( the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire )

[elegiaque]

WHO: Gwenaëlle Vauquelin, Thranduil, Wren Coupe, & division heads and anyone in their quarters or offices.
WHAT: A quiet night in goes awry.
WHEN: Forward-dated slightly to the 6th.
WHERE: The Gallows, main tower. Also, Halamshiral.
NOTES: Violence, drugging, attempted assassination. Also, the division head quarters are slightly on fire. Toss any queries in here!

CLOSED

In less than a week, the Vauquelin household is shut up for the remainder of the winter; savvy enough not to want to have to instruct an entirely new staff on her particular idiosyncrasies, Gwenaëlle sends most of her servants home with generous stipends to cover the lost work and the expectation of seeing them all again in the spring. Kieran decamps for Sundermount and his mother, and with her small menagerie (birds, hound, horse, Thranduil's fucking pony, the elk) she retreats to the Gallows and quietly takes up residence in a fifth floor room of the Templar tower.

Or, at least, is seen to have done that. Many of her belongings are there, certainly, and her lady's maid occupies the second bed. Were anyone to glance in, they would have every reason to assume that they have merely caught her out - indeed, when Felix Guilfoyle is discreetly dosing the wine that will be taken up to the research division head, it's where he expects her to be for the evening. An oversight, one of several, that he will live to regret—

but he is not as young as he once was.

It's only late into the night, having set the fire and preparing the final touches, that he discovers his mistake in the sight of Gwenaëlle's slight form sleeping peacefully beneath the weight of Thranduil's arm over her waist, their sleep-murmurs echoed dozily by a pair of peculiar birds in a cage in the corner.

OPEN TO PEOPLE IN THE DIVISION HEAD QUARTERS & OFFICES

It's a slow start - increasing warmth, the faint smell of burning and then the stronger smell of smoke -

but there is definitely a fire spreading from the division head quarters.

Comments

[rowancrowned]

It was a normal evening, during the week he had been given as a gift to play house with her. He would finish his paperwork while she read, they would make use of the copper tub in the corner, and dinner would come up from the kitchens. It was sparse fare, nigh on all the meat in the larders gone alongside most of the spices, but he hardly minded the leek and potato soup, nor the thick bread that accompanied it. Perhaps Gwenaëlle would have been able to have better in Hightown, but it was so cold—

( and what if something happened and he could not get to her )

—that he hoped she did not mind. At least they had wine. Enough for a bottle at dinner, shared between them, during conversation and then the bath, the last of it finished after lovemaking and before he banked the fire for the night and bundled the two of them in his bed, wrapped in blankets and furs and utterly content.

The thing that wakes him is the smoke. It makes his eyes burn and his throat itch. Gwenaëlle shifts—he wonders what is wrong with the fire, for it to smell like it is burning something other than wood, and opens his eyes right as the chill of the bedclothes being lifted hits him. Elven sight does not falter in the dark, the figure is laid before him in stark relief, some Man trying to lift her from the bed, her limp and unresponsive. But his hands are full, and Thranduil is motivated by rage and fear.

The bedclothes aren’t tossed back when Thranduil leaps at him so much as suddenly vacated, he will get his hands around that throat and rip it out--

He barely notices the cottony feeling his thoughts have, the faint sluggishness in his limbs, all the hallmarks of magebane.

[elegiaque]

Instinct and long, long habit offer Thranduil the only promising thing about the chaos to which he's awoken, and that is: when presented with a charging, furious, half-drugged elf with several inches and a good deal of broadness in his favour, Guilfoyle prioritises the safety of the young woman beginning to stir in his arms. Nevermind that Thranduil isn't attacking her, or that this situation is entirely of (Emeric's) creation - the parts of his brain that do not require his input make the decisions for what follows, dragging Gwenaëlle against his shoulder as he spins to present Thranduil his back, his body made a shield for her -

the swiftness with which it happens and the long practise of an assassin make the knife he has in his other hand a subtler thing than it might have been. He has it in his hand in a moment, and the strike is low and assuredly aimed behind himself. If Thranduil ventures close enough to take advantage of Guilfoyle's vulnerability there is a strong possibility that he will regret it.

Everyone is regretting a lot of things, right now, and Gwenaëlle is starting to struggle.

