faderift | 02 | CLOSED

Entry tags:

02 | CLOSED

WHO: Lakshmi, Marcoulf & Magni
WHAT: A Comedy of Errors: Dinner Date edition.
WHEN: A Time When Things Aren't Happening
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Only Embarrassment, probably.

It's small mercies at the moment that she doesn't share her room with someone else. That lets her do this with such ease. Pushing back the few pieces of furniture with ease to place her table in the space. The rest was a matter of spending time in the kitchens, taking up as little space as was possible there, but making plate after plate - not sure what they would like if they even would like it. No, there wasn't everything she liked to use, but she could make do. Lived in enough dire straights to be able to substitute to make something more than decent. Nice even, to just put her hands to one, long familiar task that she can do without thinking after so many years preparing meals.

Everything else after that is merely dressing it up. Arranging each plate to look as good as possible. Mix of lighter things, dishes from Bundelkhand, to the rich, creamy, sweets out of Jodhapur that her husband delighted in. Hoped it was all of it, enough. (It was, definitely, definitely too much. ) Arranging the room to be neat, the more expensive candles so there wasn't the reek of tallow in the room. Dressing herself like - home. This was for them, of course, and their enjoyment ( - hopefully, hopefully, and most importantly, their enjoyment with each other ), but she ought to be pleasant as well. Not like reasons otherwise presented themselves in recent years, falling out of dreams into foreign lands aside. Gladly fixing long ropes of flowers into her hair where she twisted it high up onto her head to pin it in place. Dressing in bright blues, greens, and that weight of gold that was less than the Queen she'd arrived as, more than walking down the street. The heavy flat disk of gold that was her tikka, laying along her hair part to the middle of her forehead. Roping back to the ornaments over her ears, same style as the necklace around her neck.

And as many flowers around her hair as there was laid on the table, around the candles and gladly scattered about. Thankful again that no one else shared with her for the brief interlude, or to how the whole space now smelt thickly of Masala ( or as close as she could get it ). No one to be bothered with the strange rifter and her odd preparation. Carefully scattering them about, fiddling with the table arrangement when she's waiting for the knock on the door.

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Oh, hey. There's a knock on the door.

Magni stands on the other side of the door, and is entirely unprepared for the colourful scene awaiting her. Truthfully, she is not totally sure what she's doing here, because Lakshmi and Manu seem to be very different people. That's not an issue; nobility, especially, seem to enjoy the whimsy and the relief to be found in being someone else. She's just surprised that Lakshmi is the one who has invited her to dinner. Presumably it has something to do with the sword, and runes. She has even brought along a book with further information, considering runes that might be complementary to the nature of the weapon, although they would need to be acquired from Orzammar, she suspects.

So, she is not done up with flowers, suffice to say. Red cloth is wrapped around her chest and shoulders, and belts from her dark leather pauldrons cross over her chest, clasped with a broach in the shape of a bird's skull, beak hooked and sharp. And in perhaps cliche Avvar fashion, her abdomen is exposed, revealing the patterns of tattoos that reach down her sides. The trousers, the boots, are at least not from the forge. They are not, however, probably worthy of the scene she's about to walk in.

Although— she's looking away from the door, and peering down the hallway.

His morning had been like any other - a morning spar with Six, working in the stables, then rotation along the Inquisition's strip of the docks, a series of odd jobs, then another hour in the hottest part of the muggy summer day spent with his own roan mare carefully thinning her mane while she munched hay in the shade. But he'd faithfully traded his evening duties off entirely and hacked considerably into an otherwise completely regular pattern of late afternoon habits in favor of washing and carefully scrubbing ever scrap of dirt from under his fingernails. It's a meticulous kind of cleanliness in vein with clothes that aren't fine, but are certainly neat. Marcoulf's brushed those too, scrubbing old spots from the cuffs of his shirt until they're hardly there at all.

