marlowemuses | If you were Dracula, I'd be letting you take that bite

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If you were Dracula, I'd be letting you take that bite

Lenore's immediately curious about their 'guest' in the dungeons from what Striga had to say: a swordswoman of exceptional skill, the most satisfying fight Striga had enjoyed in years and she only regretted that the woman was so tired out already before Striga got to her, if she'd been fresher in the fight and had vampiric advantages, she would have been a 'true opponent'.

The soldiers who had survived the battle spoke of it like something out of legend, to the point that Lenore almost had to roll her eyes at the way the story was already getting embroidered and exaggerated. (She thought it very unlikely that their captive was eight feet tall with eyes of flame.) There was little useful information from any of them--run down castle practically in ruins, aging retainers, decrepit king and queen, none of them even healthy enough to save for feeding purposes. Morana had plenty to say about that, the waste of losing forty-seven good soldiers for the gain of an ugly, crumbling castle in an ugly, barren land and if she'd known it was going to be this much bother they would have just gone around. Carmilla had already expressed her opinion in the original conversation, and the entirety of that opinion was a disgusted scoff.

Thus armed with as much information as she was going to get, Lenore dressed herself elegantly and went to the kitchens to collect a basket of freshly baked spice cakes, temptingly aromatic, before she descended to the dungeon.

Only one of the cells was filled at this time--none of the sisters were especially inclined toward taking prisoners unless they were of political value in some way, and their food captives were kept elsewhere under relatively minimal restraint.

"Well," Lenore comments, stopping in front of the dungeon cell and looking over the captive within with interest, chained on her knees. A heavy collar around her throat was chained to a ring in the floor in front of her, while her wrists were pulled out to either side and secured to more heavy iron rings and the cuffs on her ankles were attached to a ball and chain. "I don't think I've ever seen anyone in quite that many chains."

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"Sleep on the ground, if you want," Lenore says, aware enough of what the problem is. She's always lived in luxury--her miseries have never been miseries of deprivation. "This is your room."

She goes first to the wall adjoining her own room and draws aside one of the heavy tapestries to show a door hidden behind it. "This door stays unlocked. It goes through to my room. You may enter my room at any time you please, unless I specifically instruct otherwise on a particular occasion." Lenore's brand of diplomacy has often included an intimate touch. "It goes the other way around, also. I'll assume I can enter your room at any time except on occasions which you specifically request some hours of privacy."

Crossing the room, she gestures idly at the closed curtains. "There's a shared balcony outside which connects over to my room. Given how many of us can fly, I recommend keeping the balcony doors locked when not in use."

Finally, on the opposite side of the room, she opens a door into a spacious bathroom, instructing Gideon to go in and close the curtains again. The bathroom is on a corner, with views from the tub looking out across the mountains. "In that closet is a seat where you can piss and shit and then press the lever and it's all washed away. This tap," she crosses to the sink and turns the knob to show how it works, "provides cold water for washing your face and hands. The large tub is for bathing, this knob brings cold water and this knob brings hot water. It's carried around the castle in pipes."

It's not often that Gideon is quiet when she has a chance to talk, but all of this borders on overwhelm. She falls silent as she follows Lenore around, doing as she's commanded without a hint of the patter of backchat if only because she doesn't quite know what to say. The bathroom is far larger than her mean stone room back in Drearburh, where there'd been space for a hard slab of a bed and a place to hang her hand-me-down clothes. That Lenore would enter her room as and when she pleases hardly strikes her as unusual; that the vampire would allow her (almost) unrestricted access to her own room is the part that's quietly mind-blowing. She could kill her whilst she sleeps. Set fire to her bed. What's to stop her? It seems like an act of madness, or heart-breaking naivete. Unbidden, it opens up an odd softness inside of her when her eyes slide to her captor.

Keeping windows locked against flying vampires, heated water carried around in pipes, a privy that empties itself somehow, a tub in which - she's guessing - one is supposed to be submerge oneself; well, fuck if this isn't all blowing her mind just a little.

"Yeah. Yeah..." she says as this small tour culminates, and she tries to file all this information away for later use. Just a touch fearful of fucking things up. "It's...very big."

It's a situation which deserves a fucking hell, or a thank you, but she isn't sure how to get the words out.

