you magnificent fuck up
26 February 2010 @ 06:40 pm
[narrative] because honey you're murdering me  
After the initial time spent drifting in and out of consciousness as the antidote began moving through his blood-stream, Martel spends a lot of time sincerely wishing he was still in that state over constantly bursting the stitches in his back when he's messily ill into the tin bucket by the bed. Nitral's personal physician stays with him through most of it, at least until he's able to go more than an hour or so without tearing his back open again retching. The cold sweat is almost worse and by the end of the week he's relatively sure that he's actually lost weight; there is a certain irony in his having been poisoned trying to protect the Duke, he thinks, and tries to be a good patient.

(He fails, mostly, but the physician is patient - and well-compensated for his patience.)

Onelle, Nitral's wife, brings him books to read and occasionally keeps him company simply out of, he thinks, gratitude. She's the one who brings him the paper and ink that he asks for, and who appraises him ahead of time that Koleika is taking the men ahead to Wenos to firmly discourage any more assassination attempts. She's also the one who pens the short note to Candice about Martel's condition ('incoherent' at time of writing), but the note he writes himself when he has the strength to master the spell needed to send it will probably reach his wife first.

    I'll be late. Nothing to worry about. -M.


The problem that Martel doesn't consider is that Candice presumably knows him well enough to realize there is something to worry about if he feels obliged to tell her that there isn't. Sparhawk, too, gets one of these terse missives after it occurs to him that his brother may have been awaiting a response to his announcement that he'd made it back to their world.

    Poisoned, irony of ironies. More details later. Don't do anything stupid. -M.


Onelle's messenger will reach Valdis a week after Martel's brief, ominous note. Martel endures the confinement and bedrest with poor grace, resting his chin on his folded arms and glaring at the wall that refuses to be intimidated by his pale, trembling irritation with the world.
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you magnificent fuck up
19 February 2010 @ 02:23 am
[narrative] but from what wound it wells so far i have not found  
Just as he told his wife, Martel has no intention of going into battle - if it should become necessary, he's willing, but the Arums have an able commander already. He serves another purpose, and even if chafes at him to be cloistered in the ducal palace playing at diplomat when he could be on a horse with a sword drawn- that's not what he's there for, and he knows it. Nitral, the Duke, is unusually well-liked by Martel's closest Arum compatriot and he's along less because Koleika can't get along with him and more to save time and hassle all around. The iron-jawed chief had put it bluntly: "You like to talk, Martel. I don't. You can do the talking."

It's not terrible, anyway; the city is everything Koleika promised him that it'd be and when they're not translating Arum work ethic into something the rest of the Duke's command can actually understand, Martel takes the opportunity to acquaint himself with this brilliant architect conveniently born into just the position to indulge his passion. He can relate, and they're right, really; he has always liked the sound of his own voice. There's another reason he's here - to get a feel for how they do things, to get these people used to dealing with him - and the fact that they don't need to discuss that is just one of the reasons that Martel so admires his friend.

Wenos can't pay the high prices that the Arum clans demand for their soldiers, and Martel expects to be leaving the city in plenty of time to take care of the little problem he has Ewar keeping an eye on for him. It doesn't work out that way, of course; it never does.

Wenos may not be able to afford to pay for an entire Arum force, but they can find the funds to try cutting off the head of the snake; Martel is pacing his guest chamber in sleeping trousers when he hears the tell-tale choked gurgle outside in the hall, interrupting his reading. The guards are dead, he judges, and Nitral and his duchess lie sleeping across the hall. The decision to pick up the knife he'd been cleaning and sharpening earlier is an easy one to make, and he nudges the door ajar to get an idea of where they are before shoving it suddenly open with a satisfying crack against the back of the first man's skull.