Maker knows why the woman wants him for dinner, he thinks, but he can at least do her the courtesy of looking the part. Not that the lines of him look very different at all as he makes his way up the hallway. Marcoulf is Marcoulf - long limbs and narrow shoulders, sallow cheeks under a too curly beard no matter the care he's put into oiling it. It would be altogether easy to mistake him slinking up the corridor as circumstantial. He'll give Magni a nod as he passes, then be on his way anywhere else with that bottle he's carrying.

Only that's not what happens. Marcoulf instead spots Magni there, notes the open door and the shadow of Lakshmi in it, and a look of genuine confusion finds him. His shoulders go taut by some bewildered half degree--

And he smooths, lanky stride lengthening comfortably. Andraste's grace in action; he had no idea how he was going to entertain Rani for the length of an entire dinner. It'll be easier with someone to tag in, even if that second is a woman who barely knows the meaning of the word 'conversation.'

It's one moment where she smooths over herself when the door was knocked on. To make sure the pleats of her saree sate neatly, to pull it up a little further over her shoulder where it draped. Well, it would either work or it did not.

She opens the door for both of them, smiling, familiar role in playing host. Looking up between them as they stood in the doorway. The rich smell of food, the softer scent of flowers the filled the space. Heady, almost too much. But the want was that it would make them hungry just as much as it made her so. Enough, enough Rani, guests, this was for them. Looking over them both briefly.

Magni was certainly dressed, wasn't she? As was Marcoulf for that matter, better than the last time. But then, no one ever looked their best on the road for her to have too much judgement on the matter. She steps to back from the open door. Her feet bare, the anklet chiming softly with the step.

"You both have come."

This isn't how she usually would welcome a guest to her home but - this was not her home, she was about to douse them in much they did not know. Better to ease them into it. Together. "Please," she beckons with her hand, inviting them into her quarters. "Take your shoes off. I prefer not to have them... inside." Indicates by the door, where to keep them, next to the door where hers were. No further than that into the room.

Her meticulously clean room, down to the very corners. Nothing in here was messy. Nothing was out of place. Her bed made, every item place neatly and in a decent place. Nothing cluttered, no dust collecting corners. Save for the small splashes of the flowers, the rich textiles that were airing, the silver plate to the side of one desk with a lone oil and whick burning in it, and the plates for food covered in cloth, everything was perfectly placed. The items were no different to anyone else's the same chair, the same desk, the same bed, but it was treated as well as if it were finest sandalwood and mahogany. "Sit, please."

Magni looks down at her boots, and back to Lakshmi, and down at her boots, and to Marcoulf. The request itself doesn't bother her, but she does raise a single eyebrow at her friend. What, my good man, the eyebrow seems to say, the fuck?

She kneels, cooperatively, to begin unclasping and buckling the boots, and slips them off, setting them neatly to the side. Now she's a woman with leather pants, armour, an exposed midriff, and socks. It just doesn't feel right. Should the socks go, too? The look she casts Lakshmi is both questioning, and faintly perplexed.

Whatever. Straightening up and her step into the room are practically the same motion, and she looks around curiously. And does not sit.

What the fuck, is right. He pauses, shifting the bottle from one hand to the next, then finally settles on simply placing it on the ground as he loosens the laces at the back of his boots. Do his socks match?

Well enough. Small blessings.

"It smells--" Interesting. The heavy scent of the roon smells like the color red looks, prickling at the back of his tongue. "--good."

Fetching the bottle back up, he moves to follow instruction. Sitting. Sure. He can do that just fine as well.

Their discomfit for all of it is gladly, and wholly, ignored, as she goes about the room. Letting them settle as she goes to take the glasses, threading her fingers through them to lift them up.

"You'll forgive any of my ... manners. I am not quite sure how such things are done here outside of the eating in the mess hall." But she supposed it went without saying, it didn't seem like Magni or Marcoulf seemed to give much of a damn about such things. Good.

Turning back she looks between them, curious briefly - "Is there something you need, Talonhold?"

