Open Post: The Arms of the Emperor are Never Idle

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon spends her mornings in the practice yard, bright and early, despite the cold. She jogs and stretches to get her blood pumping and her muscles warm before she draws her sword, and then after drills she brings Tally her coffee, and then after that it's back to more sword—unless Tally hauls her off to some other activity, which she pretends to hate but is secretly devastatingly grateful for. The absolute worst part of this place is all the time. Endless stretches of time, with barely any work to be done.

In some ways it's just like the Ninth—except on the Ninth she knew her exits. They were few, sure, and near-impossible, but she knew them: buy her way out, fight her way out, trick her way out, or truly earn it.

None of those apply, here.

She breaks for lunch, and wanders the halls trying to locate various Clues and Mysteries that might end up giving her a way out, and mostly just finds people. More and more people.

She's not antisocial. She likes the people here, more than she's openly liked anyone in her life, individually or as a group. But a gnawing restlessness keeps her on the move rather than letting her time fill up with idle conversation as so many here do. She's always hunting for something to keep her busy, to wear out her body so that when she sleeps her mind is forced to rest rather than serving her a lovely buffet of the worst things she's ever seen and even worse things she hasn't, the things she was yoinked away just in time to miss.

Sometimes it even works.

[This post is open in perpetuity until something happens to make me close it, at which point I will edit it and say so! Feel free to find Gideon in the morning doing sword drills, or tooling around inside, opening and closing drawers and trying peel the wallpaper off in case there's flesh underneath.]

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[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon starts moving as soon as Susan starts drawing the string back in her bow, and the arrow pings! off the blade of her sword just above the hilt. It's not exactly the glorious, fluid motion which cleaves an arrow in two, but it's not half bad, either, for a technically second try.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan shoulders her bow and approaches to retrieve her arrows. "Good improvement," she says, once she's close enough that she needn't shout.

[ninth_cavalier]

"Yeah," grumbles Gideon, "if I always know exactly where an archer's aiming before they fire I'll be fine." It's a cheerful grumble, though. "Can I watch you draw, up close? Maybe there's a tell."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, why not," says Susan. She glances around them, seeking a target, and then raises her eyebrows at Gideon. "What shall I aim for?"

[ninth_cavalier]

There are some wood and straw dummies at the end of practice yard, summoned by some previous Sword Guy. Gideon herself never uses them—she doesn't want to dull her blade, and she prefers practicing on skeletons anyway; dummies aren't that useful for show you where to hit if you want to splinter someone's tibia. She nods to them. "One at the head, then one at the body? I want to see if there's a difference in how you aim."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan decides to show off a little. Her skill has improved with daily practice for two and a half months, and so has her strength; the dummies are close enough that they shan't be a problem. She draws two arrows from the quiver on her hip and fires in quick succession: a headshot through what would be one dummy's eye, if it had them, and the next directly into the next dummy's heart. If she had a different bow on her, she might've knelt to aim for a crotch, instead, but the longbow is ill-shaped for such frivolity.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon whistles, deeply impressed. "I think," she says slowly, "if I'm gonna pull off this trick, I should hope like hell I'm up against a worse archer than you."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan smiles, small and genuine and fierce. "Then you might ask anyone else here to demonstrate," she says; it's not bragging if it's true. Then she pauses. "Perhaps not Little John. He's quite good as well."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon grins. "He was telling me," she says. "He said he can drive an arrow through a man's armor at three hundred paces." This is actually more impressive in the context of the paces they'd just taken—she has a better grasp of distance. "Oh, he also told me he would fry fish if I caught some—do you know how to fish?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Yes, of course," says Susan, with light surprise. "It's not particularly difficult, it just takes patience."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Of course, she says," says Gideon, shaking her head. "Well excuse me, some of us are from planets with no fish." She says it lightly, though. "Do you need, like, special tools? I want to catch minnows."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Why minnows?"

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon shrugs. "I'm figuring out what food I like, and I don't like just asking the fridge for it all the time. I'm not convinced it's not going on some tab, somewhere. And Little John says minnows can be fried whole and eaten, bones and all."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"You can catch minnows with a net, but they're awfully unappetizing," Susan says. "Have you got a knife, or is it just that sword?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Well, the other reason it's minnows is we know there's minnows in the lake," says Gideon. "But if you've seen more appetizing fish, I'm open to 'em." She opens a pouch on her belt and shows Susan her punch-knife, and then also the weird little mulipurpose tool she'd found in the kitchen, which has a couple tiny knife-blades as well as a corkscrew and a pair of tweezers, raising her eyebrows like will either of these do?

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I've spotted some perch, and I believe there might be catfish, too," says Susan, coming over to inspect Gideon's knife situation. "You ought to have a knife that's useful for a wider variety of applications. I suppose Swiss army knives have their merits, but it's easier to sharpen a single blade. It shall work in a pinch, but the blades are too short to clean a fish effectively. And your other one seems rather... single-use."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Double-use, technically," says Gideon, "it also protects my knuckles—I can catch a blade against this bit if it's a light enough blade. But I get your point." She makes a face. "I guess that's another thing to ask the Mansion for? Along with nets?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, you might ask Annie for the nets," Susan says, quite forgetting that she knows of Annie's nets through remote observation rather than direct conversation, and therefore it might seem odd if someone were to go to Annie and ask for some and cite Susan as the source of their information. "She's got the boat on the lake and I believe she might occasionally fish as well. I'm not entirely sure. And there are loads of proper knives already in one of the closets near the attic, if you'd like to choose from an assortment. Some of them have rather dull blades--" Susan has, of course, tested multiple of them, and moved the very best to one of the emergency supply closets she's been slowly appointing to her own preferences. "--but they seem like they might be sharpened by a determined and rather strong young woman." Is she speaking of herself or of Gideon? Ah, well, perhaps both. "I could show you."

[ninth_cavalier]

"I don't think I've met Annie," says Gideon, "but I'll keep an eye out for boats. And yeah, let's go, if you've got time now? I can definitely put an edge on a blade." She smirks. "Well-versed in edging, me."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I've got time," says Susan. "What is 'edging'?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Oh," says Gideon, feeling caught out and abruptly embarrassed. "Uh, it's a sex thing? Where you, like, almost make someone nut, and then don't. On purpose." She rubs the back of her neck. "Where'd you say these knives were?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh! There's a name for that sort of thing?" The look Susan is giving Gideon shifts a little - she's definitely a little more engaged. "I see."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Yep," says Gideon, who is suddenly uncomfortably aware of the fact that Susan is sleeping with Lancelot, which both conjures all sorts of images she does not want to think about and makes her feel a little weird for the flirting. Which is dumb, with how many people around here are in complicated multi-legged creepy-crawly relationships. Who is she?? How can she even call herself a babe magnet if this is how she behaves?? She tries to rally. First she puts Lancelot on his back, next she steals his girl. Right? That seems like a good trajectory.

Unfortunately her brain is entirely blank on, like, how exactly to embark on girl stealing, right now, so all she says aloud is, "knives?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan surprises herself by laughing a little at that. "Knives," she confirms. For a brief, queer moment, she considers playfully taking Gideon's arm the way she might Lancelot's, but discards the idea in fairly short order. "Follow me."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon falls in behind her, two paces back, one to the left. She's been doing better about walking abreast with people now that she's been here a while, but there's something about Susan, some conscious or unconscious authority, that automatically pops her right back into bodyguard mode.