A Schönling for Your Thoughts

[Aurin]

Aurin's eyes widened slightly, but he didn't frown. At least Reiner was being real; he could respect that.

"Thanks," he said and, for once, it didn't sound mocking.

"If I stop being useful to your cousin, your goodwill would hardly change that. And..." He laughed at nobody's expense in particular. "Never fucked a wing boy. I'm not from Kalzasi. Don't particularly like being considered anyone's inferior, wing boy, fellow human, or other. Might let one suck me off to let off some irritation, but..." He shrugged.

"I asked because I didn't know and I wanted to know. Lots of... Kathalan names... others not so much... Dardouen, Angevin... Whatever. I'm a rover. I try to understand the people wherever I go, the better not to make some faux pas and get my ass strung up."

He took a thoughtful draught of his draught.

"I find you hard to read too. I mean, sometimes it's obvious what you're thinking, but a lot of the time... not." He shrugged. "Mysteries are intriguing. Not trying to social climb or climb into your bed. Just trying. Tell me to stop and I will, though. I'm a bastard, I know, and not everybody's cup of tea. No offense. I'd respect an honest verpiss dich more than... I don't know, putting up with me."

Aurin glanced down at the dog and tried, "Verpiss dich."

She wagged her tail and licked her chops, eyeing him expectantly. He sighed, mumbled, "was worth a shot."

[Reiner Dornkirk]

"Heh, I'm glad you realize that." Reiner acknowledged with a sip of bier. He wrinkled his nose as if he'd swallowed a bug with that last sip, but no, it wasn't that.

"I'm gonna stop you right there. Your sex life is your own thing, man. I don't need to know who or... what you've fucked." His grimace gave way as the question, whatever it's original intent, was reframed as being earnest.

"Heh. Yeah, Angevin is a weird one, isn't it? But our culture represents people from all over the vast human diaspora. We humans are a hearty race and I'm sure you can understand, even if you don't agree with the notion, that our ideology can be very appealing to humans from all over... from places where humanity isn't regarded as highly. Like Kalzasi. Say what you will about Zaichaer, but it's nice to be somewhere that thinks what you are is something special. Exceptional. Worthy of celebration. We've been a beacon for a long time to humans all over. Not everyone comes from the same tribe, but the language is informed by one of the founding tribes." As things grew more personal, Reiner's physicality shifted and closed off a bit more.

"Well, I'm a soldier and I'm... Well... politics adjacent, so it's a good thing that I'm not an open book. Well, unless you're some kind of spell-slinger, but if that were the case I'd like to think my cousin would have kept you on a tighter leash and... Well, I certainly wouldn't be comfortable sitting here with you, but whatever the case I try to use my words. I think that's what I'm doing now. I don't think you've earned being a wanton asshole to me without my being annoyed about it. You're on probationary asshole mode. Ration your assholery wisely and maybe you'll earn a higher tier license to fuck with me. Otherwise, take your bitch and fuck off." He smirked and took a hearty swig for good measure.

[Aurin]

Aurin almost rolled his eyes and countered with how blatantly Dornkirk and Kämpfer were about the fact that they were fucking, but he was trying not to antagonize the prickly little Schönling and actually... maybe he didn't realize he wasn't so slick about it. Or maybe he had just crawled that far into the closet. Or maybe Kämpfer was pulling a masterful long-game on him. As another bad, bad man, he could respect that too.

In any case, he was getting more coherent and thoughtful words out of Dornkirk than perhaps he ever had so he could reel it in, play it cool, and see if they couldn't be friends.

"I think that's the most words I've heard you speak at once, though," he said, smiling more than smirking, trying to telegraph that he was pleased about it and not mocking. "Anyway, leave the poor bitch alone. She deserves better than me." He gave her head a pat; she whined and put her paw upon his knee. "Oh, come on, you should play hard to get or I'm going to have to tell people Zaichaeri bitches are easy." He laughed a little. Then, thoughtful, "Have I spoken ill of your fatherland? I don't think I have. I don't hate Zaichaer—wouldn't keep coming back if I did. When I lived here, I was poor enough people in the Knob would sooner spit on me as look at me, human or not. Took a chance on Kalzasi, lived in the Midden for a while until I clawed my way up into the Low City and then..." He shrugged. "Managed to make it work. I'm not a Kalzasern citizen. I don't share in any political animus that lionizes one race over another—which isn't a read of Zaichaer either. I've had to sweat or bleed for everything I've ever gotten. So do I want Zaichaer to trounce Kalzasi? Not really, because I don't want my house burning down. It's small, but it's mine. Do I want you licking Avialae boots? No, I don't want that either.

"I'm glad you all are out of the crucible. Hopefully you won't need a rifle again any time soon."

He raised his glass. "To the Zaichaeri Pax."

Then he caught the bartender's eye and threw up two fingers for another round.

[Reiner Dornkirk]

"Yeah, well. I'm usually guarded around shady foreigners who fuck with me, so don't get used to it." Reiner said, sipping at the rather strong draft that surely aided in lubricating his prolixity. He glanced to the dog with a smile and reached down to scratch under her muzzle,

"But someone's gotta love 'em." He sighed, lifting his gaze back to Aurin and arching his brow.