The first one down draws the other two in his direction - it's a short, ugly fight and a kick in the back has Martel slamming face first into the wall unexpectedly. He and the assassin behind him simultaneously misjudge each other; the knife slices his back open instead of stabbing through his ribs when he pushes his hands against the wall and slams himself backwards, knocking the other man off-balance and snagging that knife in one, smooth movement-

-it embeds in the back of the last man's neck, bringing him down to his knees in front of Nitral's door even as Martel crushes the second man's windpipe under his bare foot, leaning hard- hard- harder, when he falls, his knees buckling underneath him as he realizes only belatedly, when the fracas in the hallway summons the Duke with his own sword out, that the sting of the blade hadn't been entirely the fault of the steel.

His vision swims and then, mercifully, he passes out.
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you magnificent fuck up
22 January 2010 @ 12:29 am
[narrative] he knew human folly like the back of his hand  
Winter is a miserable time to go to war - in particular due to winter being a miserable time to tramp down from the mountains - but the frost should have broken at least by the time they're passing Maghu, and between then and now Martel ought to have plenty of time to regret agreeing to this. It's a profitable thing, though, and God knows it's worthwhile to establish his contacts in the flatlands sooner rather than later. He treats it like an idle stroll in the countryside, the way he and Kalten used to look at each other and shrug instead of bothering to consider that the sometimes chillingly casual attitude of Pandions toward their violence wasn't normal or appropriate; where they knew what lay beneath that, he wonders where the differences lie between himself and the nearest and dearest of worlds he still doesn't understand and doesn't care to find out this way. All things in Martel's life come down to perception, sooner or later; Candice knows better, sees through him, and then he feels the most secure in his decisions.

Having learned a long time ago that shrugging off any battle is tantamount to suicide, regardless of skill or experience, he ignores the cheerful fiction that he's along to do nothing more than grease wheels and prevent Koleika from finding himself in the position of threatening another Treborean nobleman - he would've ignored it even if it were true, because a diplomat bleeds just the same as anyone else. Easier, usually, in Martel's long and storied history.

Despite what will be weeks, maybe months, of his absence - he chooses not to mention what he's doing to more than a few people, and none of them outside his home are informed of anything like 'when' or 'where' or 'why'. Sparhawk and Martel are alike in some ways more than others, and their habitual secret-keeping is nothing especially new. He thinks of his brother in a detached sort of a way, and occupies some evenings penning the first [eight] drafts of a letter that he will send. He finally does early one morning before they break camp, twisting enchantment around a pathway into the nexus instead of bothering with a messenger that almost certainly wouldn't be able to find him.
S.

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.
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.

(He has no intention of riding into a battle with these worries still hanging over his head. Sparhawk has the means of getting back to his child-bride now, and he can do with it what he will.)
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you magnificent fuck up
31 December 2009 @ 12:53 pm
[congratulations] i love so tenderly the desert and the sea  
One of Martel's worst habits - in the opinion of the poor sod who gets to take care of it when his lordship can't reach the burns to clean them up on his own - is probably the fact that he appears to firmly believe few enchantments could fail to be improved by the involvement of fire. This one, though, this one needs it.

The glass is the hard part, he decides; a hollow eternity symbol in crystal clear glass, fashioned 'honestly' and completed with sorcery, it's not his usual sort of occupation and there are broken shards of his previous attempts littering the workroom as a silent testament to how long it took him to master it. (Not as long as you'd think, but he did cheat and without a hint of shame, too.) From there the water - half full, clean spring water that he blessed as an afterthought - and then, then the fire.

All right. Maybe this is the hard part.

Inside the glass an enchanted fire burns merrily, and endlessly, unbothered by the water that it shares its space with and flows against, and Martel makes a mental note to wrap his raw hands when he's finished. Not before he's finished, though, it'd make him clumsy and really - it doesn't hurt that much. The last thing is a stand for it, and a bit of metal sculpture is much easier for him than the glass proved to be.

He takes a step back to admire his handiwork, when it's done, and then swears when he realizes he stepped directly onto a piece of broken glass.

