RP:The Apple of My Eye is Madness

Part of the Rise of Larket Arc

Summary: Josleen confides in Lionel her shocking beliefs about Macon and Kelovath. Thane and Knight-Commander share quiet conversation over a war that may be fought in vain.

Frostmaw: Food Storage

Josleen hasn’t left the fort since her dramatic return, clutched in Hildegarde’s scaly claw, with Fort Freedom crippled in their wake. She has spoken to few, smiled fewer times still, fueling rumors that the Thane is not quite herself. But who could blame her, given the war and the recent escalation. She wears a wintry dress beneath a fur shawl, yes, even in doors. She loves the City of War, but not its weather. And while this old fort has always had drafty rooms, it seems to Josleen the drafts have worsened since the last war. Maybe the fort is tired too. To avoid conversation (something she never used to do before), she walks the halls with her nose in a book. It’s borrowed from the fort library. ‘Facts and Myths About Witches’ reads the spine. Her route, guided by her grumbling stomach, meanders to the kitchen. There, without lifting her eyes from the page, she reaches into a fruit basket for an apple.

Lionel hasn’t left his quarters since the middle of yesterday evening. Too many stacks too high with too many papers -- again. Briar, as ever, has shouldered his burden as best she can. But it simply isn’t enough. The rigors of war feel almost like afterthought next to the ink and quill. Through the latest hours of the night and from the rooster’s crack of dawn, Lionel has been besieged by an enemy with erratic battle plans and profound fortitude: administration. Merchants have visited, begging fake pardons before speaking of unfair tariffs and the costs of keeping posted guardsmen fed in their shops. Soldiers have bowed and bent the knee and then blustered about new recruits whose lack of skill bears a worse flaw -- lack of talent. And when at last he feels like he can breathe, a representative from the Warrior’s Guild will arrive, hounding him over what to do about the rumors that their organization’s ties to Frostmaw are deeper now than they ought to be. There’s no recourse. No way out of the endless rank-and-file. A hunger compels Lionel’s stomach to roar and Briar fixes him with a commanding stare. ‘Do something about it,’ she doesn’t have to say. Frostmaw’s Knight-Commander stretches, stifles a yawn, yawns without stifling, and then traipses through the halls to the kitchen and its food stores. He’s too busy reading a book of his own to notice Josleen’s hand motioning toward the apple. ‘How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Get Becalmed.’ Idly, he lets his hand reach for that self-same apple, unaware he’s in the presence of a very important woman.

Josleen ‘s hand knocks into Lionel and she jumps out of her book with startle. “Oh!” She whips around to face whoever snuck up behind her (he was definitely sneaking in her account of things). “Knight-commander?” Her brows furrow in surprise to find him here. “I thought you were in the field. What brought you back?” She scans his book’s spine and almost grins, almost. It’s hard to enjoy anything these days. Stress and anxiety are a heavy mantle smothering her ability to enjoy, dulling her emotions save the anxiety itself. Co-mingled with her stress is a sense of shame, and she looks at everyone, including Lionel, with suspicion. Does he know? What does he know? What doesn’t he know? Can he possibly suspect?

Lionel blinks when a hand smacks into his, but it’s to whom the hand belongs that really seems to faze him. His eyes widen and he clears his throat, hasty to put his book down. Its cover touches the table in vain hope she hasn’t seen the title. “Bureaucracy,” he answers plainly, but his tone is a kind of jovial moan. “I’ll return to the field as soon as I can. Not a moment later.” He smirks. He’s dressed today in thin black silks buttoned a few inches below the collar. His badge of office, the silver broach of a dragon taking flight, is well-pinned to his chest at an angle simply too good to have been fastened by Lionel himself. He glances around awkwardly, rummaging through nearby bowls and platters. “You’d really think we’d have more than one apple. I had a farmer tell me just last week he needed more escorts because the bushels were thriving. Tell me -- what kind of thriving bushel produces one apple?” He sighs, turning back around in resignation. “It’s, uh, I’m glad to see you back.”

