An Honest Day's Work [Petra]

[Hozxi]

70 Searing 121

Hozxi knocks.

Once, twice, a pause as she adjusts the straps of the canvas bag on her elbow, and then a third time.

The sun is beginning to set on Kalzasi. The sky turns an amber hue over the Guilded Expanse. Here, at the beginning of twilight, most of the tradesmen had gone home; there were no bakers downstairs slaving over ovens, no jewelers across the street hawking bits and baubles to passersby. Business, respectable business, had come to a halt for the day, and those who had homes with families to go home to had begun to settle down to a nice meal with their children and their partners and talk about what might come tomorrow.

Hozxi still had work to do.

As she waits for her employer, she peeks inside the bag she brought. Pages from long forgotten tomes that had been faded beyond recognition were tucked inside. The seer had spend many candlelit nights slaving over them, using the Sight to peer into their pasts, clawing back the faded ink and revealing what had once been prominently on display: the text reclaimed from obscurity and stains of time, occasionally literally. Scribes were just as mortal as the rest of us, and many a researcher had gone to open a tome of forgotten lore only to find that the attendant working to copy it or the last person to borrow the tome had decided that the tome was not worthy of saving from a drop of stew or the stains of sweat or the scrawling of a bored woman in the medians.

For each page she could restore the Circle mage she had come to visit promised her a decent wage. Below what one might pay a professional, but more than she earned from peddling her herbal remedies, and without the overhead that came from running a business on Guild grounds.

Hozxi sighs. It was almost worth it, were it not for the other feature of her client.

She shifts the canvas bag to her other arm. Not that it was heavy, but in order to appease her nervous energy as she waited for her coin. It was always an affair of chance whether or not the client would insist she come inside to prove the veracity of her restorations.

[Petra]

Petra huffs as she looks through her peep-hole. She is sick and tired of having guests that are too tall to see properly through it. All she sees is Hozxi's chest, but it's enough for her to place the woman - after all, how many nomads are in her acquaintance?

The clicks of locks come, one after the other. An over-abundance of security, unraveling in a staccato rhythm of retracting metal. The door opens, and Petra has to crane her neck up to look her visitor in the eye.

"Good afternoon," Petra begins, her voice a calm and glassy sea. Chartreuse eyes are bright enough to almost glow in the dim of her home, but their light contrasts a pale, blank face. Watchful, neutral, and calm. "I'm glad you could make it punctually."

She is wearing her red robes for a change. For all she dislikes their baggy, ornate fashion, she has to admit that they're very practical to conjure in. Even if they weren't, the protection and gravitas their status gives her is enough to warrant them on important business.

"It's a pleasure to meet you face-to-face. I'm Petra. Welcome to my home." She pulls the door a little wider and steps back, to welcome Hozxi inside.

Only as she does so does the other resident leer out of the dim of the candlelit apartment. A figure of twisted steel chased with warm brass, a mockery of a man towering in his master's shadow. Watching, without eyes, this new arrival.

"That is Yesod. Pay him no mind. He means you no harm."

Motionless, the pair wait for Hozxi to come into the mess that is Petra's apartment. Evidently, Petra had not quite been ready to receive a guest. Books are everywhere, and paper as well. Scattered sheets and palimpsests, empty cups of tea, the detritus of an active mind. She has half of a library in her apartment, great stacks of knowledge and rough piles of scrolls - half borrowed, half owned. It is dark, and fragrant with the smell of rotting paper and old leather, mixed with the remnants of the bakery's final batches.

Petra shuts the door behind Hozxi. "I apologize for the mess." Her laconic apology is all that is offered, before there is a shudder in the air. The murmur of magic being worked. "I'll get it cleaned momentarily. Please, make yourself comfortable. I'll just be a moment."

[Hozxi]

Make yourself comfortable. What cruel jokes these villagers make. How was one to be comfortable in a space so alien, inhabited by alien creatures? It was enough to make Hozxi want to shout, to complain, but instead she smiles very thinly.

"Of course, lalla. I thank you for allowing me into your home." The giant enters the apartment by bowing in order to keep from damaging the door frame.