Marcoulf is sitting and being obedient, and Magni would give him a look, except that the only reason it perturbs her is because it's here, in Manu's place.

Lakshmi's place, she reminds herself, and further corrects: "No, your Majesty."

She is just curious. Slowly, somewhat compliantly, she sits.

"I did not bring the sword." If that is why Marcoulf is here. Sword discussions.

Well... the cat was out of the bag in that regard. She lifts a brow, was that really necessary? She had not been interested in that. "And I told you, Rani."

... And something she had not told the other member of their company about herself.

"I noticed." Her eyes flicked over Magni, like she had been looking for it. "A shame. I think Marcoulf would be interested in it. I was interested to hear his thoughts. And on enchantment for that matter." She set the glasses down, looks up to Ricart. "What have you brought?" Obviously, he had. But even so.

Consider him pausing in the background of this conversation over the words Your Majesty as a very small part of him seizing closed like an anxious dog's jaws around a bone. Marcoulf goes exceptionally still, his gaze fixed at a point on the far wall and his head cocked just faintly toward Magni as if abruptly blind to the other woman in the room. Or as if he's carefully recalculating her place in it in relation to him, to the dishes between them, to the bottle in his hand--

By the time Lakshmi looks in his direction, he's recovered enough to answer by setting the bottle between them with a thunk of the glass base. "Honey wine."

Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. She looks at Lakshmi, eyebrows raising just very slightly - what? Was not that correct?

Her general subtlety of expression might be all that is keeping her from smiling. Magni's gaze flickers to Marcoulf, equally innocent. Did you not know?

One leg hooks over the other, and she leans back in her chair without any further comment. Or any comment at all, actually, because she is an overly quiet jerk.

"Perfect, thank you."

She takes the bottle from him. Fishing for a knife from the table, to stab into the cork. Getting on with this. If Marcoulf wanted to know, he could ask. Right? Right. Filling in their silence quite happily. "I prepared - many dishes you would not know from the sky, I should think. Some are the dishes from the land I ... lived on. Others are regional to my people. Others are - " she pauses, looking for the world tipping the bottle a little up to hover in thought - "fancies I thought to show you both."

Ah, her fingers flick. Either way, a little excited. It ought to provide them with something they liked.

So first, then, their glasses filled, she puts the bottle down. Leaving them be as she goes to the covered dishes, picking out the ones for the starters. Tugging off the cloth protecting them, lifting to balance them on her forearm and hands. "This is three different dishes - "

Moving back to begin to settle them down, listing off the names of the dishes. Things that were simple, perhaps, but rich. " - we have a chicken, quite unlike anything I have ever seen anywhere. The meat of it is black. I'm afraid I could not find such a thing here for you."

He's not asking. Not Lakshmi anyway. The moment she turns her back to begin fetching dishes, Marcoulf snaps his attention to Magni and stares at her with enough intensity that it must psychically communicate his thoughts: Are you serious, or are you playing some stupid joke?

By the time Lakshmi returns to the table with the dishes and begins to explain them, he's carefully reschooled his expression and diverted his attention to the plates in question. He doesn't think about a veranda in Orlais and he certainly doesn't consider kicking Magni under the table. The rich smell coming up off the dishes is enough of a distraction.

"What smell is that, Madame?" It's a very tentative question, his hand touching constantly at the base of his glass. Maker, what is he doing here?

Magni's brow quirks very slightly, a barely perceptible expression of, who? Me?

She would never.*

Ignoring Marcoulf and whatever questions might threaten to be communicated via eyebrow code and degrees of shoulder tension, Magni redirects her attention to Lakshmi, the dishes. "They smell very fine. If ever you've need of spices to experiment with, Varmas can supply at agreeable prices."

That might be the longest collection of words she has uttered in the last three days, but she leans forward to more fully inhale the scent of spice and meat, and definitely not to watch Lakshmi intensely, those tell-tale indications of delight that are definitely not charming.