Josleen points at barrels at the back of the walk-in pantry. “I suspect you’ll find more there.” She doesn’t find her own book. Considering the romantic trash she’s read in the past, this is respectable. When he says it is good to see her back she forces a polite, toothless, and empty smile, here and gone, like the flap of a wing. “Mm. I missed Frostmaw, but I worry about the manner in which I left Larket. I’ve been hoping to achieve peace, and this escalation frustrates my hopes.”

Lionel whistles at Josleen’s suggestion. “Whole barrels of apples, maybe. Who knew?” He waltzes over to them and cracks the seal, hopefully. When Lionel is too tired, he can’t suppress the boyish aura unless things get very, very heated. Here with Josleen, the man has questions he’s not currently considering asking, but in his flawed perspective there’s nothing heated afoot here. At her mention of peace, he cants his head slightly, offering her a very short glance. His hands toy through bags of grain and wheat en route to what feels like fruit on the bottom. “I’d rather not send good people to their deaths, myself,” he tells her, his palm grasping now over peaches and cabbages. “Krice and I met a Kingsguard recently who was so convinced it was Frosmaw with the lies being spun and Macon in the right.” His palm seems to grace an apple’s smooth skin… but it’s only a plum. “Of course, I tried to set him straight. Asked him to dig deeper. Unravel the truth.” It’s all said leisurely as Catal’s last prince comes up empty. “There aren’t any apples in here.” He turns and leans against the wall. “I’ve heard-tell that Macon’s controlling Larket through some devious magic or other. If we could just dispatch him but leave Larket to Kelovath, surely that’d be a victory for us all.”

Josleen flashes that same, toothless smile at the name ‘Krice’, this time to hide the fact the name brings her mild distress. Their last interaction didn’t go very well. She wonders what the warrior knows, doesn’t know, suspects, same as with Lionel, same as with everyone else. Such is how it goes when you live with a shameful secret. ‘A kingsguard convinced Macon in the right’. Me three? “Lio-” she starts to say his name to interrupt but her voice barely escapes her throat. Her entire position in all of this is embarrassing, from Kelovath to Macon to the initial conflict of the war, in which she played no small role. She grimaces at his final statement, frowns, looks away, looks back. “So I take it you haven’t spoken to Hildegarde.” She sets down her apple and book and walks into the pantry under the guise of helping Lionel find an apple. As if she could possibly give a hoot about apples right now. But in the pantry there are shadows that her hide her face and its montage of grim expressions. It feels safer to speak behind a veil. The guilty feel most comfortable in the absence of light. “There’s no delicate way to say this so I suppose I should just come out with it. It embarrasses me to admit that Kelovath misled me. It is as the kingsguard says. Kelovath deceived me, and all of us here in Frostmaw, everyone in Larket.” She ignores the rumor that Macon is controlled by magic. She knows it to be true, and yet she confirms nothing, because she simply doesn’t see it as a problem relevant to the question of peace. To Josleen, Macon is a victim of Kelovath’s rage stone, not the malevolent wielder. If she hopes to achieve peace, it’s best to ignore Macon’s bewitching.

Lionel is glad for Josleen’s produce-finding service. No doubt between the two of them another apple can be found in all this unwise stock arrangement. But then she’s frowning, and before he can see further her face is lost to him and she’s speaking revelations. Lionel’s brow furrows and a deep frown replaces whatever nonchalance had been there before. He freezes, his muscles tense but his left hand still poking through pockets of foodstuff almost of its own accord. “I haven’t had chance to speak with the queen at any length since your return,” he confirms, the words simmering out slowly and unsecurely. Alarm flushes his cheeks and it’s a good think he’s slunk into shadows, himself, lest she see him reddening so. “Hildegarde agrees with you in this assessment?” The boy is gone; the hero prods.

Josleen shakes her head in the dim light. The gold in her hair is gone. It’s a dull brown in this gray gloomy closet. “No. She does not. She is not convinced by the evidence, says she needs to hear Kelovath’s side before she can make any conclusions. As for Macon, she feels he is a dark character. And I agree there is a darkness to him, but not evil.” She looks pointedly at Lionel again. “Did you know I was in Larket for the past month? I got to know him a bit better, the King. He is a war veteran, you see, and his past has been difficult. The baggage he carries… it makes him short-tempered and perhaps unpleasant. But evil? No. I don’t think so.” She searches the same barrel over and over, not really searching at all.