The thawb she wears tonight is robin's egg blue, save for the head scarf, which is a much darker shade of royal blue. A common color, and one that draws out the distinction of her topaz eyes and black hair. Hozxi cannot help but compare it to the bright scarlet of the Circle's uniform in her mind. How one can be so bold was a secret she was dying to learn. One of many lessons this city had to teach her, she reflects.

"I apologize for not using the intermediary as was decided. The boy is... eager to please, but he takes too long to return with the money." An honest reason that nevertheless belies some other motivation.

The scattered sheets strewn about the parlor remind her of Yshvold. They may be of different feathers, she thinks, but they are birds alike. Shifting the bag under her elbow close to her chest, Hozxi adds to the hoard in the small studio by gently setting her work at the center of the desk where the candlelight is strongest.

""Do you h-"

As the giant turns to ask a question her gaze is caught on Yesod. Her magic sees the demon for what it is: the aether of concept bound to flesh and form. It is impolite to stare at a man. Was it the same for an experiment?

Hozxi blinks and forces herself to look away, completing the turn and settling her gaze on Petra.

"-have evening tea? I can fix it for you while you read."

Make myself comfortable, she repeats in her head.

[Petra]

Petra murmurs a name, and a monster answers. She flicks her wrist, and cuts a hole in reality. Only a little nick in the weave, and the demon does the rest. She offers her aether, her very soul, and a few drops of her blood from within her veins, and the demon bays its agreement. A hook-summon, a quick transportation of a willing vessel.

The demon crawls from the warp in the skein, a stunted half-man half-clockwork abomination. Two arms and two legs, it looks like a human child twisted around itself, like an automaton of a child bent around an axel. Twisted, but not quite broken.

Petra pricks her finger and drips two drops of her life onto the demon, and his answer is the music of a gleeful madness. His arms wave, and the room starts to change.

Books are tucked away, papers righted, furniture adjusted, pens arranged, everything dusted and the window pulled open to let the dust filter out. Niveral is a useful monster indeed - an extreme proficiency with extremely weak telekinesis. Perfect for multitasking chores, perfect for cleaning. A drop of her blood is well worth the time saved, and as Petra sucks her finger plaintively, the monster finishes its work and slithers back into hell.

It leaves behind a spotless abode.

"I do. Second cupboard from the right. The stove is smoldering, add wood to get the kettle boiled." Petra gives the instructions as if nothing happened at all. Entirely mundane. Her emerald eyes flash as she looks at the offered books. They have her interest, just as much as the entrancing woman in her home.

She sits herself at her own table, and Yesod hangs in her shadow, motionless. He doesn't even look alive - he is a statue, until he decides to move.

"I admire your talents." Petra turns a page carefully, like she is handling her own child. Delicate and practiced, her hands run over the pages. "This is magnificent work. Did you learn these skills in the desert?"

[Hozxi]

Hozxi heads for the stove. Lifting the small logs and tossing them into the fire is made to look like child's play for the giant. As the new wood joins the old embers dance and the stove comes to life once more, the flames greedily licking the edges of the fresh fuel until their dominance is established.

She digs into the cupboard. Her employer's tastes are simple, she concludes, as most of the space is crowded with articles that do not belong in the kitchen. A utilitarian use of space in a cramped attic apartment. Nevertheless it does not take magic to smell the commonplace ingredients: salt, cumin, ginger, honey, tea-

Hozxi lets out a small satisfied burst of air from her nostrils and goes for the tea. Her arm pushes most of the cabinet to the sides, barely fitting in the space made to reach the airtight jar of tea leaves.

The kettle is just as easy to find. Hozxi takes it to the spigot and rotates the handle. The water comes as easily summoned as the demon housecleaner, albeit without the demand of blood. She had become accustomed to the convenience of plumbing in this town, but somewhere in the back of Hozxi's mind the notion that fresh and clean water could be at one's fingertips at any time was... magical.

"I came to Kalzasi knowing what I understand your college calls 'semblance,'" she begins to reply. A fact she had come to know when being forced to describe her Cardinal Rune in detail. Hozxi pours the tea leaves into the pot. Other Circle mages she had met had found the idea that one might learn to manipulate aether outside of the rigid academic tradition a source of ridicule. Petra was not one of those.

