( 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]

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.