled gently through her nose. She knows him, how he'd make her forget about all this, the horrible quips he'll make about how he'd be happy to lend a hand if she ever needed; she knows that Aog is a wonderful liar and his eyes won't dim and there won't be any awkward pauses when he is introduced to what remains of her, not like the last two times.

But still-- she doesn't want to meet him. As the chair slowly and inexorably closes the distance to the huge blackwood doors between the crimson tapestries it's all she can do to keep silent. If it had been only the arm she would have bitten her knuckle and turned around and hesitated for a minute or three. She did not have that luxury and she was thankful for it. He deserved better.

The nursemaid brought her to a gentle stop so as not to disturb her delicate balance, and strode over to the door to pull it back ajar. She glanced quickly back over to the countess out of the corner of her eye as if to say "Is this really him?" and then quickly folded her hands and stood to the side. The warm air, heavy and close, felt pleasant compared to the slight chill inside the lofty corridors of the manor.

His face, so familiar to her due in part to how idiosyncratic it was, and in part because it belonged to a friend, seemed at once completely unchanged and subtly different. She realized for the first time that before she had been a smidgen taller than him (most men, actually), something that others had a habit of pointing out whenever they wanted to tease her gently. From this angle, he seemed... well, was it the angle, really, or the circumstances of their re-acquaintance? Oh, Aog. How she had missed him.

She smiled sadly at him. "Hello." She shifted in her chair, and the pinned sleeve that contained what remained of her right arm pressed the corner of the quilt against her breast. She held out her slender hand to him. Lacey had always been fine boned, angular and almost boyish, but now her willowy arm seemed almost frail. Faint pools of blue were visible through the pallid skin under her grey eyes.

As the heavyweight doors, shields against a surly, petty world, stand parted, he daren't take the woman's hand in his, even now, after all they'd written and said and damn the title, he just can't touch her. However, he does what he can, playing at a finely-honed, gentlemanly bow; his right leg extending over the line of his left-foot's toes, making apparent a faintly-pinstriped stocking from behind the hem of his robe. Aog's head inclines just so, and his hands raise to either side, as if he were hoisting a placard over his head.

"Countess. This one is at your service," the Wizard intones, his body correcting that ridiculous, foppish posture in scantly a breath. "Oh," he half-chokes, taking his first step into the manor's dull, cool expanse, casting a playfully-caustic half-moon smile toward the chair-bound Countess, "Has your chair gotten taller, Your Grace? It really has been long, hasn't it." She smiles tightly-- such an expected move from him, and she found it slightly grating, like sand between teeth.

The aproned woman standing at attention to the side-- of middling age and of the corresponding shrewishness-- cast a glance toward the strange visitant. The previous had been numbered among the more proper of sorts, respectable folk who had business there interrupting the Countess' convalescence. The honorable discharge from the Order, a visit from the Head Priestess of the Abbey for a blessing. This one... the nursemaid straightened. She had a very keen sense about these things, and this one rankled her. She especially didn't like the ones who were quick witted and full of flattery, that was not the way to be about nobility. The fact that he'd bowed so neatly, moved with such surefooted grace caused her to incline her chin in a subtle show of disapproval. Was he not considerate of the invalid Countess and her ailments? Was he not the slightest bit modest and nervous and humble in her presence-- nay, in her very dwelling?

"Too long." Lacey gently withdrew her hand and in a way that only one experienced with their servants can, shot a very quick glance towards the nursemaid with an almost imperceptible expression that made clear that this eccentric guest was more welcome here than the previous two, and was to be treated as such. "Do you have it?" she implored, tilting her head just so.
"Why, if ever there was a duty I'd not begrudge fulfilling, it would be ensuring my dear friend the Countess get woefully inebriated!" The rakish magician hops on the ball of his foot once, jouncing the sack containing his pilfered keg. There's a telltale slosh of thick liquid against wooden walls.