"The handwriting I came to learn here at the registry office," she concludes, swinging the full kettle around to the stove and gently setting it onto its honored place above the flames, which were now making short work of the wood given to them just a few minutes ago.

"All things have truth. I simply coax the pages to reveal what their truth is."

WIthout meaning to, Hozxi looms over Petra, providing a second shadow.

"The passages in Kathalan were difficult. I do not know it well enough to tell when one phrase ends and another begins."

[Petra]

Petra turns another page, still reading as she responds to the massive woman who always seems right on the edge of hitting her head on something.

I'll never envy the tall, not with all their headaches.

"It's more than good enough. I have no trouble understanding it, and I am not a native speaker." She has to read a line a second time, and then a third, to understand it (without punctuation, the scansion is hard to put together, and Petra finds herself wishing she had a pen to jot down hypothetical breaks in the poetic feet), but it's not like she's going to admit that to a stranger.

I have to allow myself my little vanities. I get so few of them.

"Kathalan is an innately rhythmic language - its etymology is driven as much by rhythm as by tone. Well-suited to a society with an oral history. Less so for the written word. One more cause of the Southron decay, perhaps. A question for historians."

A group that Petra, clearly, is resolutely not.

She looks up at Hozxi, right into her eyes. She in unwavering in her eye-contact, more than is strictly polite. A bad habit picked up in the Middens, where eye contact is necessary for a perception of dominance, and those not seen as dominant tend not to fare well. Petra needed every advantage, given her sex and stature.

"But you do not call it that." A statement of fact, leading Petra into her thoughts. "What do you call what you do? And do you limit it to the finding of specific truths? Or is it more..." Petra flicks another page absentmindedly and searches for a word. "...up-to-interpretation? More general?"

A ghost of a smile brushes her lips as she speaks. The joys of speaking to another magician, and another foreigner. A rare enough combination, and one that Petra always forgets how much she values until she has one in front of her.

Or, indeed, in her house, making her tea and bringing her books.

If only more suitors would try to court me so. Perhaps I'd have a ring on my finger, instead of a demon at my back.

[Hozxi]

Hozxi returns the direct gaze. It would have been impolite to have someone offer a view of the eyes, the windows into their soul and reject it by turning away. That was the custom to which she had adhered most of her life.

"I have always known it as Seeing. A term that was, if you will believe me, taught to me by a woman who would be called nearly blind by any law and at the end of life," she comments, chuckling dryly at the notion. Seers were the longest lived of the Memnos but often some of the earliest in life to develop symptoms of their lives as aether tools. When one drew too much of themselves at once, even in service of some great cause or prevention of some great catastrophe, meant risking the consequences of overstepping.

"It is limited only by the curiosity of the mage. It tells truths, but it can also shield truths from others. It is a tool of study. Much like the books you collect, the potential good from its practice is as broad as the library of anything that a civilized person has put to pen and paper."

She lets her eyes roll to Yesod. The thing that watches like a motionless statue.

The kettle whistles. Hozxi plods across the studio. As she lifts the kettle, she gently pours the water into the teapot, watching the leaves swirl and dance and release their flavor at the boiling liquid's demand.

"If you will allow it, I would ask what truth you are seeking from these volumes."

The tray of teapot and cups seems... miniaturized as it balances over Hozxi's hand and onto a nearby unattended cabinet. The giant offers to pour Petra a cup by motioning with the teapot.

[Petra]

The tiny woman, dwarfed by her giant guest, takes a cup and sets it down. Carefully, ever so carefully, she slides a scrap of leather into the seam of the pages and closes the book. She is as delicate with it as a lover, and just as generous. She eases it closed, and does not slide it across the table but picks it up and puts it aside. So much effort, from a long-held instinct of preservation. In the Middens, everything is valuable. In a library, nothing is replaceable. Two rivers of over-care, with Petra as their confluence.

"In The Pursuit of a Crown, Paiter de Vries argues that there is one maxim that is always correct. In the absence of a specific goal, one should seek power. Power is the only attribute that can be exchanged into any other. Power, defined as the ability to change the world to suit your will, is axiomatically the best thing to be striven for in lieu of a more personal or specific destination."

Petra watches dark liquid pour into her cup with no shortage of silent appreciation or invisible respect.