Lionel cannot withhold an awkward tug at his heartstrings when Josleen describes her perception of the Rage Knight’s person. He stares after her now even as she feigns at searching. “I knew where you were, of course,” he starts to say, but his mouths prone to stumbling. He scratches at his forehead and bites his lip, studying that lone apple there in its bowl on the table. “Why did he take control of Larket?” Lionel asks the question into the air, a little like he expects the air to answer him back. But then he glances at Josleen. The unspoken angle: a man with as much baggage as Lionel himself might carry wouldn’t be in any rush to rule a city.

Josleen cants her head slowly to the side as if to say ‘weeeeeell’. “If you believe that Kelovath unleashed the fermin plague, killed the priest of Cyris, and was grasping at the throne, as Macon believed and as I now believe, then he moved to block Kelovath. King Macon is also beloved by his people. When he had Kelovath arrested he was not King, but his leadership swiftly saw him to the throne. I’ve seen him in public. He stops to talk with citizens and his presence is welcomed with smiles. The notion that he stole a throne no one wanted him to claim is another one of Kelovath’s lies, I am embarrassed to admit it. ...I never saw this coming.” A line she has said many times in the past.

Lionel shuts his eyes for several seconds. Too much assumed knowledge has been called into abrupt interrogation. He rubs his face and seats himself. “All these things are easy to say, but hard for me to trust. What grounds do you hold that Kelovath is responsible for the plague? Or any of this? It’s almost too peerless -- the perfect scapegoat for Macon’s rise. And what of this magic I’ve heard mentioned? I never knew Kelovath personally, but what I heard of him made me proud he was around here in Lithrydel when I was not. And -I- sure wouldn’t unleash a fermin plague, I can tell you that.” Whatever has happened down in Larket, it grows more complicated by the week.

Josleen leans against the barrel and folds her arms across her chest defensively. Lionel is not her enemy, but she can’t help but feel an adversarial role here, simply because she has grown too sympathetic to Macon’s side. “You’re coming at this from the assumption that Macon has guilt, that he needs a scapegoat. If you can, wipe his slate clean of all prejudgments. And Kelovath too. I do not deny Kelovath’s holy and heroic past. Indeed, I have owed him my life on several occasions, and I loved him for his holiness and his courage.” Her voice pinches. “I really did love him.” The words grow watery, and she hides her quaking frown behind a hand. She takes a moment to gather herself, thinks of he betrayal to focus her rage. When she thinks of the man she lost, the good paladin, she cries. When she thinks of the man who betrayed her, she just manages to hold it together long enough to speak. “Let me start with the evidence that convinced me most. This was evidence only I had. Macon did not know this. This did not come from him, and thus it could not be manipulated by him.” And with that preamble, she takes a deep breath, sighs loudly, then speaks the evidence that finally broke her faith in Kelovath. “When I was last in Frostmaw, for the war council, Kelovath, unbeknownst to me, ventured to the underdark alone to confront the drow witch Gevurah D’Artes. Alone.” Pause for incredulity. “He claims the drow attacked him, but that his life was saved by a sentient and powerful sword, one which had been locked up by enchantments prepared by Tiphareth himself. The sword not only broke out of Tiphareth’s spells, not only saved his life, but he managed to escape the drow city and the underdark unscathed with this sword in his possession.” She shudders hard again as her brain whirs to a grind as it does every single time she reviews this evidence. It’s insane. “Kelovath fell somewhere along the way...I have a theory as to when.”

