faderift | closed.

"His appeal is tied to his place within the system of power that dominates," Nikos starts. And then, because the wine has softened him, he summarizes: "Wealth."

There. Straightforward. Perhaps even enough that an Orlesian might understand. He'll still give a full speech. Not when there's a game to play.

Almost as if in answer, the man in blue takes a too-heavy step forward. Nikos leans forward in anticipation, but the woman turns nimbly aside, avoiding the impact, and Nikos sighs, irritated.

"It doesn't matter who he is. An Antivan. He's going to ruin the fucking game. Or she is. Hard to choose who to blame."

Looking exceptionally surprised, her eyebrows arching gracefully over the perfectly guileless blue of her widened eyes, "Surely you do not mean to say that those with value assigned to them by society largely have members of that society be willing to summarily overlook their value as a solitary individual in order to curry favor from the society as a whole? Pre-pos-ter-oh!" Alexandrie interrupts herself to grip the cloth at her companion's shoulder with excitement and shake him very slightly, "He has done it!"

And indeed, through a quite fabulous series of missteps that seem more complex than the dance itself, their hero has managed to actually kick his partner in the knee while turning her. Admirably, she doesn't yelp, and her glare is gone by the time she completes the turn. Alexandrie releases Nikos's sleeve to clap her hands with quiet delight, holding her glass deftly with her thumb while she does so, and takes a rather long and satisfied drink from its contents.

I mean to say that society's values are horseshit, would be how Nikos would start his response--angry, each syllable stiff with irritation, that the current system of power is reinforced by participation in its structure, no matter how funny she thinks she's being.

Then he wants to tell her to let the fuck go of his sleeve.

Then their wish is fulfilled, and better yet, they get to drink, and as Nikos raises his glass, he finds that he is already smiling, again, darkly pleased at the scene that has unfolded before them.

The start of his lecture is still stuck in his throat. Takes a large amount of wine to wash it away. He scans the room, looking for their next target. The room is full of idiots, rich peacocks strutting and preening. They are spoiled for choice.

"There," he says, and gestures with his glass. "That woman, in that pink tent of a gown. She takes a glass, takes a sip--then forgets that she has it, sets it aside. The next time a tray of wine passes her, she takes a fresh glass. And it repeats. If she does it four times..."

He raises his glass.

"We drink. To the fucking excesses of the rich."

It's like drinking with a person-shaped storm cloud. How cross he seems with her airy flippancy, with the greater dance of the event itself, with the entire structure of—

Alexandrie wonders suddenly whether or not he knows Kitty. Certainly they must have gravitated together by now, the disaffected often do. Although it is much rarer to have someone who profits from the established order of things waving the torch.

A curious man, to be certain, but he does have a wonderful eye for the ridiculousness that often seems to come part and parcel with wealth. The woman he indicates is readily found—the gown is a tent on her, although the color really sets off her skin and hair quite nicely—and Alexandrie nods her successful acquiring of their target.

"She has—" she looks about the woman to find where she is placing the near-full glasses. Ah, there. "—one abandoned beside her and one in her hand at the moment. Are you proposing four glasses acquired, or four discarded glasses in total?"

Edited 2018-10-26 04:04 (UTC)

"Let's see." Words of curiosity, but Nikos drawls them, invokes them with flat sarcastically. "Which of those will get me drunker faster. Four glasses discarded," in case she needs help to get to that answer. The flighty often do. "Which means we look for two more discarded, and then we are allowed to drink."

Preferably enough to drain his glass, so he can discard it, and get a new one. Or at least a refill. Nikos points, heedless of how rude it might appear. Purposefully heedless. Like he gives a shit what any of them think.

"A tray approaches."

A slender serving-girl, in the understated finery that is the uniform of the event. She carries a tray of glasses--a white, faintly gold in the flush of candlelight. Her path will put her in line with the woman, will entice her with a new glass.

Amused by the extremity of heedlessness, Alexandrie raises her glass without thinking about it and catches her own action just in time to avoid being a cheater. She turns the movement into a thoughtful one instead, continuing her raise of the glass until she can rest her cheek briefly on the backs of the fingers holding it, watching the movement of the tray and waiting to see if the woman will forgetfully set aside her glass before it reaches her.

"I have always found it interesting," she comments, "how purposefully flouting convention in a way that grants knowledge that one is well aware there is such convention—ah, nous avons la chance!" The woman's conversational partner has gotten her excited enough about something to require her to put her glass down to make gesture with both hands, although whether she resumes the same glass or takes another from the impending tray has yet to be seen, "—can sometime reinforce it near as much as simply playing along."

This must be what people feel while watching a sporting match. That anticipation of a win, a point--a chance to drink. On tenterhooks as the action carries on before you.

The anticipation is undercut by Nikos trying to work out what the fuck is being said to him. He's distracted from his vigil as he looks over at Alexandrie.

"Purposefully flouting convention, one is aware of the convention, which... reinforces the convention," he says, still drawled. "What?"

She frowns briefly, prettily, and looks at her glass. What was this, her fourth? fifth? And he was certainly swimming about in his cups. Why on earth was she attempting to hold conversation rather than simply continuing to play their diverting little game.

"You are rude," she says simply, all the same, "in a way that grants them power."

Shit, though. The tray has passed by the time she looks back over, and the woman has moved to stand in front of the place she's been putting them so it can't be checked that way. Alexandrie tsks, although her tone remains light and cheerful. "Ah, non. Bouge, vache! Did you see? Did she take one?"