"Do not tell Marcoulf of this chicken. He would use this as an excuse for why meat is turned to charcoal."

*That she would admit.

It's hard not to flick her ear for that. "He was well enough a cook when we were on the road." But her ear stays unmolested, hands currently full, and she goes about placing the plates down. The soft clatter of their clay bases onto the wood with a clipped sound.

"It is a blend of spices, Goda Masala. It is... pepper, cinnamon, aniseed, cloves, onions, cumin, coriander. A few others." An expensive list, a very expensive list. But worth it, spares them the worst of it, thinks they might choke on the notion they were eating something as expensive as a half teaspoon of saffron. "There is usually coconut, chilli peppers, bay leaf, but such things do not seem to be here. Or at least not readily." A sigh, mournful. Another thing to being here. If she can find things she knows, they are by halves at best.

It's been years, all the same, at least adjusted to it.

"But the dishes are Bharli Vangi, Bharli Bhendi ... well, the purple and green stuffed vegetables you see there. Sabundana Vada are the small fried cakes you see there. They are potatoes, nuts, and another few spices. Then there are the flatbread there - it is Rhoti." Her hands move as she talks. Pointing to each thing as she goes.

She sits, then. Arranging her wrapped skirts, pulling the drape over her shoulder where it inevitably worked it's way wider, looser and down back up. "Take what you wish." Demonstrates then, putting the food on her plate - even if it's not quite proper, showing how to place it, move the bread about the plate. It is ultimately, however, for all the spice, all the colour, not so different in those details to any other common dish. Eaten with hands, the bread used to mop up what is left and to scoop up pieces in lieu of using cutler. "Enjoy."

Hovers though, waiting, the last thing she wants to do - is to utterly disgust them with her food. It's been so long, and the dishes varied to what she could find and tasted them as she went to make sure it wasn't dreadful. But... well, what host didn't worry?

Pepper, cinnamon, cloves-- all this for a dinner with the likes of the two of them. Not joking, he decides.

"Coconut can be had," he blurts out. His cooking his exactly zero relevance in this room and even less importance. He gingerly begins to shift some of the food - the little golden cakes, the vibrantly colored vegetables - onto his plate. It's a good thing to busy his attention and hands with. A good reason to keep his eye lowered.

"It's uncommon in the south, I think, but the name is familiar. The rest-- maybe it's called something different here. Or the shape isn't the same. Magni's man might know which direction to point you in if you can describe the taste well enough."

If there is a rule in any Orlesian house about staying his hand until everyone at the table has served themselves, he doesn't know it. Marcoulf instead splits one of the fried cakes and eats half without blinking.

And pauses.

And takes a measured sip of the honey wine.

Oh, bless. She looks over to her friend with slow incredulity. Why are you being like this? the look might say, because—

why i he being like this? Blurting and looking something along the lines of shy. Nobility from rifters is the same as nobility here: meriting respect, when they have proven themselves, and representing opportunity in the right circumstances.

Magni, far less concerned, is carefully sampling from each dish, arranging it around her plate in an effort to emulate Lakshmi's method, but also so that each can be tried without it immediately running into the other, but not yet digging in. That said, the price of the ingredients... well, it's making her take considerably less food than what might be necessary for someone who works in a forge.

And then she gets to the flatbreads, and take four without agonising over it is polite, because she has been working in a forge all day and could eat her own arm, probably.

"You both met on a mission, then." Small talk. Truly, her bane. Her suffering.

"Truly? I will have to look then. It is not quite... right without it." There's a sigh, mournful, almost. But if he would but look, happy to know it. "It is no matter. Next time, then."

She's particular in how she eats - in company at least. There are habits - habits that otherwise she has done away with. But here especially, it still shows, she was something a great deal more once. Her fingers light, as she picks up the food, her bites small, mouth half closed with it. Lifts to cover her lips as she chews, letting them talk about her - little as either of them are prone to it. But enough that she can make her particular little motions, the small sips of wine between them. Delicate in a way that is not quite right to the scars over those hands.

