
A recorded voice:
You have reached [number]. Please leave a message.
Presumably nobody really thought Martel was at all likely to record a message.
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S.There have probably been warmer invitations to reconciliation, and there have almost certainly been kinder ways of helping a brother; he doubts Sparhawk would trust his aid if it came gently, and rightly so. The best way of determining an Elene's sincerity in his concern for you is judging how annoyed he seems to be about the inconvenience.
Come to your senses yet?
I've attached directions to the portal I found. It's safe either side, near as I can tell, but for what I assume are painfully obvious reasons I haven't had the occasion to go through and be utterly sure that it's going to the right world. You'll come out on a beach opposite Thalesia's strait, if I'm any judge, so I suggest finding yourself a horse in the interim. Faran will find it somewhere in his black and volatile heart to forgive you the infidelity, I'm sure. Every means I can devise to test it indicates it's the right world. There's only one way left to find out, and my brother, better you than me.
If you haven't come to your senses - marvelous. As much as I could go a hundred years (and well might; evidently the physiology of a resurrected soul isn't entirely unlike that of a troll) without seeing Elenia again, happily, my wife is interested in visiting. Discreetly. Apparently I have myself a sentimentalist; she also thinks this is a good idea. There are many, many things that you and I need to talk about before we do any such damn thing - and they'll have to wait, I'm doing a friend of mine a favour with his little war - but as I can't be sure you remember how our conversation turned out (was it very good wine, old boy?) I felt obliged to properly indicate my willingness to be reasonable.
You'll find instructions on the spell I use to send letters through the nexus with this, too, and I feel confident that you can master something simple enough for even Kalten's understanding of sorcery. If you hurry home, mother might help you with the tricky parts.
Your brother,
M.
[16:25] Grif: "And yeah, without admitting to anything in particular, transitioning to legit work does take some getting used to."( Read more... )
[16:25] * Martel coughs. ...what. Nothing.
Time passes.
In Savannah, he answers to Professor Lefevre and they wonder at his decision to adopt his wife's surname when they marry, at the expense he went to for a computer that looks at home next to his grandfather clock and antique fountain pens, at his blend of accents and casual assertion that as a lapsed Catholic he's switched his fealty to good red wine.
In Arum, he answers to my lord and they puzzle at his seeming lack of a history before this land he wasn't born in, at his foreign methods of warfare and its tactics, at his willingness to become their own myth, at his unhurried and patient route to influence, at his vast library and enchantments, at his eccentricities and unselfconsciously solitary faith.
At the end of the day, Martel shrugs his shirt from his shoulders and feels the pull of scar tissue over his heart, because he will carry the end with him until there's no where left to go.
In ten, twenty, thirty years they will not forget the crunch of metal and bone before Martel went to his knees in Zemoch, breathing blood; he was blessed and then he was dead, and what followed is burned into memories not belonging to him. The city fell, then, taking its dead with it - and there were many of them.
And yet here he is, as if untouched, and once again standing at the end of his brother's sword with a dry smile and cold, dark eyes. Ultimately it's almost impossible to say which of them wants this less.
The masquerade is nothing that Martel has any interest in attending - but Petrana gets wind of the fact he's been invited (which means she's been invited, and he suspects his mother pointed this out), and then he really doesn't have as much say in the matter as he might have liked. Despite the effort on his part that would be required to give any less of a damn about the proceedings of some courtier's melodrama-laden royal anniversary celebrations, he submits to a few fittings and the bare minimum of input into what exactly it is he's being wrestled into for the evening. There are stars, silver and ivory silk, sewn into the black velvet doublet that Petrana was utterly convinced would be a good idea, and he takes comfort in the fact that very few of his fellows are going to be able to witness this indignity.
The mask is a little more tolerable; modestly sized, admittedly because Romiar glimpsed what they were planning in the first place and pointed out that Martel's hair is probably sufficiently reminiscent of moonlight without any encouragement at all. (Veleda commended her husband for his poetry of thought, and Martel got his father another drink for sparing him what he'd seen on paper.) All the same, when he waits impatiently for Petrana to come down the stairs so he can hustle her into the carriage waiting outside, it has more to do with a desire to get this evening over with and less to do with anticipation of the costume that matches and opposes his.
That, he reflects, as he takes in the gold chains knotted into braids holding the translucent yellow fabric that is her sun's halo and the skirts flaring out from her tightly-laced waist, may have been an error on his part.
"You're going to have a terrible headache by the time we leave," he predicts, even so.
"Thank you, dearest," she replies - sunnily - as she sails past him to the door.
Of course.