(This is one of those occasions Ewar doesn't mind being reduced to a messenger boy, carrying the package and short note - Congratulations. - M. - to Ithaca personally.)
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you magnificent fuck up
11 September 2009 @ 01:09 am
[narrative] ambition took me speed of light to god's exclusion zone  
The trip to England - and then onto France - was a good idea, Martel knows. Having spent the past year devoting himself to establishment, he's missed all the things about traveling that gave him the wanderlust he had as a younger man in the first place. It's good to get away from 48 hour work days for a while, to be a little out of reach, to be so good as to wear the clothes that Candice likes so damn much every day for a while as they travel together for the first time.

Selfishness aside, there's practicality to it as well; if he's supposed to be passed off as some 'Professor Lefevre', an English and French mix, then he probably ought to know something about the countries allegedly responsible for him. It's not tourism so much as learning by immersion, and after leaving Savannah shortly after Candice's parents did (they liked him, and he'd feel worse about having fallen back on old methods of manipulation if it hadn't worked so well - perhaps he could've won them over without that, they'll never know) it's what most of the past month has been devoted to.

This world is so exhausting and he's tired of it. The languages he picks up easily enough, but everything else - the culture, the tools, nothing is familiar. He wears the clothes well, but never quite cares for them; he is driven to distraction by this modern insistence on disarming. (Until he figures out how to hide knives from metal detectors and the like by means of glamour; an imperfect solution, but sufficient.) It's fascinating and he is fascinated, but he feels out of place and out of sorts.

He's thinking about taking photographs of Valdis when he first sees Amiens and forgets to think entirely.

Amiens is a thirteenth century high gothic cathedral, and for a moment Martel is somewhere else entirely so clearly that it hurts. He takes his sunglasses off (stupid things) and follows Candice up the steps to go inside, quiet just this once. When he slips away from her exploring to claim a seat in a back pew, he prays to a god who won't be listening in a world he knows is too far away to be heard.

He dislikes France a little less and a little more, all at once.
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you magnificent fuck up
22 July 2009 @ 01:23 am
[prompt] if wishes were horses then beggars would ride  
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you magnificent fuck up
20 July 2009 @ 03:39 am
[prompt] that which cannot be taken back  
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you magnificent fuck up
20 April 2009 @ 06:45 am
[prompt] i care not for wealth or fame i'll remember your song but forget your name  
Some months ago, Martel hired Master Snape to handle the full warding of his Valdis property; to protect it, and to hide it from prying and unfriendly eyes. To put not too fine a point on it, between the two of them there is enough paranoia and sheer power to arm a small country, and when - after many weeks and much work - the wards are complete, they are no small feat.

They are, as a matter of fact, very, very good. It's sort of the point. There are plenty of reasons for that, and some of them Martel might even be persuaded to share with his friends and acquaintances, such as they are.

What's interesting, however, is the fact that despite this one Brody McAdams and one Lucy McClane found their way into the castle, wholly unimpeded in their quest to affix Lisa Frank stickers to a chosen wall. (Just like they went unbothered in their previous plot to attach a selection of My Little Ponies, before the wards went up:

"Sir-"

"Mm, leave them be. Have Langler go take those down in the morning.")

The people Martel becomes fond of get away with some very strange things.


friday → embarrassing secrets
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you magnificent fuck up
29 March 2009 @ 10:36 pm
[prompt] your childhood home is just powder white bones and you'll never find your way back  
After years of exile, something about riding through Elenia gave Martel an unpleasantly familiar feeling between his shoulderblades. All of the bridges had been burned, and he didn't belong any more; he fancied the land knew it as well as he did. His thrice-damned 'traveling companions' didn't make the trip any more palatable - if anything, less - and when they were encamped, he left them to their own devices a while, following a path he'd never realized he wouldn't forget.

The woods they'd stopped in were on the edge of the estate he'd sold years before, in a rush to leave. He hadn't been intimately familiar with the place since he was a boy and a novice, but he knew it well enough. There were differences; time would do that. The kennels were gone, and the stables had been expanded. It seemed to him (in the evening and from the distance) more lively than it had been when it was his family's home; he'd been largely absent after his novitate began, with Romiar and Veleda always a self-contained couple.

