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Post by Briar on Dec 2, 2021 15:19:29 GMT -6
The young man tapped a finger to his chin, considering. “Aside from that… Well, there is a TROD here -- a robot, you know -- if you would call that ‘living’. But I’m sure she’ll stay out of your way, especially now that you’re taking over the garden.”
-No family?-
At that, the young man gave a laugh. “No,” he said. There was some private joke there, but Briar didn’t know what it was. “No, I’m afraid I’m quite alone in that regard.”
Briar’s heart sank at his words, though he willed his face to remain impassive. It might not be the truth, he consoled himself; and if it was… Even if it was, he would have wanted to know for sure, wouldn’t he?
Noa had led them out of the kitchens and back into the foyer. Briar looked again at the staircase leading up.
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Post by Briar on Dec 2, 2021 15:21:40 GMT -6
-Are there any areas that are off limits?- he signed.
The young man followed his gaze, a smile spreading slowly over his features. “Ahhh, are you offering to keep me company? My quarters are on the second floor; you can go, but I won’t be responsible for the consequences.”
This time Briar didn’t manage to repress the shudder that went through him. -No,- he signed hastily, taking a step back. -No... Thank you.-
The young man laughed, as if the reaction pleased him. “Truly, there's nothing of interest on the second floor. I don’t care if you go." He gave a shrug, and the creature on his shoulders scrambled to rebalance itself. "But," he went on, "the basement and the tower are off limits.” He indicated a smaller door, tucked near the back of the grand hall, that Briar hadn’t noticed at first; the layout of the room had cast it in shadow.
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Post by Briar on Dec 2, 2021 15:22:52 GMT -6
There was nothing grand or beautiful about the door itself, which made it appear strangely out of place among the fading finery of the rest of the house, but it was of a sturdy make, and kept closed by a heavy-looking lock.
“One door. That should make it easier for you, shouldn’t it, my lost little lamb?” The young man was smiling, but there was nothing mirthful about that smile anymore, and his voice had an edge to them that hadn't been there before. “I know it creates a certain element of temptation to forbid you from it, but if you’re smart, you won’t push your luck. My patience only stretches so far, and curiosity isn’t a trait I particularly value in my servants.”
The threat wasn’t lost upon Briar. He thought of Yeo-reum, bleeding and battered, likely still waiting for him by the entrance.
-I’ll stay away from that door,- he signed.
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Post by Briar on Dec 2, 2021 15:24:38 GMT -6
The young man’s smile widened. “Good,” he said, some of his easy, offhand manner returning. “See, you’re learning already. I trust you won’t get lost anywhere inconvenient again, hmm?” Briar said nothing, his gaze trained on the floor. “Well, this has been a delightful little interruption, but I have my work to get back to. If you’ll excuse me.” The young man extricated a key and unlocked the door, before stepping through and closing it behind him. Briar stared at it a moment longer, then turned back to the entrance. Yeo-reum’s wounds needed to be seen to, and he needed time to collect his thoughts. Too much had happened today -- beyond even his wildest expectations, and it was too soon to know whether it had been a stroke of luck, or... ... It didn't feel like luck. But he reminded himself grimly that he needed to be here. -----
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Post by Briar on Jan 25, 2022 22:17:16 GMT -6
Life on the estate was not, as Briar had feared, unbearable.
In fact it was, in some ways, a return to the life he had always known. In some ways it was even an improvement over his previous situation. The garden he found himself charged with was almost painfully functional, each plant chosen for a purpose, and laid out in dispassionate, pragmatic arrangements that made them easy to care for. The tools were better than he was used to; there were new ones that the robot had to teach him how to use, in the same cold, impersonal tones. That this would be the sole intelligent servant in the entire estate had felt alien to Briar, but as the days went by and he came to understand more of the mage that lived here, he felt gladdened by the fact.
No, he had been gladdened even on the first day.