"We did. We were hired by a Madamoselle," careful, on the French - Orlaisian - oh, whatever they were called here. She was beginning to think she just preferred when Lafayette was shooting and swearing unknowingly at her. "to guard her on the road." She laughs a little. "But it seems you both caught me off guard. I had thought to introduce you to each other."

A push, light as anything.

He finds himself grateful for it - their breezy, substanceless back and forth. Magni can shoot him all the pointed looks she cares to; he has more immediate concerns that pimarily revolve around taking another carefully measured sip of the honey wine to cut the riot of taste in his mouth left from the little cake. Andraste's mercy, what had the woman done to that potato?

--Marcoulf swallows hard. Clears his throat and muffles the sharp sound against his fist.

"We've done some work together." Before all this Inquisition nonsense. He clears his throat again behind his hand, softer. "Some time ago."

She looks up, herding spices and sauces onto the flatbread, before politely covering her smile at Marcoulf's cough with a drink of wine.

"It is still good," she says, eventually, realising that there might be some doubt on that count. It was mind bogglingly expensive food, after all, and though she is of the Avvar, this does not mean she is an under appreciative savage.

A mademoiselle could mean anything, and she raises an eyebrow at Marcoulf before adding: "My other employer is Varmas, of the merchant guild. Sometimes they've need of capable hands."

Nods to Marcoulf. "Sometimes the capable hands have blades needing fixing."

Sky lady, but she is is hungry, and agonising over the cost of the food and whether it would be unseemly to go to town. Probably. Fucking royalty.

She looks at them both, careful, setting back in her chair, because she has neither of their care to her food, eating happily. More than happily. Any spices she stole from Hastings were the bare bones at best. What was the point when she was going to spend her days ready to move at a moments notice. But to get to eat like home? She is glad, happy with it, and even happier to share it with those around her. No Rajput, no, and certainly not a Mughal to go splashing things about richly but... well. A decent showing, she felt.

She tears a piece of the potato cake up, mopping up the sauce with it. "Just so. It is why I could think of no one who should be better acquaintances then you both. A soldier needs to know a decent blacksmith. The two are inseparable to each other." Cheerfully supplied, smiling behind her hand that is once more risen for politeness sake.

"Magni is making a blade of my homeland. She has done quite well with it, even if no one seems to have heard of the thing before." The next mouthful is swallowed between the words, reaching up to wipe off the mess with her napkin before she went for her glass. "Tell me when you are done, both of you. Spare me nothing, I have a great deal more to give you." A small prayer of thanks to the mage that agreed to .. spell? The plates to stop them going cold in the meantime.

More? Marcoulf pauses, surveying the dishes spread before them. Maker. He carefully begins to tear his pieve of bread into smaller squares. If it's all this spiced, he'll need to pace himself. Washing every other bite down with honeyed wine will commit him to stumbling out.

"I'm not surprised. She's a trustworthy hand at the forge," he says, pushing around the sauce on his plate with the bread. "I was glad to find her here. She undid all the bad work I'd had done to my sword since last I saw her."

He manages a few bites before he has to concede to carefully sipping from his cup. Clears his throat like he has a scratch there and eats some bread with nothing at all on it. "Is that how you know one other? Over her work?"

Their acquantience may very well be the last little mystery over this cabal they've apparently all formed. Is this how Lakshmi is paying her for the blade? In cinnamon and pepper and a dozen other equally ludicrously expensive favors.

A great deal more? Unceremoniously, she takes one of the dishes she had only daintily sampled before, and with a glance to Lakshmi to see if she is about to be met with stately judgment, scoops a far more considerable amount on. The forge's heat, the weight of the hammer, it all drained the body. Granted, the spices are perhaps more than she's used to, but other than the slight flush at her neck, she seems unfazed. Cool as the proverbial cucumber - which might also be slightly exotic to the Avvar, who knows what actually grows in the Frostbacks.