How much does Nikos want to fight right now? A whole fucking lot. Because her roundabout speech was her telling him about himself, what he was doing wrong, diagnosing his approach to the world, to the circles of nobility that Nikos would like to see decimated--like she knew what she was talking about, like she has any fucking clue. He could tear her apart, he wants to tear her apart, and the fact that this is his seventh glass of wine does not defang that impulse in any way.

Seven glasses of wine does make his attention soft. So as Nikos goes to round on her, she makes noises in Orlesian, and he looks around to see where she's pointing.

Shit.

"She took one," he decides, after a moment of peering steadily over in that direction. She took one because he wants to take a drink--and drink he does, greedily, a good quarter of the glass gone.

"One more. And we win." We is too inclusive for how he's feeling right now. Or, well, how part of him is feeling, the angry revolutionary part that wants to set the room on fire; the childish part, that wants to kick her in the shins, no matter how many layers of skirt and gown he'll have to kick through. "And. They think they have power. Because the world supports that mass delusion. That--thought. But it is all," deliberate now, "horseshit."

The music, the dancing, the wealth soaked into every corner of the room and its inhabitants, the wine, the casual cruelty of their little game, the well-tended coals of her companion's anger; it blossoms to life in her like flame on a rag soaked in oil. That destructive desire that had so often sent her looking for the person in the room most likely to call her an empty-headed Orlesian whore to see if she could induce them, still snarling even, to fuck her.

Could he, if she continued to push and prod, say something she hadn't heard before? Had he something in his arsenal that could actually hurt her? Or would he, like so many others, be unable to find purchase on the Seraultine glass her heart still turns to when the world around her is like this.

Alexandrie abruptly tips her head back and drains her glass entire. "She shall do it, you know well she will," she says by way of explanation for her rulebreaking. Weighs her now empty glass in her hand as if considering smashing it rather than simply setting it aside. "Fuck her." It is succinct and saccharine, even as her gaze glints with new interest. "Finish your glass and dance a full set with me. If, whilst so brusquely engaging me on why the world we were born to is horseshit, you can keep me from taking the lead during more than half of the pieces, I will owe you a favor. If you cannot, you shall owe me one. If one of us storms off before the set is complete, they forfeit."

Edited 2018-11-03 03:08 (UTC)

She's quick, all at once, abrupt and decisive. And not wrong. The predictability was what led him to choose his target in the first place. He wanted to lose, because losing meant drinking.

"If you wanted to dance, you might find a partner without building a fucking game around it." Never mind the little leap in his chest at the suggestion, a childish kind of anticipation. Ignoring it for the present moment, Nikos drains his glass easily, and sets it aside on a nearby plinth. The taste of wine makes thick his tongue. He holds his hand out to her anyways. "The world we were born to is horseshit, because the world is built upon the assumption that there are those lesser and greater, categories that are mere chance. Accidents of birth."

The song playing was just recently started, a good enough time to join in as any. Nikos tips his head, mock quizzical, letting that smoldering anger cool into sarcasm. "Do you know this one?"

Because, against all odds: he does. Often underestimated as a dancer, he'll take the lead to start with. As per the rules of the bet, he'll hold it.

"I might have found a partner without building a fucking game around it, true enough. And if you simply wanted to drink, you might have done the same. The neither of us did, because games are diverting.

"As to this dance it so happens that as an accident of birth," she replies wryly, "I do."

Even well past tipsy, Alexandrie is a excellent partner and follows Nikos with the ease and grace of a thousand evenings spent in just such a way. The body remembers even if the mind has a veil of drink over it. She won't try to take over their steps just yet but she's certainly coiled like a serpent, ready for him to be focused enough on words that she might, subtly, begin to backlead him.

"Tell me, are some not born cleverer than others? Some stronger? Some better at figures? Those too are an accident of birth, no? Do you say that because it is mere chance it should have no bearing on who is a smith, who a scholar?"

Nikos snorts. Like hasn't been drinking since before they walked in the doors, is what that snort means. He manages to hold the lead as they start. The music is a decent volume--enough that it can be heard over the ambient social din of the room, not loud enough to be distracting, or to prohibit conversation.

Which is good. Because Nikos has a lot to say.

"Innate skill is an accident of birth. It is also a product of upbringing. A man born a slave will be a slave, no matter if he carries buried in him the seed of skill. If that skill is never encouraged or recognized, what becomes of him? Nothing. He dies a slave. And," if she was thinking of rebutting, too bad; there's more-- "And at least in a trade, a son of a smith might work alongside someone who studied, to be a smith. Someone who learned. And yes, there might be an edge of innate skill, but even a mediocre smith might open a shop. How would you advise a poor man go about gaining access to your social circles? When he trips over his feet at a ball, will you think kindly of him? Will he be allowed to enter the ball at all? If he can buy his way in: perhaps. If he is rich enough, titled enough, if he gets a parcel of land in the right region of the country--"

He's gripping her hand quite hard now, as passion picks up. Gracefulness compromised by anger.

This is precisely what Alexandrie was waiting for: hands that clutch rather than prompt her, questions that fall one after the other in both crescendo and accelerando without waiting for answers. It is often easier when ones adversary is as fine a dancer as Nikos is. If she moves, she expects he is likely to compensate for it without thinking, and will perhaps continue to do so as long as he is kept distracted. So she steps herself into a turn before his arm asks it of her, and replies:

"I might advise a poor man with useful skill to find a patron or patroness to encourage its growth and take charge of his entrance into society. Perhaps you shall scoff at such, but how is such a suggestion different than telling any youth to seek out a master to apprentice to? Unless you mean to say that all, regardless of talent, deserve such education simply by virtue of their existence? How many apprentices do you mean a master to have? How many ways can the attention of one instructor be pulled before the quality of their instruction is throttled to nothing?"

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