"Mine's bigger," Lenore comments, with just a hint of a smirk, since she knows Gideon's brain probably can't at all deal with the possibility of something more luxurious than this at the moment.

For now, however, Lenore rests a hand on Gideon's arm to get her focused attention. "Take a bath and then try and get some sleep. We really are heading out first thing after sunset. I'll tell you about what we're dealing with on the ride."

Then she leaves her pet to settle in. Lenore takes the leash with her, but she doesn't say anything about the collar. There's a wardrobe in the room stocked with clothes that are all ... more or less Gideon's size. Lenore had the room made up, but she hadn't known how long it would take to win Gideon over, so she hadn't yet commissioned any proper wardrobe for her. That could wait until their return.

A part of her worries that she's being reckless, leaving Gideon unguarded like this. Gideon could walk right out of the castle and she probably wouldn't even have to be particularly sneaky. But then what? That life as a mercenary, with few comforts and no thanks? Or she could stay right here, good as her word, with luxury and pleasure, and a beautiful woman lavishing praise upon her.

Lenore was pretty sure Gideon herself would come to the same conclusion.

The comment and the playful little smirk catch hard at her imagination. Thoughts flit around her head like nervous moths, such as how much bigger? and what else might be in such a room and even how much space does one person need?? She's still uncharacteristically silent though, finds that - sometime after Lenore has departed - she's still standing there, in the middle of the room ('her' room), wondering what the fuck to do with herself. She feels a bit as though she's been left alone in a sacred space that could be despoiled by her grubby touch, and in the end it's her lingering fear of this that leads her to the bathroom.

It takes her a little while longer to work up the courage to try the taps for the tub, and she spends some time experimenting with the temperature. She's quietly amazed by the water that just springs out of them, one already heated just as Lenore had said it would be. Through all of this she can't help feeling somehow dirty and awkward and stupid. A barely socialised savage let loose in a place she's simply unfit for. Eventually though, she strips off the clothes she's been wearing for some days now, only remembering the collar at the last and removing that too. The clothes she casts upon the floor, rumpled and muskily scented, but the collar she places carefully beside the basin. Wearing it may have made her feel weird - like some wild animal Lenore was attempting to tame - but like everything else in this new space it seems too fine a thing to just chuck onto the floor.

It's with some trepidation that she soaks herself in the tub; having only ever scrubbed herself clean with cold water and washcloth it feels kind of alien to her, and she can't quite rid herself of the concern that sitting chin-deep in water will make her sick. It feels fucking good though, and she stays right where she is until the water turns cold and streaked with the dirt from her skin. By the time she's out and the water is draining away to some mysterious location, she feels almost relaxed. There's a huge cloth that she dries herself down with, hoping she hasn't fucked up by utilising it in this way, and she folds it neatly and returns it to the exact position where she'd found it, just in case.

Padding back into 'her' room - naked, with her dark skin practically glowing with new depths of cleanliness - she stares at the bed. Huge and sumptuous enough to border on the obscene, she seriously considers dragging the heavy blanket onto the floor and following Lenore's suggestion. She could make some nest in the corner of the room, trying not to touch anything. In the end though, she caves, curiosity getting the better of her. Gingerly climbs beneath the blankets and just lies there, staring at the ceiling.

"Fuuuuuuck me," it's said on a breathy exhale, finding the bedding so soft and cushiony it's like being wrapped up in a god-damned cloud. How the fuck is she meant to sleep on this? The sheer luxury and comfort of it is way too distracting. Maybe she ought to go rifling through the room to fill up the hours, discover what else it contains. Maybe she should get up and walk right out the door and creep through the sleeping castle, just vanish off into the night never to be seen again. Nothing's stopping her. She has the key to the door! She's no longer caged-- but. She wonders - vaguely, with a touch of embarrassing hopefulness that she tries hard not to acknowledge - whether Lenore would be shot through with loss to wake and find her gone.

The hot water from the bath had been more soporific than she'd given it credit for, however. As such, it's like this - indulgently imagining Lenore's bereft little face, how she'd sigh and stare at Gideon's empty room with a touch of delicate melancholia - that she drifts off into sleep. Quite without meaning to.