It's easy enough to just keep eating contently, the very faintest quirk of a smile in appreciation of the compliments they both give her work, not letting it go too much to her head. There is always more to learn.

As for how they know each other,

"I was a convenient lay," she says, very flatly, before taking another piece of bread. Whatever, dudes.

Is it possible to aspirate bread? He definitely chokes on it anyway.

For one second, she only looks blissfully encouraging, eat, for goodness sake eat. It was what they were both here for, after all. For them to have as much as they possibly could. She couldn't it all herself, not even if she worked at it. Glad too see it, and ready to get more. Even ready for the question, ready with a polite, distancing answer.

And then, Magni goes and replies before she can and - Lord Ganesh, I ask for preservation. She lent over, giving Marcoulf a firm clap on the back to get him breathing again.

"You were no such thing." Thank God that there would never be much of a sign of heat working up her face. She could keep her words measured. "We met in a tavern, then again, later." It is, after all, not a lie, it is exactly what happened but cleaned of the details. Happily bloodless.

Edited 2018-08-12 04:38 (UTC)

This is the longest we have been dressed in each others company, she might say, if she were the worst. And a liar, because at least there had been no nudity involved when handing over the prototype that she has been working on. (A tricky thing; it still didn't feel right, and would take time to progress with.)

She doesn't bring up nakedness or swords, and instead swallows the food she had been enjoying while Marcoulf choked, helpfully topping as his wine.

"Marcoulf knows my flair for the dramatic and exaggeration," she replies, cooperatively, and does not give Marcoulf or Lakshmi a look because it hardly seems necessary.

Marcoulf makes a low, croaking sound which must be agreement - oh certainly, the woman is the most dramatic person he knows. Flambouyant like a hammer is. Osentatious as a sensible wool coat.

Washing it all down with a healthy pull from his refilled cup, he clears his throat roughly for what must be the twelfth time and finally settles magnanimously on, "I see."

He doesn't quite split a look between the two of them. Instead Marcoulf fixes the dishes on the table with some serious study and veers hard to the proverbial right. "Will you be testing the new blade in the yard soon? I know a lady who might like the challenge."

There's no kick for Magni delivered under the table. He just strongly considers it.

"It isn't ready," she replies, quietly. Not blunt, but firm; this was a new design, a different approach to the materials, and she has no desire to risk something sub-par in combat that might injure either party. A new design, a rifter design— no. Not yet ready.

Still, perhaps that was a little too harsh sounding, even through her steadiness.

"The next prototype, perhaps."

She nods, at least was easy, not fraught with .... everything else that was in the room. Thank God Marcoulf had some sense.

Letting Magni speak - taking another mouthful. "I would be glad too when it is ready but... She will have to be fast. Where I come from - we call the style, Mardani Khel. We favour light, fast weapons. There is nothing faster than an Urumi used well. Nor does the weapon... it strikes very particularly."

The comfortable arrogance, but more than that - she does not share this out of some need to falsely display pride. She is proud, of her home, her people, all that they are.

"She's strong over fast," --that much he can confirm himself-- "But the lady is clever and her reach is better than yours, madame." Lakshmi herself being quite petite indeed. Against a woman like Six who is nearer Magni's height than the other--

There's a forcefully aborted train of thought that leads down avenues like 'Well, clearly she doesn't have too much trouble with someone so much taller--'. Instead, he looks to Magni across the line of his knuckles as he mops up the remaining sauce on his plate with the mildest section of bread he can find. "Send word when you have a ready version. I'll see to it my acquaintance is ready for the challenge."

There. A perfectly normal vein of conversation.

"Perhaps so - " and there is that play of mischief perhaps, that is less grand so much as that sharp little bemusement, of there is something you do not know that makes her teeth sharp in her mouth, little digs of white against her smile, not broad, or laughing - neither was particular in her nature, which is a depressing thought if she was in the moment to have them, and she currently wasn't and so: " - but you will see. An Urumi is a hard weapon to grasp until you see it move."

