"Nothing?" he demands of Ewar, without preamble, taking the stairs at a speed that forces even the well-trained Arum to hurry in keeping up with him.

"Not a trace, my Lord. Do you-"

Martel quells his rising annoyance the best he can - which is, as it turns out, fairly effectively well. At least as far as outward appearance goes. "I'm going to see for myself. Inform my wife, and try not to start with me in the process."

Ewar, who radiates perfect innocence and certainly absolutely no tendencies towards 'starting' anything with Martel, regards his lord evenly. "Just as you say, sir. Should I tell her when to expect you back?"

Martel hears the prompt in it and sighs internally. "No. But I can hardly imagine it'll take me such a terribly long time to find all of nothing. Do excuse me." He pretends not to notice the look he's getting, here, and if Ewar sighs or rolls his eyes, he at least does it out of Martel's earshot and sight.

Of course, he isn't concerned. He's annoyed that someone he's paid for a job has up and vanished in the midst of it, leaving no apparent trace - he hasn't seen Severus here in what's rapidly becoming weeks, and none of the usual methods of communication are doing him any good. Or anyone else. It won't take him long to find nothing at all - Severus's own home is too well-warded for Martel to do anything truly effective but sort of glare at it from a distance, even if he goes there - but he does so dislike idleness. He dislikes it even more when people he ought to be able to find aren't where he ought to be able to find them.

He catches his cloak as Ewar tosses it to him before he leaves, swearing silently about the bloody unreliable bloody nexus and its fucking denizens.

prompt: five minutes in the life [260]
word count: 320

The as-yet-unnamed castle, when Martel first arrives there with his scars and his exhaustion and his inability to lay down, doesn't strictly speaking have a chapel. It doesn't strictly speaking have much of anything, in fact, being only more years of abandonment away from being a ruin. The chapel, though, is more of a specific lack; the former inhabitants weren't faithful people of any particular religion and their home (now his home) reflects that.

He ignores it, for a time.

The bedchambers that'll be in use are a higher priority. Candice's suite, and the rooms set aside for Maria and her child. Guest suites for the possibility of Sephrenia (and by extension his own erstwhile brother) visiting. The kitchens, baths. Work and training rooms. A study. The library needs cleaning, repairing, restocking. He has yet to touch the outbuildings and a stable will have to be built almost from scratch before he can think of horses. Receiving rooms, anterooms. His great hall. There's so much to be done and that's only considering what he needs to be in use now, never mind the sheer enormity of the task if he sets about renovating the entire castle.

It keeps him busy; keeps him from thinking about the ache in his chest under the scar that he shouldn't have, shouldn't have risen from, the absurdity of second chances when he'd systematically and deliberately destroyed any he could've had in life.

In a moment, quiet and deciding whether or not he'd meant what came underneath his words, he remembers the chapel that isn't.

He chooses one of the smaller halls, the following week, drafts a plan with Ewar for what it is he'll need. (Dweia? Ewar asks, and he shakes his head, puzzled.) He puts himself in contact with the smith who'd crafted his armor, sketches out a brief explanation of what he wants.

For the time being, he fills it full of candles and fresh flowers, and regretfully cuts pork out of his diet.



[prompt: 'write about something you cleaned up'.
word count: 327
fandom: the elenium
yes i am applying to theatrical_muse finally, eat it.]

It's been a strange day among strange days, which Martel assumes is probably why his home is filling up with people in the space of a week or so. He's fairly sure (although he wouldn't swear to it) that he hasn't even met Brody (this is only because he didn't exactly get a lot of names off the bus while he was being kidnapped as a felonious monk), for example. Preoccupied doesn't mean he's a terrible host, though, so he's making the brief trip down the hall to Maria's suite (oh god what's she done to it).

He raps on the door with the back of his knuckles, waiting for a response.

[18:33] * Maria is here in a bar, perhaps looking for Martel.
[18:34] * Martel is here, now; god only knows what he's /been/ doing. "Hello, there."
[18:36] Maria: "Hi! Can I have a sleepover?" ........let's just get that out of the way. "What are you up to?" Meanwhile, she ambles around the bar, poking at stuff. Including the answering machine, because no one else uses the thing.
[18:37] Martel: "Define 'sleepover' before I answer that."
[18:38] Maria: "Brody wants a vacation, and if he comes over I'll have someone to entertain me." She scrolls through the text messages, and then pauses.
[18:40] * Martel tries to recall if he's met Brody. "Very well. What are you looking at?"
[18:40] Maria: "Um. Be calm, first. So this chick Candice is your girl, right?"
[18:40] * Martel has the look on his face of a man who's pretty sure he knows what's coming. "That's one way of putting it."
[18:41] Maria: "It looks like she's in the hospital with her friend Enfys...I guess someone tried slitting her throat or something? I don't know, the message is off-world, some of it's garbled."
[18:42] Martel: "Does it say /where/?"
[18:46] Maria: "Um, it has pinpoint coordinates attached! Bolivar medical."
[18:50] * Martel looks /extremely/ calm, which may or may not actually bode well. "All right. Your friend can come and stay, and I'll see you as soon as possible, I have to go. Now."

[prelude to this.]

Martel's morning typically begins before the sun rises; his days are busy lately and it suits him well enough, suits him even more to accomplish as much a day as he can possibly manage.

Not that he's ever had a tendency to push himself.

Still. Today is a little different; Candice had no interest in getting up quite that early and after lighting the fire, he'd seen the sense in it and gone back to bed a while. Breakfast was followed by the parting of ways, and Martel spent most of the morning primarily overseeing the work of the Arum men. The fact he supplies the end-of-day booze is, he's noticed, raising his popularity there astronomically. 

In the afternoon, sleeves rolled up and boots on, he's back in the nexus a while--in search of someone, actually. 

Three guesses who.