In the morning, there's a tap at Gideon's door, and a maid with a tray of hot breakfast. Human and unarmored, the maid curtseys as she hands over the tray, and informs Gideon that she's to dress warmly and then come to their lady's room once she's ready to depart.

Lenore's still yawning when Gideon arrives, one of her maids securing the last few tiny hooks up the back of her dress.

"Good morning, handsome," Lenore flirts, eyes playful as she glances over at her bodyguard. She's pleased (and a little relieved) to see Gideon this morning, though she quickly reaches for her tea again to pretend like it's not that big a deal.

She feels no less baffled and out of sorts the next morning. The maid wakes her, and whilst she kinda wants to try and make conversation, she comes over strangely shy to find herself waited upon. So she just says thanks in a gruff kind of voice, asks for the tray to be brought to her, and eats breakfast in her ridiculously opulent bed. It's hard not to feel somehow dislocated from herself, like all of this is happening to some other Gideon, and she's just watching it play out from the corner of the room. What the fuck...fucking hell…what the fuck is her silent litany for the morning.

Eventually though, she ventures out of bed. Rifling through the ornate closet leaves her confronted with a whole bunch of clothes, none of which are threadbare or patched up so often they’re now a mottle of different materials. All of which feel as though they won't itch or chafe against her bruise-mottled skin. Choosing between more than three pairs of the exact same kind of clothes is just one more new experience to add to the ever-increasing list, and in the end she swaddles herself all in black, yanking on a pair of of boots that are only slightly too big for her. The collar, however, remains forgotten in the bathroom.

She hopes her cheeks aren't quite so flushed with colour as they feel when Lenore - as Gideon enters her room - calls her handsome, and tries to play it cool herself. "Yep. That's me. Reporting for duty, my effervescent empress."

Nailed it. Casual and irreverent as all hell.

"We're heading out promptly," Lenore says, though she's still a bit slow-moving herself, choosing ornaments for her hair and directing her maids on how she wants it braided and pinned up, worked into a crown around her head so that it's better able to keep out of the way and she doesn't have to worry so much about the mass of it becoming covered in falling snow.

Her eye flick over Gideon, assessing her preparations and mostly approving of what she sees. "Go and fetch your collar," she instructs, since that's visibly missing and they're going to have to have a Problem if Gideon has done anything to discard it.

"You want me to keep wearing that? Like, when I'm working?" Something about the request has her insides twisting sharp. Makes her feel a mix of emotions she can't accurately identify. Confusion and annoyance sure, her usual brand of surly...but there's also something heated and squirmy that she doesn't know how to name. "I thought you wanted a bodyguard. Not like, a prize hunting hound or something."

Wearing it to appease the guards made a weird kind of sense. This? She isn't sure what this is.

"I want you," Lenore stated simply, glancing at Gideon with calm expectation. "And I want you wearing that collar. If I decide the collar has served adequate purpose, I will let you know. Until then, you will wear it."

She's not ruling out the possibility of a prize hunting hound. Really, Lenore thinks that Gideon should just be grateful that the leash isn't making a reappearance. Yet.

"Go on," Lenore says, the tiniest hint of sharpness in her tone, since she expects to be obeyed. "Hurry up."

Right now, every moment feels like a remarkably sharp learning curve. For example, it's surprisingly difficult to tell someone to go backflip off the balcony when their humiliating request is paired up with the words I want you. Particularly, as it transpires, when those words are stated with calm certainty by the most beautiful woman Gideon has ever laid eyes on. She stands for a moment, tense, poised somewhere between go fuck yourself and yes ma'am. In the end, the hint of sharpness in Lenore's tone has her settling for an eyeroll and a huffed exhale.

She turns around and stalks right out of the room. And yes she may take a deliberately extended length of time before she slopes back in again, but when she does she's wearing the collar. Lifts her chin to show where it rests against the bruises at her throat.

"Woof. Happy?"

"Yes. Good girl." Lenore's hair is just getting the final touches of diamond pins to secure it, so she rises and goes to greet Gideon properly. Her face tilts up with a smile as she draws Gideon down, giving her another sweet kiss on the lips to mollify her and continue to cement the idea that good behavior receives approval and affection.

