Logs:Milani Lost the List
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| RL Date: 16 June, 2008 |
| Who: Milani, N'thei |
| Type: [[Concept:{{{type}}}|{{{type}}}]] |
| When: Day 1, Month 10, Turn 16 (Interval 10) |
| Perpetually under guard by at least one watchful pair of trader's eyes, the Vijays' stores line the wooden shelves. Bolts of fabric, earthen jars of who-knows-what, vials of perfumes, jewelry boxes, the list goes on and on. Quite a wealth of merchandise can be found herein, all kept track of in a large ledger book that slots into a pedestal at the far end of the room. Tapestries cover cave-like bulges in the wall, also for sale, and there's a slight breeze wafting through the otherwise enclosed room. Standing with his back to the archway, his arms crossed, his attention turned into the well lit room, N'thei cuts an unmistakable silhouette-- not striking, just undeniably his own. Next to him, the guard Lystros looks plump and slackerly for all he has nearly the same height. The two engage in quiet conversation overlooking a vacant storeroom, lots of stuff but no people to speak of. Light footsteps echo up the passageway and a moment later, Milani in her work-a-day 'uniform' of skirt and bodice bearing Reaches' badge appears. The young woman comes to a slow halt as she catches sight of that distinct profile and for a moment, there's an uneasy look on her face and something that might betoken a desire to cut and run. This is quickly smoothed away and replaced with a bright smile. "Wellll, hello there, N'thei," she chirps and moves on into the room, angling towards a set of shelves. The conversation seems to be a benign one, something about whether or not one set of shelves needs reinforcing, about keeping the drafts out during the winter, routine maintenance talk. It falls short at the chirp, at N'thei turning his head to take a glance at Milani, Lystros slinking toward the edge of the archway to return to his duty. It's N'thei who answers, mild; "Surprised you have any marks left to spend, just browsing?" The breakup of the conversation is noted with a brief glance upward as Milani picks through a box of assorted baubles. She tries to make it look casual. Success perhaps dubious as it seems that she might be examining the pieces a bit more closely than she ought. "Mmmhm, something like that," she answers with another flashed smile for the Weyrleader. "Glad to find you actually." Outright lie and there is the faintest flicker in her eyes to betray it and there's that little bob in her throat too as she looks back down at a necklace with a big round amulet on it. "Really." The questioning lilt is miniscule, a bare rise at the end, while N'thei nods to Lystros and crosses the room after Milani. Not the first time he's been disregarded, the guards occupies himself cleaning his fingernails. "Don't get that very often, people glad to find me. What do you need." His tone assumes and his fingers presume, reaching toward the big bauble with a frown and a head-shake; he does not approve of the necklace. Milani blinks at her own fingers as if surprised to find the necklace there as she turns it over to him, roots around a little more then takes a few steps further along down the shelves a little out of sight of the guard, hands empty. "I don't need anything. I need to let you know something," Millie says with a hint of her usual gumption re-appearing as he chin lifts and her hand walks down the edge of the shelf, halting at another box that she tips towards herself, eyes presumably curious for the contents though she's not really looking as the loose beads all slide to the front of the box, blue and green and white all mixed up. N'thei puts the necklace away, more casts it carelessly toward the shelf than anything, the making of it cheap enough that it hardly matters how it's abused. "Undivided attention is hard to come by, Millie, best to get to it before I wander off." If he's picked up on her apprehension, he makes no show of it while he treads along a few steps behind her, arms re-folded, interest on Milani, not the wares. "Right." Where's the usual quip? Not making an appearance it seems tonight as Milani looks up at him then just says it, simply, straightforwardly. "I lost the list before I got a chance to torch it." And then she waits, eyes right on his face, shoudlers betraing a certain tension, hand still on that box of beads like she's forgotten that she put her fingers down there. N'thei's eyes light briefly, a hard-to-pinpoint light that could be any number of reactions to that news. Then an eyebrow creeps upward and the corner of his mouth pulls downward; "Before you got a chance to torch it." Tongue to the back of his teeth, he looks ostensibly back at Milani, but the impression comes across more that he looks through her. "When did this happen." There's a flicker in Milani's own gaze as she notes that expression on his face, but she stands firm for now. "A month ago today," Hayda's assistant goes on, suddenly letting go of that box. The beads rattle back into place sharply, knocking against each other. It might be then that she realizes that maybe walking down an aisle with no exit might have been a bad idea, though she only folds her arms across her chest. "No one's come forward with it yet. So maybe it just got swept up into the trash." How fast N'thei must be calculating to go directly into the next question-- demand, really. "Who else knows about the list." Strange thing, how a little shift in stance changes an aura entirely, no more than a minute difference in the angle of his shoulders to answer Milani's realization: he stands between her and the way out, and the only other person in ear shot isn't apt to take