She pours well, and holds pleasant conversation. What a courteous giant I have allowed into my home. If only Yesod were so well-behaved. Doubtless this wonder of a person is from nearly as painful a hell as he.

"Some train with swords, some build popularity, some amass fortunes. I am neither strong, nor charismatic, nor rich. I have eyes, and a mind, and a talent for magic. So I gather books that will make me powerful, that I might one day, when I have an understanding sufficient, make my mark on the world."

Petra taps her fingers on the table, thinking of an analogy that will translate well.

"Consider me... a stone, raised to heaven by the hand of God. Only when I am high enough to blaze like a comet, and overhead of the evil in the world, will I allow myself to be dropped."

Petra sips her tea. Silently, she nods and gestures with the cup. The ghost of a smile dances across her features - high praise indeed for a cup well-brewed.

"You have chosen the power to see truth. What will you do with those truths? Why have you given your life to your art?"

Petra takes another sip, and realizes she hasn't talked this much in a line in...

Stars and comets - how long has it been? It seems I've chosen excellent company indeed.

That smile returns. Small, and furtive, but this time, permanent.

[Hozxi]

"If I had given my life to my art," Hozxi says as she contemplates the steam coming from her own cup, "then I would still be in the desert guiding the tribes as I was raised to do."

She sighs. It wasn't that she missed the Tribe. Not enough to go back, at least. But out there things were much simpler. At least when her betrothed would meet her coming back from finding a fresh meal or guiding the Tribe around some barely perceptible hazard, she could count on the constancy of tea being prepared for her. Now she had to make her own tea. Or perhaps she had the power to make tea whenever she saw fit.

"I think that when the circumstance comes that I am needed, that I will be in the right place at the right time. Being there is my power. That's what business is, is it not? The serendipity of one who has and one who wants finding one another. And trade is the lifeblood of civilization. Your de Vries says that power is the only maxim."

She blows away the steam on her cup.

"I find that a perspective lacking in wisdom. A comet may blaze overhead, but the moon stays in heaven because it knows that is the only place where it might shine for the whole world to see."

Hozxi smiles slightly, earnestly, but shifts her legs so the one folded on top in her cross-legged posture upon the floor (the only way she can sit, drink, and maintain a conversation at eye level) is now on the bottom. At first she had wondered what drew the boy to this woman. Now Hozxi had some idea of what enthralled the orphan.

Something about being so forthright. So determined. Petra was a snake crossing the desert. A straight line from her intention to her ambition. It was like staring at the sun for too long.

"Nevertheless I should want to see when you have found the evil you seek to land upon. With the force of falling from heaven, no earthly evil would survive such an impact."

[Petra]

"Most of my colleagues would say that the greatest evils are not earthly. Mistlords and dragons make excellent villains. Good enough for most. Fodder for their dreams. If there is one thing I have found in my studies, it is the lie in this thought. Heaven's evils are man's evil. The inferno is no different. But where divinity stagnates, mankind changes."

Petra taps the books, her fingers rapping out a waltz rhythm that she must have picked up from somewhere, though now she can't place it. "I can only do what I can because of books like these. When I am dead, I will have left my own. Someone will one day have the power that I dream of. Perhaps they will use it for trade, or peace, or conquest. Perhaps they will shine fixedly in the sky, and draw the wonder of all those below them. I can only trust that they will be my superior. Generation upon generation, world without end."

Petra quotes desert scripture, antique but at least correctly-translated. She has done her research on her guest, as well as her magic. Petra is many things, but chief among them: she is fastidious.

As such, she wanted to get a measure of the woman she would be trusting. Now she trusts completely. She has never felt more certain in her life. Yesod vibrates in disgust behind her, but if she let herself be ruled by the emotions of a demon she would be long since dead. She lets him sulk. She reaches down beneath the table and pulls out a burlap sack, in which three cylindrical leather cases sit. In the cases are scraps of documents uncovered in archaeological digs, perhaps millennia old. Blank, the ink faded from time.

She sets the sack down on the table with the utmost delicacy.

"I have more work for you, if you are willing. I'll pay the same rate - my research stipend can survive it. These were recovered in the uttermost north. Ancient vellum in a language that will need deciphering, together. I hope you're interested."