But then they're on their way, heading off down the hall, Lenore in the lead and Gideon just a step behind while the two maids trail after carrying bundles. There's a squadron of soldiers already in the courtyard, loading horses and sleighs. Thirty soldiers altogether for a royal entourage. One of the maids climbs into the covered sleigh, while the other one just packs it and then backs away, only coming forward when it seems like Lenore needs something else.

Lenore mounts a beautiful white horse with a blue and silver harness, while a large black animal is brought for Gideon, along with the two-handed sword that had been confiscated after the battle.

"Can you ride?" Lenore asks, grimacing a little with concern that accommodations might have to be made for her bodyguard's lack of equine ability.

There's little time to dwell on how being collared like some prized pet makes her feel. Not when Lenore is swift to transfix her with a beatific smile, when she tugs her down to meet her upturned face, plants a kiss smack-bang on Gideon’s lips. Her heart pounds heavy in her ears, and a swarm of butterflies with razorblade wings take up residence in her gut. There's no time even, to dwell on why the words good girl make her quietly, happily die inside, and she's soon sloping after her owner, slightly flanking her, and just a step behind.

Any residual feelings of discomfort or unease open up onto altogether different feelings as they stalk out into the courtyard; it's a veritable hive of activity, with soldiers and horses preparing for departure, their voices a hushed murmur amidst the dampening effect of the snow. She scans the scene before her and her heart skips hard in her chest as she tries - and fails - to smother a grin. Oh fuck! This is really happening. She's doing something, being taken out into the world and put to use at last, and the horror and misery and loneliness of the last week or so sloughs off her like old skin.

She quits trying to hide her hot-metal grin altogether when her sword is brought forth, and she's quick to step in to take it. A rush of love spills through her, and it's all she can do to prevent herself from grabbing the unsuspecting made and kissing her right on the mouth. She restrains herself - barely - but is quick to swing the sword in its scabbard onto her back, and when she looks up at Lenore she's lit up with an incandescent animal joy.

"I'll manage," she says; no, she hasn't been officially taught, her technique is likely rudimentary at best, but escape attempts two, twenty-seven, and thirty had all involved her swift departure upon a horse. So they'd failed, and she'd been dragged back to Drearburh to face a disciplining, but she has given it a go before. As if to prove her point, she'll step into the stirrup. Swings herself smooth and easy into the saddle.

Lenore gives a pleased, approving smile when Gideon proves to have at least basic competence on a horse, and is so obviously settling more into her role with every minute. Lenore doubts that there are many thoughts of rebellion still lingering in Gideon's head, not when Lenore has provided so very many reasons for loyalty.

They set out into the snowy landscape, moving slowly and nearly single-file, with the lead horse regularly changed out in a comfortable drill that barely needs any spoken direction. The soldiers simply rotate their positions so that different horses take the extra fatigue of breaking the path through the snow.

Everything is quiet for the first half hour, everyone settling into the journey and the pace, but once they're out of immediate sight of the castle, the strict drill formation relaxes a little and quiet conversations spring up.

Only one of them is unarmored, a dark-haired woman with light brown skin and a craggy face that's all sharp edges. Her black eyes never seem to do anything but glare, but she watches protectively over the group and often bursts up into a cloud of bats and swirls into the sky above them (her horse endures this with a surprising lack of reaction), then returns and gives a few words of report to the general or Lenore.

The woman who rides consistently just behind the lead horse is clearly the general, and she confers frequently with Lenore, who gives her friendly smiles (though none of the flirtation she has consistently aimed at Gideon) and easy conversation. Lenore calls her Zohreh, and she's a broad woman, though not particularly tall, with bouncy dark curls. Her round face is hard as stone except for when she speaks to Lenore and softens so much that she might as well be baked from cinnamon and sugar.

Lenore knows the names of every one of the soldiers and speaks to them with casual familiarity as they rotate past her position at the heart of the procession, just behind Zohreh. The maid--the only one who isn't a vampire--stays inside the sleigh and seems disinclined to conversation. She'd been lively when she'd been beside her fellow maid, but now that she's alone, she's quiet and withdrawn.

"There are quite a few logistical challenges to being vampire rulers over a mostly-human country," Lenore says to Gideon, seemingly apropos of nothing. "Stessl is an example of them, and that's the problem we're heading to resolve. On the surface, the city's mayor has informed us that due to several hardships, including a fire in one of the mills, they won't be able to make the full tribute expected of them. So we're going to assess the situation and to see what aid they may require.