But she moves to stand, as they get through the beginning parts of the meal she - scoops up the half-empty plates. The same easy balancing act before she takes them away. Calling over her shoulder as she moves. Goes for the next plates of food, though they take a second to organise, leaning over the low desk. Back still to them as she talks, the material moving around her. That brief exposure of skin, all bullet holes, hound's teeth and swords. Rich as gold. Hidden again when she moves. "But if she has your confidence, how can I speak against her?" Plain honesty to her mind as she begins her next balancing act of plates again.

She catches it, that echo of playfulness, and it makes her brow quirk very slightly, leaning back in her chair to observe Lakshmi, that spark and the mischievousness that she had not seen, she thinks, since that first night. Not an act, she thinks; just something diminished. Coals and embers awaiting breath to recover them.

The gaze slides of Marcoulf, and she tilts her head. Who? her gaze might seem to ask, if he feels like paying attention.

A faint smile of her own. "She didn't see us at the tournament," Magni exhales, barely audible, her own smile more a suggestion of humour than an actual expression. That performance might be reasonable enough to doubt either of them.

He is paying attention - often is, despite everything -, but instead of answering properly he defaults to a twitch of the hand. The gesture says, 'Later'. He can explain it later when she tells him every apopolexing detail of whatever this is.

"A better eye than arm, maybe," he murmurs, fetching up the bottle so he might refill their glasses. Someone should see to it that they don't lag far behind him. "Come now, what sort of blade is it?"

"No, I did not. The stories I heard said that... the Grand Melee was quite the thing to have seen." More idle chatter, as she turns back, full of plates, big ones, small ones, side little dishes. It gets no less bright as far as food goes, no less full, rich in smell and in taste. "Ready?" Is the brief inquiry, because they had best be - there is only more to come.

Each one is set down, the table filled up, she doesn't just sit again after she unladen her arms - no, it seems there is more. Cramming food into every little crook and corner of the table. Some of it more flatbreads. Others are sauces, things to dip into, drop on top of other parts of the meal. Chutneys, dhaal. Others again little pieces of pastry, stuffed full. Worse is the way the dishes are arranged. Some have vegetables laid and carved into bursting flowers, the pasties edged to be delicate as petals at the edges, some parts of them were arranged to colour in a circle to weave outwards like a sunburst. Each plate different.

"But the blade is a - whip, but the length and breadth of a sword. Still metal." Explaining as she lays down the plate after plate around the small table. Emptying from her arms bit by bit. "But very thin, so that it can snap and curve. As I said, fast."

Thank the Mountain Father that Lakshmi feels like explaining, because Magni has hit her full quota of spoken words for the month and it's tiring. And perhaps also thanks to him that Lakshmi was not there to witness all, because while it was an epic match of the best across the lands, and Magni isn't exactly a creature of pride when it came to combat—

well, she isn't sure why it bothers her now that she did not perform better.

Those pastries are intriguing. The food is crafted into flowers, and earn something of a smile from her, because she can appreciate a skilled hand. (Don't.) She doesn't speak, just points to one of them and looks to Lakshmi, brows raised in a silent question. You did this?

He's careful to move the bottle out of the way, carefully wedging it in a more convenient patch of the table so she can go about her business of decking the rest of it with a frankly baffling number of dishes. Thank the Maker for the business of discussing the sword; he's not sure what he'd do with himself otherwise and questions of steel are at least-- well, navigable.

"Do you carry a second blade to parry with?" A whip thin sword couldn't be any good for blocking assaults and he can all but feel the heavy ring of Six's greatsword reverberating up the length of his arm into the knot of his shoulder.

But it's an absent question, really; his hands have migrated back from the table into his lap as Lakshmi sets the last dish on the overflowing table. He regards them with mute fascination or horror or-- "You should have said more. I would have brought a second bottle."

