for Myrobalan

[misdirection_hex]

Loyalist traitors will burn with the Chantry!

Stand for freedom--or fall with the slavers.

The choice is yours.

The flyers line the second-floor corridor, pasted on the door of every double room. The apprentices and enchanters have been spared the propaganda. Vandelin deduces that the culprit isn't allowed up onto the enchanters' floor of the tower, and wouldn't be familiar enough with it to pick out the Loyalists' doors in any case--but he or she knows that the mages are ripe for recruitment. He suspects 'she,' and can hazard more than an educated guess about her name.

He'll be expected to discipline her; she's his apprentice, after all, and he'll be blamed for this little stunt--but he's tempted to leave the flyers as they are, just for a little longer. It's only when he notices that one's already been taken down that he reconsiders. And it's only when he realizes that the door belongs to his cousin that he feels a tiny pang of remorse.

Quietly, he knocks.

Comments

[faithlikeaseed]

There's a murmur from behind the door, a vague verbal mush that might be "it's unlocked" filtered through more than just the single panel of intervening wood. It's followed by the sound of a chair being pushed back and Myrobalan clearing his throat before repeating himself: "Come in. It's unlocked."

He's always been the messier of the pair sharing this particular room, though that's hardly saying much given the obsessive neatness of the workspace across from his. But the level of disorder on his side of the room--an armful of books spilled in a negligent avalanche across the bed, a satchel thrown so hard after them half its contents have spilled out--implies something a little more emotional than a young man's careless entropy at work.

Myr himself is something like composed by the time the door opens, though there's a livid design crushed across one cheekbone precisely matching the embroidery on his sleeves. He's only got eyes for the flyer--torn where it'd been pulled from the door--atop the smear of parchments obscuring the desktop, his expression a kind of haunted disbelief.

No surprise, though. There's nothing surprising about any of this.