"Where it gets more complicated is that the former mayor was very corrupt, so Carmilla--one of my fellow queens--killed him to make an example of him. But she didn't set anyone in his place, leaving the city to sort itself out. It's ... not how I would have handled the situation. So the man who took over and holds power now is simply the man who had the ability to seize power, whether through charisma, scheming, or force. The details weren't anything that we were all that concerned about as long as the tributes are met and there's no sign of outright rebellion or excess corruption and cruelty.

"So they've failed at the first part and I strongly suspect that we're dealing with a man who's corrupt and thinks he can consolidate power right under our nose, possibly eventually leading to outright rebellion." Lenore's tone is cool and with a hint of annoyance, explaining the situation mostly dispassionately but with flickers of empathetic concern. "We're going to investigate the situation. I'm looking for signs that these hardships are caused by his greed or they're part of a larger plan. This could even be a trap, which means I'm probably the worst of the sisterhood to deal with this. But for investigating the situation, handling it diplomatically, and knowing whether he's lying to my face, all those are things that I'm the best one to handle."

The first flush of excitement burns out of her soon enough, transmutes instead into something more sustainable. She watches the proceedings in silence, drinking down the details the way a parched and thirsting person swallows down water. There's the feeling of strange dislocation again, like this can't possibly really be happening, she's not riding beside a vampire queen as her entourage busies themselves around them. But here she is, and it's real, all thoughts of flight or fight pushed right to the far-flung edges of herself.

She keeps close to Lenore - as she's sure is expected of any self-respecting bodyguard - and makes no effort whatsoever to try and start up conversation with anyone who strays into her orbit. There's the lingering feeling that the soldiers may despise or fear her, or think of her as some dumb appendage who isn't worth their time. The maid - the one other human in their midst - displays no inclination of wanting to befriend her. Nor of wanting to talk to anyone at all, for that matter. Lenore strikes her as a luminous in the midst of all this; seemingly on easy terms with everyone, relaxed and in her element. Gideon, in contrast, flanks her like an ominous shadow. No matter that it's uncertainty that makes her so stone-faced and still.

The physical reality of riding a horse through freezing drifts of snow is just beginning to push against her consciousness when Lenore begins talking at her. The fact that her body is still battered and bruised prickles at the edge of her awareness, muscles aching gently at each movement of the animal beneath her. Lenore's voice is a welcome distraction, and so she listens despite that half of what she's saying means so little to her.

"I mean, vamps aren't particularly popular among humans. You know, the whole drinking blood and turning into bats thing can be kiiiinda off-putting," her mind skips to the vampire Lenore has referred to as Zohreh as she says this, and there's a hot spike of feeling beneath her skin which she doesn't quite know how to articulate, "it seems legit, is all I'm saying. That this guy wants to take power for himself and strike out on his own. You think he's lying about the fire and stuff?"

Her interest sparks, and it shows in the contours of her face. Trap goes hand in hand with fight, and she can't help but feel interested.

"I expect that there is a mill and that there was a fire at the mill," Lenore says, thoughtful and a little bit distant, mind rotating all the possibilities. "But even if it is as simple as that, a tragic accident, there are other parts to this that we're not being told. At any rate, we're going first to the mill to see what we can learn. Then we go to the mayor's house and act like we believe him. No matter what we learn, I expect I'm going to want to replace him, and it may be an immediate necessity to replace him. But in order to do so, we need someone to replace him with. If we just kill him and leave, the problem recurs with some new asshole. If we kill him without having a candidate in mind, we may be at risk of having the entire city turn against us. Thirty soldiers isn't enough to hold off the populace, not even with you, not even if you're as good as they said. And slaughtering farmers and shopkeepers who are just trying to defend their home after they've no doubt had a miserable few months in one way or another... not ideal. On many levels."

Lenore grimaces. It's a wretched puzzle of a situation, and all the plans she's come up with to try to find a replacement are gambles. "The replacement has to be human. They have to be local. They have to be someone that the people already trust, to some degree. They have to be competent enough to run a small city, and they have to be willing to work with the vampires. All that, and we have to find this person under the nose of the current mayor, in a situation that may already be a trap."