"I don't think you hate it, I think you're condescending about it." He did the classic doofus impression voice to quote him back at himself, "Derp, isn't that the language of the Imperium? Do you want them to conquer you?" Back to his normal rasp, "Fuck that noise." As Aurin went on, he nodded.

"Sounds about right. I'm glad to know your patronizing isn't prejudiced. If you're too good for Zaichaer, you'd better be too good for Kalzasi. You seem to travel a lot. Where is good enough for Aurin Kavafis? Is that why you mentioned the Imperium? Are you here to prepare the way for their invasion? I don't doubt they could take us if the struck soon, but we'd be a damned hard city to hold onto, I'll tell you that." The Imperium seemed so remote to him. Probably because it quite literally was. He hadn't been treated to a fancy education, so he didn't know the ins and outs of the distant realm, he only knew what he'd been told they had in common and what he'd been told they got wrong.

"Yeah, I'm glad the fighting's ceased, but I'll be keeping the rifle on hand while there are still mages out there making the world worse for regular people." His eyes followed Aurin's mug, but his own didn't rise to meet it.

"...the fuck is a pax?"

[Aurin]

"I said I was asking," he reminded Reiner. "As an outsider everywhere I go, I wanted to understand why so many Zaichaeri cling to Kathalan and not other languages that are part of it's history. Not that I'm a great student of... well, anything... but also history."

He sipped meditatively through Reiner's rejoinders.

"It's not really about being too good for this place or that place," he realized softly, a moment of honesty before he smirked at himself. If he was sharp with others, they shouldn't be surprised to know that he cut himself bloody with his own wit most of the time. "I come here and there are things I like and things I don't like, but I don't fit. I've had success in Kalzasi, but I don't fit there either. A couple of jobs have come my way from Gel'Grandal, so I have spent some time there. Believe me, I don't want them annexing anyone. The capital's under lock and key, but you go out into the duchies and..." He shook his head.

"Maybe I'm not good enough for Zaichaer, huh? Couldn't make it work. What's that say about me?"

He laid himself open, just a bit, but like many people with his sense of humor, even if it was honest, it was part of some game whose rules even he didn't know.

"Pax is a fancy word for peace. Dunno, thought it suited the High City of Karnor."

[Reiner Dornkirk]

Reiner shrugged.

"How should I know? I guess there are more of us who came from that culture... or there were a lot of us at a particular time in Zaichaer's development and it got around. I don't know how languages spread or nothin'. Maybe you should be asking why the Imperium used it to train their pet pidges. Seems like kind of a- 'Which came first, the Avialae or the Egg' kinda thing to me." Now knowing another beer was en route, he made no effort to ration the remainder of his first.

Reiner tilted his head as Aurin shifted gears away from his description of the Imperial duchies.

"No, don't trail off. I want to know what you were going to say." He didn't know a ton about the Imperium. Least of all in its current state. He knew they'd been an ally in some things, that they had cultural keystones in common, but they were also far away and didn't have much impact on his day-to-day life.

"Maybe you're not." He conceded, "Not sure I'm worthy of the glorious State either, but at least I'm working to get there." He noted, glancing up to accept the reinforcement to his tankard of doppelbock.

"High city, heh... Dunno that it suits us anymore, but we'll get back there. Our sights are still high, even if our lot was brought low." At least they weren't the Dread City anymore, even if the brass was tarnished and lost its sheen under so much ash. "So, where else have you travelled? The elf lands? The orkish?" He took a swig of his fresh beer and wiped the foamy mustache it left upon his stiff upper lip.

[Aurin]

"There's dissent in the duchies," he said plainly. "The emperor demands too much in taxes and doesn't dole out much beyond 'the protection of his Kathar', but it sounds like tax collectors and bureaucrats are most of what they see. Nobody in their right mind is going to attack the Imperium without an alliance of smaller powers, y'know? Like, maybe if Karnor was united and Zaichaer was willing to work with the Dratori to pincer attack or something... Assuming Sangen wouldn't step up to help. Never know with those bastards." He even made the air quotes appropriately.

"At least your cousin's sending soldiers to patrol the roads to keep them safe, sending bread and medicine. Like I said, there's plenty about Zaichaer to admire. Again, I'm no big brain. Clever, maybe, but not intelligent. Seems to me the Imperium got too big, too complacent, and now too focused on the people in the capital. So maybe Zaichaer will annex them before long, eh?"

The last was a joke, mostly, but he grinned and drained his glass as he saw the next round en route.

"Eh, you're all right. Putting in the effort and all that. Spilled your blood, too. Ah... most of Ailizane... Sol'Valen, yes. Not so much Dalquia. Passed through it once or twice en route to the Imperium. The elves of Ecith, too, but not the Orkhan. There's something queer about them." He couldn't put his finger on it, so he shook his head. "Cathena, Auris, most of Karnor. Chasing work. Chasing tail.

"How about you? Ever trooped past the borders?"

