Meeting on the Stairs
Ser Glorie allows herself the indulgence of a brief fragment of her usual daily routine in the absence of plotters, rises early, winds all the long way up the staircase to the ruined ballroom, and has her morning shattered. The Fool is in the pre-dawn sea air of the chamber, feet planted in the middle of the floor as though she belongs there, head cocked at its entropic splendour as if performing haruspicy on Glorie's psyche.
"Not here," Glorie says, sharper than she means to; not because she cares to hold back her tongue, but because doing so is evidence of feeling. It is already too much for the Fool to be here, to invade her, to see this. To take her quiet from her.
The Fool follows her tense turned back, perhaps expecting her to halt outside; huffs and hurries when Glorie takes immediately to the stairs.
"What is enough?" she hisses at the knight. "Thou believest! Agree they scheme and plot and mean harm! Seen thou, and stand back and allow it! Why dost prolong this?"
And Glorie halts, and looks at her, and the Fool almost steps back at the sharpness of her, the sudden sense that she walks by a blade, has walked by a blade and casually handled a blade a thousand thousand times, taking for granted that she was not cut; and now she sees the bared edge.
"I say to thee again," Glorie says, "that my function is to kill, Fool, and that requires better reason than to lacerate a hundred times twixt sunrise and nightfall, day in and out, with words. But true, thinkst could lay charge before them now, and let reaction seal their fate. Why not? Why not indeed?" and she puts the pad of her thumb on the point of the Fool's chin, and drives her back a step or two, eyes wide, so she has the wall at her back.
"Ser," the Fool says, garbled, scandalised perhaps.
"Mayhap," Glorie says, quiet but not soft, the hunting rumble of a growling beast, "provision of a bodyguard for eternity was foolish, and a Fool wise; mayhap I enjoy a threat, small as it is. See I, mayhap, the last time in all of the world's long end that I will fulfil any purpose. Think me not insensible, Fool, while thou keepst our Highness's bed and confidence, engage her wit and faculties — that I. Do. Nothing."
"Ser—"
Ser Glorie angles her thumb, to push and hold the Fool's jaw irresistably shut.
"No more words on it," the knight warns, low and dangerous, and moves down the stairs like a silent falling shadow.
