tushanshu_logs | open audience

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open audience

Characters: The Ironwood Emperor and anyone who came to speak with her!
Date: March 30th.
Location: The Palace of Landed Sky
Situation: The expected holding of an audience for any that care to speak with the Ironwood Emperor.
Warnings/Rating: N/A; to be updated if necessary

The hall is still and white, strung with softly glowing lanterns that are strung up high beyond reach. Outside, the sun is at its zenith, and it filters down through the cloudy glass roof to create a brilliant, nearly blinding ambiance.

The floor is marble, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ruby quartz. It catches the light, and casts strange patterns on the walls.

The room itself is almost eerily silent. No noise, no echoes. No one and nothing vaguely human, excepting the Emperor herself, who is practising (with no small amount of skill) with a sword at the far end of the chamber. It's a long walk to her, and she's disinclined to make the journey less tedious to those that come calling on her presence.

The 'audience' is an open one, and no one will be turned away. So come one, come all, to the Palace of Landed Sky.

[Actionspam or prose are both acceptable!

Characters will only be admitted into the hall one by one, so there won't be anyone present for anyone else's conversations, and there won't be any 'mingling' in the chamber itself.

By popular demand, we will continue to allow mingling for those waiting for an audience in an antechamber. There is a thread header below to allow for that!]

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Jack has been to the audience hall once before when the Emperor was absent and Evandau took petitioners in her place, so he spares the stunning surroundings only a brief glance as though to affirm they haven't changed in tandem with the decline of the city outside the Palace before his gaze returns to the sword-bearing woman at the far end of the long room. He doesn't mind the walk across the inlay floor, coming to stop a dozen or so feet away with a respectful pause. It had been a long and restless night inside the Stark Building freezer, wanting to make sure he wasn't caught mid-melt by the time he got to see her (that he was allowed had registered with a certain level of surprise) though he suspected he looked more outwardly hale than belied the anxiousness gnawing inside of him.

"Your Majesty."

He remembers the rebuke (ma'am is unacceptable) but strives also to remember his and Raylan's conversation after that day in his suite, to put the man's words foremost in his thoughts moreso than the Emperor's sharp threat when Jack had spoken his mind. ( "I didn't think she was that kind of person, from everything I'd heard. I'm still not sure I do -- how stupid is that?" ... "She ain't. She told me she wouldn't have done it, for what that's worth." )

Her stance draws up to an elegant pose, and she does not look at Jack as she speaks. "What is it?"

"I wanted to thank you for this week," he began. "Everybody needed it, both the Foreigners and the kedan. I hope Tu Vishan is feeling better for it too."

Jack transferred his staff from one hand to the other, a nervous gesture. "And I wanted to ask about a change to the rationing, if it's going back into effect."

She waves a hand, dismissive of the gratitude. She knows how to read the mood of a crowd, when dissent begins to flower and bloom into outright rebellion. She has no desire to see such conflict, not now.

"Ask."

"Please consider exempting the younger ones from the rationing," he said earnestly. "You've brought kids here, young kids -- some not even ten yet. If there was enough stockpiled to supply everything offered this week, then what's been required that everyone donate has to have been enough to take the extra care for the kids. Please?"

"What do I care of children?"

It's not a no, but she's definitely not enamoured of the idea. If he wants to convince her, he'll have to do a better job than that.

Jack's eyes sharpened slightly at the retort. "I believe that you do," he answered evenly. "Because I see how the kedan children are taken care of in Keeliai. The schools they go to, the safe places they have to play."

He was careful to keep his responses factual, as opposed to his opinions which had caused such a blowback on him.

"But if you need a different reason, I think it would help the Foreigners trust you a little more. It would give them something visible to see."

"I cannot please everyone. The kedan are my people, and I protect them when and where I can. I give them what they are due. And," she pauses, looking him over. He has grown a spine, the little sprite, and it gives her no small amount of amusement. "I am not inclined to care whether or not the foreigners trust me at all."

She performs another set of moves, simple and elegant, and when she finishes her sword is levelled in Jack's direction.

"Or are you asking so that you can play hero?"

"Maybe not," Jack said, trying not to let urgency creep into his voice. It was strange, he thought he'd resigned himself to having this request turned down and yet when it actually seemed as though that would happen, he found he couldn't so easily let the idea go.

"But I think it'd make things easier for you, when you do need us to do... whatever it was you brought us here for."

His gaze rests on the point of the sword for a moment before returning to meet Eshai's eyes. "Anyone who really knows me wouldn't hesitate to tell you I'm no hero. I don't care if you do it anonymously, or say it was your idea and take credit, whatever you want and I won't say anything differently."

He takes a breath, holds it for a moment and lets it out slowly. "And I'll owe you. I don't know how much that's worth, probably nothing, but I keep my word when I give it."

She tilted her head to one side, lowered the sword until its point was against the floor. "I will do as you ask. I expect you remember your promise."

Jack bowed his head respectfully. "Thank you, Your Majesty," he said, finally relaxing a little. "I'll remember this."