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Post by Briar on Jan 25, 2022 22:17:43 GMT -6
After the brutality of their initial meeting, it had been impossible to come to any other conclusion. He was glad that there was no one else here; for their sakes, and because it made things easier for him. There was no one to explain himself to, no one who might note his comings and goings, no one but the robot who simply did, as far as he could tell, as she was told. And even her instructions were not terribly specific, even if the quantity of tasks kept her occupied through all hours, including the ones that a living servant would have spent at rest.
The mage’s name, he learned, was Noa -- Noa Saint-Clair. Briar hadn’t known the family name prior to this, and he had tried to imagine the weight of that name against the half-remembered face of the boy he had met, ages ago. He couldn’t.
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Post by Briar on Jan 25, 2022 22:18:13 GMT -6
But the name, overwrought, suited this overwrought house, and it was easier to fit it against the arrogant blue-green gaze, the callous way the young man treated everything.
Noa Saint-Clair seemed to live by his whims. He kept odd hours and his house was kept almost by sheer force of will. Whatever tasks the robot didn’t perform were done instead by invisible, magicked servants -- or sometimes even by the implements themselves. Noa Saint-Clair locked himself, sometimes for spans of consecutive days, behind the door that he had forbidden Briar from entering. He had been telling the truth when he had said there was nothing of interest on the second floor. Briar had ventured up, in a bid of calculated risk, on one such occasion, and found a bedroom almost as dusty from disuse as the servants’ quarters. The room had been cold, the center of it taken up by a bed that could easily have fit four people across without touching.
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Post by Briar on Jan 25, 2022 22:18:29 GMT -6
The rest of the furniture had been fine, heavy; old, as the house was old, their grandeur tarnished by the layer of decay and neglect.
When Noa Saint-Clair had no need of Briar, he treated Briar as little more than air. Occasionally he would drift through the house, half the time in such a state of disarray that what he wore could be nothing but bed clothes -- at morning, at noon, at midnight.
In some ways it was not so terrible, no worse than living with a rich eccentric who did not bother with anything he did not care for.
In other ways, it was like living as a mouse in the den of a monster.
Beasts prowled the property, the only other signs of life besides the master of the house and his pale ever-present familiar. They weren’t many in number, but each one was massive, the smallest of a size with Yeo-reum and rigidly trained.
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Post by Briar on Jan 25, 2022 22:18:46 GMT -6
He saw, once, a great shimmering blue serpent summon lightning from clear sky. He saw, too, the master himself do the same. Until that moment he had not quite realized how overmatched they would have been in a fight, but the sight of it settled like ice in his veins as the scent of ozone dissipated in the air.
There were sounds too -- usually at night -- audible even through the solid stone of the mansion walls. Briar paid them no mind, or tried to; and in the days he worked himself to exhaustion so that sleep claimed him before coherent thought could struggle its way to the surface.
Sometimes there was livestock for the beasts. Sometimes there were strange shipments. There was, Briar noticed, never anything sensible; there was not even food, besides what Briar himself cultivated in the gardens or bought in town. If Noa ate, he procured his foodstuff through some other, alien means.
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Post by Briar on Jan 25, 2022 22:19:01 GMT -6
But all of that was easier to ignore than when Noa deigned to remember the presence of his wayward new gardener. Sometimes, when Noa wasn’t locked away with his own pursuits, he showed up like a cloud obscuring the sun, one shoulder leaned casually against a wall, and talked.
It generally began without preamble, as if he was simply picking up from where he had left off, briefly; the first time it happened, Briar had been caught off guard, but he soon came to accept it as one of Noa’s peculiarities. As far as Noa’s peculiarities went, this was relatively mild. Sometimes Noa spoke of his days, his pursuits, his spells -- the successes and disappointments. Briar didn’t understand the intricacies of this, and didn’t pretend to. But Noa didn’t seem to mind, occasionally deigning to explain some esoteric concept, then smiling when Briar frowned at him.
