( 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

[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.