[rowancrowned]

Enraged is a good word for it—less wise and more dangerous—and Thranduil, being dismissive of formalities and without a weapon of his own, simply grabs the knife in one hand (it cuts through his shard-bearing palm, it cannot be sharp enough for bone, and he is an elf) and Guilfoyle’s wrist in the other, a solid kick aimed for his knee to bring him low, get them both on the floor.

He snarls something in Sindarin, fierce and terrible, and shouts for Gwenaëlle. He needs—someone, Galadriel, Haldir, one of the others to take her to safety. He is coming to realize that something is wrong with him, that he has been drugged.

[elegiaque]

The muted sound of pain that barely gets past Guilfoyle's throat is hidden beneath Gwenaëlle's own more startled cry as he goes to his knees - he is too old for this, Maker take it, he had trusted no other hands but his own, his own hands are weary and his knees aren't built for this any more, he retired years before the little thing he's trying to carry was born - and her bare legs find the floor, hard, the fingers of his free hand digging painfully into her hip without intending. She scrambles backwards until her back hits the dresser, eyes huge and mind blurry, a heavy feeling from the lingering effects of whatever the fuck it was Guilfoyle had put in the wine -

“My lady,” he says, improbably courteous, dodging sideways out of Thranduil's easy reach when she's clear of him. “I must beg your forgiveness and ask that you—” he has another knife, elf, “leave us at once.”

Gwenaëlle stares at him. At Thranduil.

Something is burning, and the ruckus has roused Hardie in the other room, barking furiously. Is she having some kind of fucking fever dream.

[rowancrowned]

His left hand is dripping blood, and will be useless unless he is actually in desperate need of it. His swords rest on the chest by the bed. He unsheathes one and kicks the empty scabbard and other sheathed sword to the far corner, where it bangs off the tub and skids to a top. The fire has reached his curtains—he will worry about that once he’s dealt with the Man.

He holds it easily in his hand, circling (bring a sword to a knife fight) but doesn’t falter when he addresses Gwenaëlle, too occupied with the main threat in the room.

“Gwenaëlle,” steady, because this changes things, he’s right, she does need to get out of the room. “Who is this.”

She has not heard him angry. Perhaps when the Dalish clan died, but this is—they were there, and Gwenaëlle is here, and his.

heard this party wasn't extra enough

[limier]

It's easy to miss —

Beneath the shouting, the barking, the crackle of flames; the clatter of bodies, and metal, and stone. It's easy to miss the slam of new weight battering the door, the snarl beneath.

Abruptly, wood splinters. An axehead crashes through the frame, wreathed in its own blaze of white. Wren wrenches it free only long enough to thrust an arm past jagged edges, to pull the lock, to force the thing at last aside. Smoke sears her throat, her lungs, her eyes and it's a moment to sight the third figure. Who?

It doesn't matter. The swords don't matter. She hefts the axe and bellows:

"The room is on fucking fire," It's like swallowing glass, on the rising breaths. Her face wrenches in black fury. "Get out!"

She's already reaching to haul at Gwenaelle. None of this matters.

(Some things do.)

[elegiaque]

The birds, as one, scream: the room is on fucking fire! and Gwenaëlle is understandably somewhat arrested by the sight of Coupe bursting into the room with a fucking axe, derailing her sluggish efforts to drag her thoughts into sufficient coherency to answer Thranduil. Guilfoyle had been disinclined to do so at the point of Thranduil's sword (which he does not doubt his own ability to elude, but he is in no mood to push it) - a third person enters and if he were the sort of man who made facial expressions, he might laugh, what a maker-damned mess.

He did as his lord bid him. He can do little else.

“Don't kill him,” is what she manages, trying without success to wrench her elbow out of Wren's grip for little more reason than an instinct to be, at all times, fucking difficult; perhaps also because this situation is sliding (further) into chaos and she is terribly, suddenly afraid of what will happen- what will- “don't kill him, please,”

“I would be most grateful if you were to remove my lady,” Guilfoyle says, blandly, as if the room isn't filling with smoke and murderous intent all around him. Maker, let this farce not be how he dies.