He hesitated for a moment as though silently debating something else, then seemed to decide against it and grasped for something that seemed appropriate to end the conversation with. "May I be excused?"

"Go," she said, lifting a dismissive hand.

In the back of her mind, she wonders if she should be doing this . . . To date and from rumor, the Emperor has not seemed like the most open kind of person. She doesn't anticipate luck.

Still, it goes against Amelia's training not to try . . . and before she does something more drastic on her own terms.

"Your Majesty?" Her voice is soft, but it carries.

"What?" Eshai is seated at her throne, her double-edged sword held with surety as she scrapes a sharpening stone down its edge.

Always reassuring, listening to that noise. Amelia doesn't like swords, rarely holds them, never uses them unless absolutely necessary. Her mouth firms a little, eyes closing, re-steadying herself.

She's here for a reason, though, and her cause is Just.

"The kedan told me I couldn't help where the Turtle is hurt, and they told me to leave. I can heal well, and I know I can take care of at least some of the places he isn't well. I'd like your permission to help. Please."

This is her last effort to do this through proper channels. She has to do something.

"There are three options. Regarding them, it seems you are either deaf, dumb, or deluded. If healing would work on the turtle, I would be dragging each of you by any means necessary to where you would do the most good. It doesn't. Do not assume you know better than me how to remedy this situation, child."

She tests the edge of the sword, a pinprick of blood follows the motion against the pad of her thumb. After a moment, she smudges it between her fingers. "I tire immensely of repeating myself. Do you have anything useful to contribute or am I to be forced to endure further inanity?"

"Even magical healing?" Amelia's mouth firms. "I've tried one spell on the water that isn't good, and that does help, even if that spell isn't really meant for large areas. If you need me to show you, I can -- on the finger you just pricked."

"And if magic really doesn't help, I want to ask what does. How the kedan are taking care of it. Because I'm not assuming anything; I wasn't even here when the Turtle first was hurt. I just want to help -- I need to."

"Fixing the water is not the same as healing a being that's older than whatever planet you hail from," she says primly. And to Amelia's offer, she simply tucks her hands into her sleeves. "Hypocritically of me, perhaps, but I have no desire to allow people to prod at me with exotic magics. Forgive me my cynicism."

To the latter statement, she tilts her head. "Your needs do not concern me overmuch. The methods the kedan use are none of your business. This is not your fight, little girl, do not appropriate it. If you're so willing to throw yourself into the line of fire," her mouth tugs into a tight line, "you will get your chance. Sooner than you like, I guarantee it."

"Excuse me, but it is my fight." Amelia's voice is no longerr soft. "It's everyone's fight. We were called here. We don't have any way home. This is our home too right now, and we have every right to fight for it. I don't want to throw myself into a 'line of fire,' like you say, but if that's what Justice demands, I would."

There are a lot of good questions that Amelia should perhaps be asking here, but Justice has started to creep into the conversation. Justice tends to supplant some things.

"You will fight for it. But this is not how. Or would you rather stand there and debate your point until you are breathless?" Her tone is markedly unkind.

[ He makes his way in much the same way as last month, meeting her eyes indifferently and forgoing the bow, though Iorveth does pause once he's before her throne to look back to the doors to ensure it is closed and no others have snuck in before he turns back. ]

There were over three hundred foreigners in this place before us. All perished or disappeared.

There was a journal left behind by one - the last entry as "Malicant is here."

How did they die?

You again.

[She doesn't sound particularly impressed. Don't think she doesn't watch the network, Iorveth. Or have minions to do it for her, in any case.]

Does it matter? Dead is dead.

[ :T sorry not-sorry he called you a bitch. look he just tells it as it is okok. and that's not really a bad thing in his book either. either way, not really moved one way or the other by the disapproval. he's not here to make friends with her. ]

It does, considering we're likely to go the same way if we make no more progress than they did.

You act as if that concerns me.

[RLY THO do you think she'd summon you guys as cannon fodder if she cared??]

Perhaps it should. What's protecting you once your cannon fodder has died off? We are not nearly 300 yet, and just how large is Malicant's appetite?

[ Maybe she'll simply summon more of them, but if that were the case, why would Malicant retreat at all? Maybe she's feeding it. Satisfying it to keep the others safe. Iorveth's head tilts to the side and he considers her with narrowed eyes. ]

Why did it leave the time before?

It was beat back. Tu Vishan put up the barrier.

[A COLD LOOK she knows what you're thinking there, dude. Okay she actually doesn't. But it's probably not anything she's pleased by.]

And the turtles from the mainland? They passed from the same sickness, did they not?

[ As far as he'd heard from others here or there, but he speaks as if it's a certain thing. ]

Why were they not able to do the same?

They were not aware of it until it was too late.

[She doesn't exactly like talking about this can you tell. He probably can. Because he's an asshole.

This entire conversation is basically Assholes Anonymous, okay?]

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open audience

AUDIENCE

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apparently I can't pick a tense. #bestriter

lmao I didn't even notice #bestreader

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