So, y'know, no pressure.

Her mind snags for a moment around the logistics of thirty vampire soldiers up against an entire city. An entire city that isn't full of rotting ancients disfigured by a plague…but an entire city that she - too - would be pitted against. So many of her girlhood fantasies had orbited around similar situations - not quite so far-fetched as the position she's found herself in now, but close. Fantasies of being on the front line, of performing so magnificently (and looking totally banging whilst going it) that she'd be heralded a hero, command people's respect and adoration. Or maybe even a few hot girls fawning over her would have done the trick. Perhaps Lenore is underestimating their capabilities, perhaps if such a battle were to break out she could bring hell raining down on them--

--but her wild flight of fancy starts to bleed out and die when Lenore mentions farmers and shopkeepers. Just ordinary people, fighting to survive. There's no glory or romance in that. Just something achingly, pitifully sad. Her standoff with the vamps had been one thing, but this?

She finds herself grimacing along with her owner.

"You said it yourself that I'm no tactician. I know fuck all about diplomacy or any of that, just in case your interactions with me haven't resoundingly given that away. I try to do as little thinking as humanly possible most of the time. But like...it kinda sounds like you need human intel, or a human who's totally loyal to your Queendom on the ground floor. You know, someone other humans are more likely to trust?" which seems just as tall an order as figuring this problem out any other way. Fuck if she knows. The probability that Lenore just wanted her to sit tight and listen creeps up on her though, so she shrugs, "or I heard that vampires could read minds and straight-up compel people to do whatever they want. You could try that.”

It always struck her as an unbelievable claim, more so than ever after her little stay in the dungeon. But then so had turning into bats.

"I do desperately need human intel," Lenore confirms, politely neglecting to confirm that she's definitely not relying on Gideon for tactical planning. "I have a couple of possibilities, but I'm still trying to think up something better, because neither one's likely to work unless we get lucky. And no, vampires don't have any particular powers of compulsion. There are spells for that, but they're all either temporary or have side effects. Not a good solution."

Sighing deeply, Lenore tilts her head back to look up at the gray sky. "Maybe we'll get really lucky and the miller will tell us how sympathetic and kind the mayor has been through the genuine problems of the area, and then we won't have to arrange a coup at all."

But she's not going to place any bets on that.

"Or you could always just let humans run their own shit and stop interfering all the time. Just saying," she just says, as the cold air bites at the exposed skin of her face, and her barely-rested muscles protest silently with each movement her horse makes. She casts her gaze toward their royal guard for just a moment, wondering if perhaps she ought to shut the hell up and stick to polite sounds of agreement.

But Gideon has never excelled at that.

"You know you're kinda the bad guys, right? It was common knowledge in Drearburh. Vampires just wanna enslave all of humanity and keep us around for like, snacking purposes," this is how she'd heard it told, stories passed between retainers and servants through hushed conversations. An evil to be vanquished, barely even people at all. Her gold-coin eyes cut in Lenore's direction, trying to read her expression, wondering if she'll refute the claim. Being confined to one mouldering Kingdom her entire life has left her knowledge stunted at best, relying on hand-me-down tales from an already insular and cryptic people.

Some of the soldiers around them shift uncomfortably at Gideon's comments, but they keep their faces forward and remain silent.

Lenore just shrugs. "Sure. Men could run their own shit and stop trying to oppress and assault women all the time. That'd be nice. Maybe humans could let animals run their own shit and stop eating them and riding them around, as long as we're all minding our own business. Maybe all the different nations of the world could stop having wars and we could all just be nice to each other and people could stop stealing and murdering and all that nonsense altogether. I'd be out of a job, because my entire job is trying to talk all these fucking murderous vampires and murderous humans and don't even get me started on those fucking wolfmen, trying to talk everyone into playing nice. If I'm right about this mayor who seized power and he's using his power to bully the locals, we should just let him do that and just hope real hard that then he decides to use his increased and unrestrained power to never bother anyone ever again and certainly doesn't decide that maybe he'd like to rule the region? The real world isn't as simple as 'good guys' and 'bad guys', Gideon. Don't be childish." Gideon talked sass in front of the soldiers, so she's getting upbraided in front of them. Lenore gives her a scolding look. "If you don't like the way the world is, then go on and pray to whatever deity Drearburh believes created the world, and maybe he'll come down and take away all the shit, just for you."

