milliways_bar | (no subject)

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If Mary didn't already know that she wanted Blodwen Rowlands dead, the charred, blasted remnants of her tree would be a jarring reminder every time she walked into the bar.

How to accomplish this goal is a little more difficult for a thirteen-year-old girl, but she's certain that if she tries very hard and studies her best, she'll find a way!

(Her allies have told her that patience and information-gathering would be smart. In theory, Mary agrees with this, but she's not a very patient girl. And after all, no one ever got anywhere, scientifically, without testing their hypotheses.

Mary's current hypothesis is that perhaps more mundane methods of curbing Blodwen will work where all the twenty different magical blocks that have been placed on her haven't, which is why she is currently engrossed in a book on poisons.)

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Sam for once in not thinking about Blodwen, he's sitting at a table and writing things and then crossing them out. After a while, he looks up when he's ready to throw all the papers he has and notices what Mary's reading,

"Poison?"

"It is useful information to have," Mary says calmly, without looking up from her text.

"Are you going to make it?"

He eyes all the little papers in front of him and then calmly sets Charter Marks to burn each one, its depressing and satisfying all at once.

"That depends."

Right now, it doesn't look too promising - most of these seem to need to be ingested, and Mary doesn't think much of her chances of slipping Blodwen a glass of arsenic.

"Are you planning on trying to use them against her?"

There's no need to ask who he's talking about.

"If I were planning on using them against anyone," Mary says - and she does look up now, her lips pressed together in a thin line - "I would hardly be advertising it, would I?"

She's met Sameth once before, and he says he dislikes Blodwen, but Mary knows better than to trust strangers now.

"Yet you're reading about poisons in the Bar. You don't have to glare at me like that, I fixed the hole in the floor."

"Anyone may read about anything. There is no rule against education."

Beat.

"What hole in the floor?"

"The one that happened when I fought with her. I'm surprised you don't know about it, she rotted it out from under me."

"- from under you!"

Mary stops, and then pulls out a pad of paper from her pocket and makes a small, thoughtful note.

She can make dead wood decay, as well as plants. What other things can she do?

Actually, she may as well ask: "What else did she do?"

"Yes, from under me, I landed on a car and broke my wrist. She poisoned me somehow with a horrible cloying air, it felt almost like the river of Death except it was air."

He doesn't really want to talk about this but he also doesn't want to see Mary going up against Blodwen.

This gets another neat note. Puck had mentioned something similar, sothis is hardly news; all the same, it is good to record.

Poisons are probably the wrong track, then, if Blodwen is able to generate poisonof her own. (Though it doesn't make the idea any less tempting.)

"It sounds a sort of anti-Magic, that she has. The opposite of growing things."

"Not all magic is for creating though, in my world she would be called a necromancer."

Sameth watches her writing the notes and hopes maybe she can figure something out.

"That is not the sort of Magic I mean," Mary says, rather dismissively.

"There is the magic that people here use - that is spells and illusions and power, things that only some people may do. But there is also the Magic that is in everything - that makes trees grow and makes flowers bloom and makes sick people well - and that anyone can use, and ought to. It is the Magic that is in the whole world. It is that sort of Magic that I mean - when I say that she has the opposite."

Privately, Mary considers all the other sorts of magic, even the good ones, to be a kind of cheating.

"I'm not sure what you mean by that. The Charter permeates all things in my home and it can create or destroy."

"Do you need a charter to grow a flower?"

"It is in everything in the Old Kingdom and its not a charter, its the Charter."

Mary eyes him, frowning.

"Is it a sort of religion?"

He sighs, but at least he's gotten better at explaining it,

"No, this might help.

Five Great Charters knit the land,
Together linked, hand in hand.
One in the people who wear the crown,
Two in the folk who keep the Dead down,
Three and Five became stone and mortar,
Four sees all in frozen water."

". . . no," Mary says, flatly. "That does not help. It is poetry."

Poetry is metaphorical! Also, fictional.

"Its also a description of how the Charter works. The poetry just makes it easier to remember."

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