Lionel listens intently, then rises from the chair he’s only just sat down upon when Josleen’s voice surges. He won’t move toward her but he will stand stoically to the sight of her defensive arm-cross. His stance buckles, however, as hesitation truly begins to deter him from preexisting conceptions. “Sentient swords, eh?” Lionel doesn’t bother elaborating; there aren’t many descriptions of him floating about that don’t include Hellfire and the Ishaarite spirit Halycanos in the very first sentence. He sighs, picking up the only apple either of them have yet found and carrying it over to the woman in offering. “I wouldn’t want to be caught in a dark alley with Gevurah D’Artes, myself.” Having spent six months tortured at Khasad’s whims in the Underdark, the Catalian isn’t ignorant to the fact that everything Trist’oth is ‘dark alley.’ He grimaces. “Continue, if you would.”

Josleen accepts the apple but tucks it under her crossed arms unthinkingly. She continues, “During the last war, the war against Balgruuf, towards the end of the war Kelovath fell. He fell off a cliff face a great depth that would kill any man, while wearing plate too. He miraculously survived… or did he?” That frown wrestles against her calm again, and a sob suggests she’s losing the battle against her grieving. Her words sound thick, as if with snot lodged deep in the back of her throat. “What if he was ressurected for an evil purpose by an evil god? I have seen this before. I knew a man named Tyler, an ex-fiance of my sister’s, deceased. He was resurrected by an evil god and later attacked me, and others. The irony is Kelovath saved me from Tyler’s resurrected monster, but he---he couldn’t save himself.” Another sob. She pulls a cloth napkin off a shelf and dries her eyes and nose. A sniffle. “I’ve not shared this theory with anyone, Lionel. Not even Hildegarde. I have no proof, just a hunch. He fell a distance no man could survive, and I believed it was Arkhen’s grace that saved him, but after what happened in the underdark… perhaps I was wrong about the god.”

Lionel stiffens at all this talk of deities, but in his eyes, there is clear and present sympathy. If not for Macon, then at least for this woman, this Thane of Frostmaw, who had seemed cut from such hard stone but now lies on the brink of madness. He isn’t so far from her now, after the passing of the apple she has tucked, but he dares not come any closer. Not only for his unfamiliarity with her but for his own unending difficulty connecting with people. Instead, he finds himself doing the most curious thing: he tries to hush her. “Shhh,” he starts. “Shhh… I hear you. I’ve got no great love for the so-called gods, either.” He shoots a glare upward to the heavens but it only grazes the high stone roof instead. “I don’t trust ‘em. And I have a tough time trusting anyone who’s got enigmatic resurrection on their scorecard. Your theory’s safe with me, Josleen, and I’ll consider what you’ve told me in confidence.” He pauses, takes a deep breath, exhales. “One way or the other, it’s peace I’m after. If Larket gathers for war, we gather right on back. If the enemy knocks on our door, we knock them out cold. If Kaizer himself rains fire down upon us, we cheer on Queen Hildegarde and watch her rip his self-righteous wings off. You get me?” He tries a smile. “Whatever ails Macon, whatever compels Kelovath, it’s Lithrydelian safety we’ll seek.”

Josleen has learned that few can suffer her tears spilt over Kelovath’s death/betrayal. Krice, Sabrina, now Lionel, all made uncomfortable by her distress. Ironically, the Rage Knight has been most accommodating of Josleen’s mood swings, in his own gruff way. It’s no wonder she defends him, and perhaps even misses him a little, though it shames her to admit it. She nods at Lionel’s hushing, and smothers one last sob into the cloth. “Thank you,” she says a bit stiffly, and with a mind to dismiss soon. She needs to be alone again. It’s how she copes with these emotions best. She licks her own wounds. “I have no question of your loyalties. I hope Kelovath is captured soon. I want answers, and closure. And I hope there is no need for any more battle with Larket. But if there is a need, I am glad you are there to meet the challenge.”

Lionel recognizes the Thane’s need for dismissal. The apple is hers; he’ll scavenge elsewhere or bother poor Briar to do it for him. Yet he feels wiser now than before he entered the storeroom. Josleen’s encouragement fuels the man; he’s broken and flawed and sometimes downright problematic, and he has a sword with a mind of its own, too, but his name is fitting when people he admires build him with words of reassurance. Ever the lion. “And I’m thankful you’re here as well.” He nods and leaves, not wanting to let her troubles linger except where she can be left alone with them -- and, if needs be, to cry.