"I did. ... A wife, even of... my position, is expected to know how to cook for her husband." Gently, gently, gently. Easing around the topic of what that rank is if only for Marcoulf's sake. ( And at least, some, for hers. She has no want to let that cut apart the conversation. ) "And my husband... had varied tastes. Even if they weren't always to my taste that I took pride in accommodating. So there is a little of many places. Punjabi, Marathi, Rajputana, Bengal."

She shakes her head - at his concern, a little, but the smile is there are least to take the bite out of it. "No, please, for my people - a guest in your house is as if God has visited, and we treat them as such. We take pride that they want for nothing while they are with us. All you need to do is enjoy yourself like you were my family itself. So I have more to drink, also." And she gives them both, firmly, a look. Stop fussing, the both of you. "So for Goodness sake, you should both eat. As much of it as you want. If you don't leave here sick with eating too much, I have failed and my heart will break." And her hand waves on, eat already.

I took pride in accommodating, she says, and Magni has to do her utmost not to cough. Accommodating, indeed. She doesn't comment, but let it be known that she doesn't comment. Perhaps Marcoulf will telepathically understand her heroism and sacrifice.

But also: husband?

Not that it was surprising, really, but here she is. Magni, the Surprised. It might be perceptible from the faint twinge in her brow, a whole couple of millimetres, or so.

She processes said surprise by loading up her plate with food, perhaps in amounts that could verge on alarming, and sets to methodically working her way through it. Never let it be said that she's one to break a lady's heart.

Her husband who was some kind of king, presumably. The difficulty in navigating that conversation in any way resembling comfortable or natural is probably the only reason he doesn't ask. So you're welcome, Magni. His extreme desire to avoid putting his foot in mouth has just saved you from living through an off-center exchange where he might have otherwise asked after the health of--

On second thought, no there's a whole list of reasons why it's better not to ask. The last time he'd made some polite inquiry after Lakshmi's family, they'd ended up dead. 'Had varied tastes,' she'd said. Not has.

"Of course. Apologies." Maker, stop setting the bar so high Magni. He shoots her plate a sidelong glance, and carefully follows in her footsteps - or at least in that general direction, carefully picking bits and pieces from the sea of small plates until his own looks reasonably crowded.

She damn near beams at them both as they begin to pile up their plate - she has little reason to smile when it comes down to it. But this comes like a warm bath like maybe she never stopped. Taking a second just to be glad that they were doing so, before she goes about putting food on her own plate.

Perhaps even, as she moves, and no words she would say out of her own mouth, enough to say that she looks happy, and - damningly enough for any royal - earnestly so.

"As for before - we use a small round shield in the off hand. Primarily for deflection and blocking." She fishes for the serving spoon in one dish, hovering as she piled the food on. "Sometimes a dagger, yes, or a long knife will be the preference."

"Marcoulf has a preference for long knives, I think."

She looks up from the food, and raises her brows at her friend, entirely straight faced. She holds the dinner knife in her hand, and demonstrates (without disturbing food, wine or the table, because she is a professional and not an animal, )

"Better reach with the lunge and thrust."

Marcoulf makes a low noise of agreement, consumed by the process of carefully shifting a flowering vegetable from its small plate to his own. It seems safe - mostly the bright bursting color it should be without a preponderance of flecked spice covering it.

"About this long," he says absently, gesturing to the length of his forearm and hand before he gets as far as glancing up to catch Magni's raised eyebrows.

He stuffs the vegetable flower in his mouth.

It is, mercifully, just a carrot, a very elegant carrot - but a carrot.

"Do you dual wield them? Or perhaps keep to another weapon?" Said between her own mouthfuls, careful still in how she covers her mouth when she speaks. Another pause, as she reaches for her wine, to take a deep mouthful of it to chase down the food. "I've often used two swords - but primarily when I am riding the cavalry line."

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