“He's my lord's man,” tangled in Wren's hands and the oversized shirt that doesn't belong to her, “he's my lord's, don't kill him—”

[rowancrowned]

Thranduil curses, again in Sindarin—yes, the room is on fire—exhales (the smoke finally starting to truly bother him) and strikes Guilfoyle on the side of the temple with the flat of the sword, a sudden flurry of movement and grit teeth and satisfaction that this is Orlesian bullshit and not something more serious.

It all goes very quickly, after that.

Guilfoyle is near enough to the door that he assumes Coupe will handle it—he steps to the tub, ignoring the way the hot stone is burning his feet, how the hair on the back of his arms stings, and overturns it, flooding the room all at once with water, soaking the rugs. The hangings are still a concern—there is still fire, but it can be someone else’s problem. And then he makes for the door, still holding his sword, grabbing the knob and unlocking it, pushing the door out into his office, dragging Guilfoyle if Couple didn’t, and dumping him onto the carpet.

“Hide her,” he says to Coupe. “Tell them—tell them I went out for the night. That I left the fire untended, and this occurred. There is nothing in there to—” implicate him. “—arouse any interest, but much of it would not be suited for recruit’s eyes.”

Coupe can handle it, he assumes. He bends, picks up Guilfoyle, and holds him like a sack of potatoes, making for the hallway. He has clothes at the Hightown house, he will kit himself up there—and for now, wraps himself in enough of a glamour so he can be ignored.

[limier]

The birds scream, Gwen struggles in her hands (those tighten on instinct of their own —), and don't kill him. Don't kill my lord's man, don't kill Emeric's,

What? Emeric's bloody what? The answer's as obvious as it is absurd; the man's got one foot on the pyre already, surely bards don't live so long. She drags Gwen to the door, turning to force her out toward room and dog and open hall beyond. Priorities. Priorities, and then she can deal with the assassin, with the fire,

Priorities, and then Thranduil spits some nonsense and smashes him upside the head.

"Get fucked," She tries to hiss, in no mood to take orders from a man who looks half-drunk upon a mess of his own making. But black air rises, the scar in her throat feels about to split, and all that comes after that last roar is a hoarse noise when he's already three steps out the door.

She's left with a slip of a girl, and a burning bedroom. The latter needs water, the former needs stashing. Needs watching, if she's to be kept from doing anything half so stupid as what's brought her here tonight.

"Downstairs," Croaked. She'll pick her up if she has to, if they're not moving fast enough, if Gwen tries to follow Thranduil's path. "Where is the warden?"

Or anyone else appropriate, anyone who can keep her in one place until this is seen to. Poor Yva doesn't qualify.

[elegiaque]

Difficult at the best of times and set on any direction but with Wren Coupe, Gwenaëlle finds herself off her feet and over a shoulder in short order, Wren's arm maintaining what's left of her dignity, or at least the privacy of her privates, clasped over the bottom of Thranduil's shirt against her thighs.

It's very difficult to knee someone in the chest in this position, and she doesn't actually succeed, but an effort was made.

“Why would I know!”

—is probably going to be the answer to any questions that involve knowing where anyone in the Gallows might be.

[limier]

There's no way to reach the sending crystal without putting down axe or girl. Silent curses sprawl past her lips, neither unvoiced, nor audible.

She slams the blunt head of the axe against doors as they pass, all that might be done for now to rouse those inside. Feet pound upon the stairwell, and when they're a few flights down she veers abruptly aside, through the door of a storeroom.

It's difficult to dislodge her with any kind of gentleness, and a pile of empty sackcloth isn't the softest bed. It'll do. It's no sooner that Gwen's off her shoulders than she's hastening to the door, to drag a chair from the entry beside (jam it beneath the handle it ought to do).

"I will be back," When the flames are extinguished. "With trousers."

[elegiaque]

“I have clothes!” she wails through the closed door, scrambling after Coupe too clumsily and slowly—what was in the wine, she feels appalling—to avoid having it closed in her face. She thinks about kicking it, thinks about her bare feet; tries the handle and finds it jammed, slams a hand against it and turns, pacing, frustrated—

There's nothing for it. She's going to have to sit here and wait. Hope, she supposes, that the fire is controlled quickly or else she's going to die in a locked room and someone will have to explain that, probably.

She's not going back down to the room she gave Yva, that's out of the question. Maybe Galadriel.