They'd matched each other, he reflected; once he'd been grateful that they were already gone before his dishonour, when they could still be proud of who their son had become, but by the time he had his feet on what used to be their land again it was a passing thought already long since scoured from his mind. It didn't matter any more. With his hand on a tree that Petrana had claimed for her own by shoving him in the chest with her feet until he swung (upside down, indignant like a ruffled cat), he thought of his grandfather. The last true Pandion in their history; that legacy had died with him, and any hope of continuing it would eventually die with Martel.

Thoughts he wasn't having interrupted by movement, he made an irritable sound and turned away, walking back through the trees without bothering to properly acknowledge Adus. "When we leave, burn it," he said, shortly. "Try not to attempt creativity, Adus, it only embarrasses me."

sunday ♪ take us home
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you magnificent fuck up
15 December 2008 @ 03:31 am
[prompt] i'm the tiger's empty cage, i'm the mystery's final page  

"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

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Current Music: i'm the slave you'll never free, i'm the truth you'll never know
 
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you magnificent fuck up
03 December 2008 @ 05:56 am
[prompt] the sea's wine red; this is the death of beauty  
( the doves have died; the lovers have lied )

prompt: specious [257]
word count: 527
warnings: gross blackmail.
note: set during canon.
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you magnificent fuck up
07 September 2008 @ 03:41 am
[prompt] i'll buy you roses pale red  

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.]

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you magnificent fuck up
06 July 2008 @ 02:54 am
[narrative] white's the dove that longs to fly  


Maria's a godsend -- in so many ways, but specifically (this week at least), she's the godsend that has allowed him to at last line up his funds and finalize the sale. The Arums are what he personally thinks of as 'decent people'; their approach to life has a straightforwardness matched with underlying complexity that he can appreciate. The details of further dealings have yet to be hammered out, but a quick go around with the chief himself led to the concession that perhaps this peculiar foreign swordsman might have something useful to teach the young clansmen.

In particular, the clan chief is interested in Martel's own personal innovations. (He'd drawn back from completing the parry-pas-nine at the last possible moment, but Koleika got his point almost immediately. A blade in front of a man's face tends to bring things sharply into focus.) 

Conversations later decided more or less for him to make his way to Mawor when he's got the leisure to do so; he doubts he'll have the opportunity to speak with this architecturally inclined Duke personally, but a look at those walls would be...interesting. If nothing else, he might get a few ideas. 

For now, making the necessities liveable is enough of a project. He's not getting ahead of himself.

(Much. Yet.)

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you magnificent fuck up
23 June 2008 @ 05:44 pm
[narrative] such a difference between who i am and who you see  
Martel has work to do--which beyond honing skills left long untouched, he hasn't been able to say in all seriousness for some time. It's been chafing, this lack of purpose, and he's quietly pleased with himself for finding one. A direction of his own, simple as it is. Maria will reacquire his money from where he'd left it in Eosia, he'll buy the place and then he'll at least be occupied until the renovations and...a few minor fortifications are complete.

Stables, too, he thinks as he marks down his to-do list (of course he has a list); he can talk to Candice about that horse when their trip is set. He'll have somewhere to keep the things he's acquiring.

For now, he's seeing about directions, details...he's going to have to guess at her dress size, more than likely, but given previous plans he would've had to regardless. It occurs to him it might not be a terrible idea to mention her excursion to his far-less-wayward brother should he have the opportunity, though if she sets foot in Elenia it won't be from his directions...but the thought of seeking Sparhawk out again...mn. If such an opportunity arises...well, it'd be foolish to keep secrets for the sake of keeping secrets. Particularly the kind of secrets that could be, conceivably, misinterpreted.

(As though he's never done it anyway.)

All the same, his mood is better than he lets on.
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