Aog feels an air of distinguished achievement about himself, charged statically into ephemeral tickle-prickles up the nape of his neck by the castigating glare of the Countess' be-aproned caretaker. He, that is, the Wizard, that is, the other servant, simply clicks his fingers as he reappropriates his stance, a feathery pair of wholly-silent paces bringing him nearer to Lacey in her seat. Aog's hips settle the frame of his pallid, wan body unevenly, as if all the vaunted grandeur of his pretentious, theatrically-courtly entrance were airs.

And, of course, they mostly were.

"Now, if I might inquire as to where I shall deliver, speak thee now, else your precious mead will grow legs and walk itself to a spot it fancies."

He catches himself not strictly controlling the direction of his gaze; indeed, Aog's beetle-black eyes are nestled without any of his standard clinical aloofness in the Countess' winsome features. The Wizard immediately corrects his lingering stare, hoping the wide saccade in his eyes will be construed as a moment of thoughtfulness.

He waits for the ruling from the chair. Where, O! where, to make his offering?

One could almost sense the Countess' dutiful attendant bristle at the ghastly revelation of the alcoholic nature of the visitor's contraband. To her credit, there was only a slight stiffening of the back and a pressing together of lips. Lacey glanced away for a moment, covering her incriminating grin with her single hand. "Oh dear," she murmured. Her dear friend was ordinarily as subtle as a mote of dust in the moonlight-- she'd hoped he had realized she had chosen the word "it" precisely to keep the identity of his generous benefaction in the realm of privacy. "...they said I should take some, to lessen the aches. Truly." She offered that (hopefully convincing!) clarification to her long-suffering nursemaid. And really-- if mead was such a venomous thing, why, then, had they drowned her in it during the abscissions? It made no sense at all; therefore, she reasoned, it was no sin if she ignored their counsel every so often.

Her soft slate eyes flitted up to meet his for a smidgen longer than a heartbeat, and then she smiled at her fuming stewardess and adjusted the quilt that swaddled her tiny form. "Grow legs? That, I'd very much like to see." Maybe the cask could teach her how. "In all seriousness, you may hand it to Miss Salisbury." And here she turned again to Miss Salisbury. "She will deposit it in the larder and speak not a word of it to anyone, yes?"

Miss Salisbury, of course, would not have been a proper shrewish matron if she did not take her Mistress' word as law. "...Yes, Countess." She dipped her head once and held out her hands, palm up, to take Aog's burden (whilst making a point of looking up and away from him, the dirty cur).

"You may have the rest of to-day for yourself. I'd like to be alone with him for a time."

Miss Salisbury nodded ever so subtly and turned about, silently striding with remarkable quickness and efficiency down the vaulted, polished corridor, through the vermilion curtains at the far end.
Watching the bounty of his antics and playful scheming stride through the colorful demarcation, Aog's hands return to his hips, which have, since parting with his gift, shifted their cocking to the other side. Maybe the keg didn't so much sprout legs as it did simply be party to a pair ferrying it about, but Salisbury was close enough for him. The Wizard breathes deeply in the manor's air, further grounding him behind the noblewoman's welcome. He feels centered. Less road-weary.

"You've enrolled her into the course of our criminal mischief, Countess," Aog muses, the same breath easing out through a curt, mephitic smirk, only alive on his face for as long as it takes him to say it. Then, Aog looks to his Countess, his words -- hardly more than a whisper, but given heft enough for Lacey to hear them, regardless -- not so inscrutable as his countenance: "Leagues and miles and campaigns of thievery, and the only thing I can think to even say to you now that we're alone is to ask how you are."

He daren't take any more than the first step toward her. Maybe Aog's waiting for an invitation, or a command. Maybe he's just as dumbstruck as he says he is. Could their reunion have so wholly overwhelmed the conniver? He'd say he was just enjoying a precious moment without action; a shard of their ultimately limited time together where there is no dance or interplay or subterfuge, where nobody misses the web for the strands. It's just the two of them, together, yet unassailed by the wonderful complications of their proximity.

Like all things, even that instant must pass, and the Wizard isn't too upset over its disappearance.