Lenore has to acknowledge that her temper may have gotten away with her just a little bit on that one, but she's not sorry for it. The silence all around them is resounding.

It's a belated success; the sharpness of the vampire's words let her know that she's done it at last, found a way beneath Lenore's skin, cracked her composed exterior. This is the fracture point against wish she's learnt to push, and if she keeps going now what will happen? Maybe Lenore or one of the guards will hit her like she's some shitty barking animal, and she'll have the cold satisfaction of the only kind of win she's ever really known. The oppressive silence that closes in around them feels - to her - like everyone's full and undivided attention.

It takes her a moment to realise that it's a hollow victory. She's lost as to why this feels different and bad, why there's little of the grim righteousness her provocative words usually earn her. She's accustomed to being spoken to as though she's a particularly stupid child, or worse, something barely human altogether. Lenore's scolding is a mild thing compared with the harder words she's been pelted with before. That she's served a side-helping of guilt with her scolding, that she feels vaguely like she's failing a test-- it's a surprising thing.

"Been there, tried that, didn't work," she's aiming for bored indifference, having never uttered an apology before in her life. An apology in Drearburh would only have conveyed weakness, earnt her further scorn. Somehow though, there's a touch of the chastened in her words, "It's just what everyone said. I'm relaying what I've heard."

She considers relaying the common maxims of Drearburh whilst she's at it; vampires are the scourge of humanity, to make a deal with vampires is to act as traitor to one's own species. These are the only opinions she has ever heard on the matter. For reasons that have yet to fully take shape in her however, she does shut her mouth this time.

Lenore just lets those weak excuses fall on deaf ears. She ignores Gideon, and so does everyone else. After a few minutes, the scout Esfir bursts up into the sky, does another lap, comes back to report again, and things resume their previous cadence, with Lenore chatting to the soldiers and quiet conversations among the group, but there's a bubble of silence directly surrounding Gideon.

They stop for lunch in a clearing between the snowy trees, and Gideon is given a portion of cold bread and cheese, the same as Lenore eats. It's very soft bread and very fine cheese, and the vampires all drink a bit from flasks which are not offered to Gideon. When the brief meal and rest is concluded, everyone mounts up again. This time, Lenore climbs into the closed sleigh with her maid, and Lenore's horse is tied to a lead, but there's still not a word from anyone to Gideon.

It doesn't take her terribly long to realise she's being iced out. Longer than perhaps it should, as she says nothing herself for some time either, waiting for someone else to shatter the hard and glassy silence she's managed to throw up between them. And they do shatter it - softly, and between themselves - whilst she continues to be resoundingly ignored.

Fine she thinks at first, and fuck them. Entertaining herself by thinking back to her battle in Drearburh, how fucking awesome she'd been, how many stupid shitty vampires she'd slaughtered. There are only thirty soldiers this time; she could take them. She'd have the element of surprise given that no-one is paying her the least amount of mind, avoiding her like some badly-trained animal that just went and shat on the floor. These red-drenched and furious daydreams keep her occupied for some time.

They dismount. She eats in sullen, achy silence, and by the time she's mounted and moving again her violent fantasies have worn a little thin. She can't pretend she didn't know she was being rude and provocative; it's her default position after all, naturally demeaning, disinclined to go long without some amount of sass. This realisation pushes her to dwell, instead, on Lenore's bright upturned face when she'd gone and fetched the collar and worn it as requested. The fond spark in her eyes whenever Gideon had relented from being a dick, back in the cage. She considers - briefly - drawing level with the closed sleigh and banging on it with foot or fist until Lenore emerges. What she could say to make it up to her. The only thing that reins her in from enacting this scenario is the new and small concern that perhaps she'd be fucking up again. Embarrassing Lenore in some way, making her ignore her all the harder. She's painfully aware, suddenly, of how little she knows about correct etiquette.

She sighs explosively, out of nowhere, after hours of silence. Declares to no-one in particular (her horse? the air? who knows) "Uuuugh, why am I such a jackass??"

There's a surprised few seconds of silence in the wake of that explosion, though the silence is less brittle this time, a little more tolerant and perhaps even amused.