He raised his new doppelbock and took a sip.

[Reiner Dornkirk]

"Ah. That old refrain. I know it well." Reiner replied. He maybe didn't hear it sung so much in contemporary Zaichaer, but before they all came together under Stefan, those sorts of concerns were not unusual. As he recalled, rich folks were constantly complaining about taxes back in the old glory days. Common folk like him were concerned with staying fed, while people with excess were worried about having some of their hoard put toward the State.

"Heh. Wouldn't that be something?" Reiner replied, a wistful smile curling his lip as he considered a world where Zaichaer fixed the inherent hypocrisies of the Imperium.

"Zaichaeri ethics with Imperial power? That would be a recipe for some real change. The earth would shake." Sure, they'd have to get their own house in order first. Not just the reconstruction, but they'd also have to strip away the unfortunate compromises that enabled them to survive but blighted their souls. Figuratively, of course.

"There are elves in Ecith? I thought it was all puke-green skin, tusks and boils down there... me? Nah. I thought I was going to see my way to Kalzasi at the vanguard of an invasion, but we never quite made it. Lucky you. We probably wouldn't be chatting over a beer if we'd met that way, huh?" He sipped said beer, wondering what Aurin might have been like in a fight. He seemed like the type to fight dirty and he was, as he'd put it, 'clever, maybe, but not intelligent' and that spelled danger. No, Reiner didn't relish the notion of getting into a scrap with this one, even if he didn't have a dog to sic on him.

[Aurin]

"Oh, you're telling me," he agreed with some gusto. "The Kalzasern rich will contort fit to make a whore blush to get out of paying this or that tax. For the theater's sake, I talk them into donations that they can use as tax write-offs. The spend some to save more, and artists get to work and eat and be housed and all. And they still want you to kiss their asses for their generosity." He rolled his eyes. "Rich are like that most places, it seems. If not playing the bureaucracy, then..." He shrugged, shook his head, and took a drink.

"Orkhan live in the jungles. Elves live in the desert. Ran away from Sol'Valen back... I don't even know how far back. Mingled with the grey elves of Auris or their kin... were enslaved by the humans down there, then eventually turned the tables on them. Fucked some dragons. Would think it some bard's wet dream if I hadn't seen it for myself. Humans aren't treated so bad, even have their place in the government, but it's the elves and, more recently, the dragons again who rule. Use that hypnotism magic to keep people content. I guess they're content, though." He shrugged. "Just another place I don't fit in.

"Anyway, I'm no Kalzasern citizen, so if Zaichaer moved in, I wouldn't rightly care so long as I still had a job, means to feed myself. And maybe you'd make me lick your jackboots, or maybe you'd have come had drinks with me and your cousins." He shrugged. "Maybe they were just being polite, but they came to see a show and rub elbows a bit. Didn't realize they were there to crash the wedding party. Clever, eh?"

Aurin would have loved to know the full story on that. From what he gathered, elements from the Imperium, Zaichaer, and possibly some actual pirates had conspired to sneak past Kalzasern security, swan into Talon Novalys' wedding feast, and fuck everything up. One had to admire the audacity and competence they had shown. Of course, if Arry hadn't made it out of the party unscathed, Aurin would have torn a rift through Zaichaer himself somehow, choked the Dornkirks out with his bare hands and skull fucked their corpses in front of their pretty wives, and... but Arry had, so he could party with the Zaichaeri elite. No point getting upset about might-have-beens.

"Anyway, hearing rumors your cousin's going to incentivize people to make more Zaichaeri babies with tax breaks for married couples and people with children. Going to take a page from the rich and knock up some pretty young thing for the tax break?"

[Reiner Dornkirk]

“Well, my cousin’s rich and he’s… Well, you’ve seen it. But it makes sense for him, since he’s first generation rich and his father didn’t let him forget where we came from. That’s probably what I’m proudest of out of everything he’s done…” Reiner noted, taking another sip of beer. Being slight of build and halfway into his second liter of strong Doppelbock, he was a bit flush faced and seemed more physically relaxed than when they’d first sat down. He was feeling it.

Reiner’s eyes widened at the description of the Ecithian elves and, when the whole of his rendition was relayed, the lieutenant whistled and shook his head.

“Mists alive, that sounds like an out and out fucking nightmare. Why would you ever go there? Are you sure they didn’t fuck with your brain? You could be a sleeper agent sent here to assassinate my cousin or something. Shit, do I need to report you?” Reiner was not, at all, joking, though in his buzz he seemed more annoyed by the red tape than alarmed at the possible repercussions.

“Oh, uhh.. I don’t mind paying taxes. Especially since now they’re creating a support system that directly benefits me, but yeah. I’d like to get married and have kids one day. I sort of liked a girl a while back, but she turned out to be a coven witch and… Well, yeah, I know they helped us during the Breach, but I don’t trust their motivations and, yeah. Magic got us into this mess. Give them enough leeway and they’ll be the ones to start the next one… if they didn’t help Kalzasi do the first one just to better their lot, which, well. Worked.” Drink.