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Post by Briar on Jan 25, 2022 22:21:39 GMT -6
Briar quickly found that it was the reactions Noa was watching for; that the content of their conversations hardly mattered at all. That didn't make them any easier to bear, but at least it gave him something to focus on, that he might thwart Noa's aims even a little by schooling himself to impassiveness as much as he could.
Sometimes Noa would ask questions. Briar was always at his tensest, his most uneasy then. Relaxing around Noa was impossible, knowing as he did how his life was balanced on the knife’s edge of Noa’s whims, but in questions he felt the jaws of a trap that was older, more familiar. He answered always in neutral, differential language, and tried to give as little away as he could while sticking to the truth. Lies, he knew, had not worked, and after his first failed attempt he had not tried it again.
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Post by Briar on Jan 25, 2022 22:21:53 GMT -6
Sometimes the questions were innocuous. Sometimes they were appallingly personal. “You’re branded,” Noa said once, his gaze unreadable and the corners of his mouth tilted subtly up. The ghost touch of a phantom hand drifted over Briar’s cheek, beneath the scarf that he usually wore to cover the mark. “Tell me about that.”
Briar couldn’t keep himself from flinching away, and turned to Noa with a stricken look, despite all his silent promises to be stoic in the face of Noa’s antics. Noa had blinked, perhaps himself startled by the force of Briar’s revulsion -- and then had laughed, head tilted back, until he doubled over and was nearly sick.
It was a game in which Briar was an unwilling participant, and one that, increasingly, he understood he could not win. Even when he willed himself into stoic non-reaction, Noa seemed amused -- or seemed to take it as a challenge.
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Post by Briar on Jan 25, 2022 22:22:07 GMT -6
Briar weathered these visits as a ship weathered a storm, and only allowed himself the luxury of exhaustion once Noa had had his fill and left.
Briar didn’t understand the appeal of these visits, just as he didn’t understand, even after months at Gracehaven, the reason that Noa had taken him in in the first place. Twice, Briar saw visitors come to the property itself. Noa received them in the grand hall. The first, after a half hour of terse negotiations, left with a look on his face as though his life had been ended. The second had come bearing a dirty satchel dripping with blood and left with a purse full of coin. Neither had been asked to stay, and neither had been interrogated at length for Noa’s entertainment.
Whatever Noa was playing at, it felt almost personal in nature, a game he reserved for Briar alone.
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Post by Briar on Jan 25, 2022 22:22:18 GMT -6
With its master’s erratic and capricious nature, learning the rhythms of life at the Gracehaven Estate was the work of weeks and months. Briar bore it quietly, with the bitter determination that had borne him through a lifetime of service. It had been a waiting game all those many long years, and he told himself that he could wait a little more, if he must.
But even so, he felt a growing sense of urgency within himself, as if being so close to his goal was eroding his patience, just as surely as this place and its master were eroding his nerves. Even on quiet days, even in the relative peace of the garden where no one ever visited, Briar could not truly relax. As the master’s negligence became more apparent, Briar had grown bolder, canvasing the house for any sign of secret doors, of records, of any possible sign that someone lived here aside from Noa himself.
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Post by Briar on Jan 25, 2022 22:22:31 GMT -6
There were none. Only the basement and the tower remained. The plain heavy door in the hall seemed to taunt him as he passed. He dreamed of it sometimes, and of what he might find beyond: a pleading voice, a roomful of corpses.
He did not like this. Every instinct had long since told him to flee, and in the interest of keeping an old promise, he had smothered them one by one. There was nothing left but the door, and with reluctance he began to turn his mind to the question of how he might pass through it. The problem wasn’t one of surveillance, but of means; and of a fear of discovery. There were no guards, no sentries, no watchmen but the familiar that only occasionally left its master’s side, but Briar had no illusions. If he was caught, he would be killed -- with, perhaps, an intervening period of inventive torture.
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