"Poor upbringing," Zohreh comments, entirely deadpan, but there's no edge or harshness to it. It's just Zohreh's bone-dry humor, her stony exterior that had shown only warmth underneath when it had cracked for Lenore.

Zohreh doesn't want to tread on whatever complicated nuances of handling Lenore's doing with this one. They all know the miracles Lenore can work with making friends out of enemies, and it's already enough of a miracle that the violent, enraged, feral creature that had been dragged into the dungeons mere days ago is now following Lenore around with puppy eyes. Zohreh doesn't dare question any of that. But she knows, too, that Lenore trusts her judgement and her command. Zohreh is a general, whose business is the management of soldiers, and she knows how to handle the difference between humor and insubordination. If Lenore hasn't given explicit instructions, then she will trust Zohreh's judgement.

It startles her just a touch to be spoken to by anyone other than Lenore. Since the moment she'd been dragged into the castle and chained up in the dungeon, the guards and soldiers had maintained a stony - if nervy - silence around her. She turns her aureate gaze on the woman, unsure how to take the comment. There's the small, sick part of her that thinks she ought to defend her former Kingdom, to answer back as bitingly as she would have done whilst caged.

She has to admit, though, that the desert-dry tone in which it's said is kinda funny, and just a little bit badass. Particularly given Gideon's reputation, and the fact that she is - right now - entirely unrestrained.

"Upbringing?" she says eventually, one brow raised high, "try updragging. Who even knows why they kept me around at all, really. It sure as hell wasn't out of the kindness of their hearts."

A few dry remarks flit through Zohreh's mind--and yet here you are parroting their remarks; how reassuring to know that the 'good guys' have no kindness in their hearts--but Zohreh always defaults to silence when she is not certain of the value of her comments. She does not wish to be drawn into a debate. She cannot shape logical arguments the way that Lenore does, loading guilt and empathy and persuasion into an irrefutable point.

So she simply jerks her head to indicate that Gideon might take the spot beside her, to be accepted and to ride companionably. Neither one answers to the other, only to Lenore, so Zohreh has no need to worry about showing favoritism. Gideon exists outside of the system of ranks, attached exclusively to Lenore. Zohreh may treat her accordingly.

That doesn't, however, mean that Zohreh is particularly inclined to conversation. Just that she's willing to tolerate Gideon's presence and a minimum of prattling.

They stop sometime in the early morning, while dawn is still only the most distant of possibilities on the horizon, at a little town with a large enough inn. Lenore descends from her carriage, negotiating with the town's headwoman, her husband, and the innkeeper and his daughter. Within just a few minutes, accommodations are arranged for the day. Everyone in the town is human, but they seem on good terms with Lenore, and she knows several of them by name, asking about someone's daughter and someone else's elderly father and giving her sympathies when she finds that the father has died. She asks about food supplies and the distribution lines that run past the town, if they have enough to eat, if they've had any trouble, whether there are still bandit problems in the area.

The other villagers move off with various packs of soldiers, most of the soldiers--including Zohreh--staying in the inn, some--including Esfir--staying in private homes, and the last bunch--with Lenore, Gideon and the maid--to stay in the headwoman's home. Lenore walks with the headwoman while her soldiers and the townsfolk bustle around seeing to the practicalities of the day's stay. A few of the townsfolk seem skittish or scared of the vampires in general, but the sentiment toward Lenore is only one of fascination or awe, while the headwoman and the innkeeper show genuine friendliness toward Lenore and no fear at all of the others.

Within twenty minutes, Gideon and Lenore are seated in the headwoman's house with bowls of hot stew and goblets of wine. There's also a small bowl of lamb's blood for Lenore, which she sips daintily while continuing to talk business with the headwoman.

After an hour, Lenore retires upstairs to bed. The headwoman has surrendered her own room for Lenore's use, and Lenore's maid is seated at a table there with her own empty bowl and goblet and a book in hand. The large bed is freshly made up, while there's a makeshift bed of rug, blankets and pillow laid out in front of the fire, though it looks more like the maid's size than Gideon's. At her mistress' appearance, the maid hops up immediately and comes to help her with hair and gown. They undress Lenore to her skin, leaving only a pair of white panties, and then she's helped into a diaphanous nightdress.

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