kindly to the nature of this list. Lystros maintains oblivion. "Who else has seen it, been told, might have overheard." Maybe she can't help it, Milani backs up a half-step and fixes her eyes on the Weyrleader's face. Feisty as she sometimes can be, she doesn't last long and her eyes flick away to just beyond him. "Why? What're you going to do?" she asks instead of just spilling the names like a good little girl. "Not your business." Delivered flatly, N'thei stays right where he was while she back-steps, the physical point already made: he can loom just as well with an extra half-step between them. "Who else knows about the list, Milani." Set jaw, steady eyes. She bumps into the shelf by mistake, rattling it a little, but she seems to have made up her mind about something. "No. Not until you tell me what you're going to do. That no one's going to get hurt." Her eyes narrow slightly and she takes a deep breath. "You know this whole thing is wrong anyway. We've made out good, why not put an end to it before it goes nuts? Because you know it will. We should cut and run while we still can." Beat. "There's nothing on the list that says who supposedly took anything. It's just a list of stuff and dates. It doesn't /mean/ anything unless it's me or Hayda." Flare; "If you had done what you were told in the first place, you little idiot, we wouldn't be in this situation." N'thei's presence-of-mind prevents all out shouting at her, but the effort to shows in the rush of color to his face, in the hand that slaps out to land hard on whatever's rattling beside Milani and stop the noise. "You lost the fucking list. I want to know whose hands it better not wind up in, and I want to know it now!" Well, that time he shouts some; Lystros peeks his head in, concerned about broken merchandise, not broken bones. A sullen flush rises in Milani's cheeks and she glares back at him. "Don't call me any names. We always keep track of lost stuff." She steps away from the shelf though, maybe just maybe edging slightly back into the aisle and sort of towards the door. "Only if you promise not to hurt her," Millie says stubbornly, chin high, high up now. "Yell at me all you want, but I'm not letting you yell at /her/ or hurt her in any way." "I will call you whatever I want, and you'll be lucky if that's the least of it." N'thei has none of the edging, will purposefully maintain himself between Milani and line-of-sight to the door, blatantly if he must. "Fine. I promise." Given without weight, without solemnity. "Who." "I think I'm going to stop defending you as a good man, N'thei," Milani says quietly, suddenly calm and still in the face of his anger and something like disappointment showing in her face. "I thought underneath it all, you really cared. But you don't, do you?" She waves her hand once as if to dismiss that. "Never mind." Dismissed verbally too. "Vivy," she says quietly, looking down at the floor. "She was going to keep an eye out for it and bring it back to me. She found me looking for it." In round-about response to the dismissed question, what he thinks of her opinion; "You stupid fucking child. You couldn't just do what you were told, if your childish short-sightedness has cost us--" The beginning of a tirade realized, N'thei cuts himself off with teeth ground, with accusation and disappointment in the look that hangs from Milani's calm. "Viviana. Fine. --I want it found. I want it destroyed. And the next time you're given a fucking order, I want you to bow your head like a good little girl and /do it./ Are we clear?" "Fuck you too, N'thei. I hope you fucking swing, when this comes down. I'm not doing your dirty laundry for you anymore. I'll find the damn list, but after that? I'm done. I'm not doing you anymore favors or sweeping anything under any rugs and if it costs my my knot? So be it. There's some things that aren't worth all the marks in the world and this is one of them." She makes to push past him then, angry now. "And you're always crystal-fucking-clear." Beat. "/Sir/." Derision finds a host-- "Don't get righteous, Milani, it makes you a hypocrite on top of everything else." N'thei lets her brush by him unmolested for all the pretense of malice; really, he hasn't been so coiled-spring since Viviana's name came into play, certainly less calculating. "Keep in mind that any finger that points at my back has to go through yours, every little lie, everything you hid, barettes and ten-percent bonuses you accepted as payment. You're not coming out of this clean, so I'd keep my mouth shut if I were you." Milani stops and looks over her shoulder at him, chin up again. "I don't care. I know what I've done and what I'm responsible for. You're right. I was a stupid child. Stupid enough to trust you and think you had a heart under it all. But I'm not anymore. Thanks for opening my eyes up. Wide open." He once said she was ripe for corrupting, but maybe he didn't really mean that shadow that's in her eyes now. But there it is. N'thei laughs coldly at the chin-up response, laughs right into the wide open eyes that he meets unflinchingly. "Happy to oblige. Go find someone else to be the hero, little girl, I've always been the villain." Squared shoulders bear the title without apology, and his eyes flicker from Milani to the archway and back again. "Get the list back. Don't mention it to anyone else. Ever." Sounds like dismissed. "Bullshit," is Milani's final word on the matter and she promises nothing as she turns to walk out, chin still held high. She doesn't run once she's clear either. She walks. It's not until she's in her room behind a closed door that her knees give out for a while. A long while. |
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