faderift | [ open: all arise! ]

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[ open: all arise! ]

WHO: you. yes, you there. you're invited
WHAT: Sonia is throwing a big party, because everyone needs an excuse to get good and drunk together right now. And dancing. There is always dancing.
WHEN: Justinian, shortly after the return of the jungle crew
WHERE: The suite at the top of the mage tower
NOTES: ♫ have some party jams ♫

The month in the jungle was a long one, made longer by the total lack of any alcohol to mitigate the experience. Utterly unthinkable. Sonia is addressing a public need by throwing a grand party -- a public service, even. Besides, it's what she does. When was the last time she got to plan a party, anyway? Granted, this is not a Denerim soiree for the young nobility, but the venue doesn't matter. Only the people and the drinks, and Sonia is assuredly rich in both. It is also a fantastic excuse not to think about any of the bad things that have happened since she was last in Kirkwall.

The decoration in the residential suite at the top of the mage tower would be best classified as improvisational -- one of those drapes tacked along the wall for ambience may be a bedsheet -- but it's the spirit of the thing that counts. One makes do with what one has. In one corner are a few tables laden with spirits, some provided by Sonia, others by generous partygoers. There are a few Barra vineyard vintages in the mix, highlights of her personal collection, a testament to the celebration she considers tonight to be. There's a small selection of food nearby, mostly for snacking to go with the drinks, though guests are free to bring whatever they like to share.

And there is, of course, music. Someone here has brought a fiddle or a flute or a bunch of pots masquerading as a drum set. Maybe you've brought your very own a capella choir. Whatever the accompaniment, there's something to dance to. Sonia makes sure there is dancing.

Tonight is not for licking wounds or swapping grisly stories of terror and survival. Tonight is for feeling alive, getting properly and delightfully drunk, and having a good god damn time.

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"Mm," By responds, and then, "The issue, of course, is that she's not a professional. You know. In pretending to fall to a fellow's charms." Then, with a bright smile - "I assume that your prior conquests have all been transactional, no?"

Which is a rather cruel charge, he supposes. Especially because it's likely true - near-impossible to imagine a woman choosing the little bastard. But the man's just getting under his skin.

"Can't say I've ever had the experience, no," Miles chirps, absolutely insufferably. He'd been offered the opportunity to see a licensed practical sexual therapist once during his school days on Beta Colony, but having been bitten once by uncouth rejection, he'd been far too shy (and Barrayaran) and had staunchly refused. In retrospect, it might have been a good idea. But Miles has had enough independent and successful romantic ventures at this point in his life -- and he's fielded enough accusations along the same lines -- that this fails to have the intended effect. No, he's clearly rattling Byerly, and it's the most fun Miles has had all fucking month.

He clucks his tongue, eyebrows raised as he takes a delicate sip from his glass. "Inserting the implication that your cousin is a prostitute just for a cheap jab at me? Ouch, Byerly."

That hadn't been the implication - he'd been charging Vorkosigan with that - but to fight against it would sound awkward, the protests awkward and weak. Damn this foul little creature. Damn his preening smugness. When the man he knew was dreaming up this little spirit, couldn't he have made him a bit less vile? Or, failing that, dulled his tongue a little?

As though you don't enjoy his vileness. As though you don't enjoy having a vicious little target. True enough back home, when he could always slip away from any insults by playing the clown. It's shocking how much harder it is to insult someone when you're playing at respectability.

"Forgive me," he replies. "It seems I underestimated how impressive your title is. How embarrassing."

Miles watches every rebuttal die in Byerly's mouth and grins viciously. No, he does not mean the hostess any dishonor, of course, but watching Byerly trip and fall over his own tongue is a pleasure worth savoring along with the wine.

"That's not what you're embarrassed about," he says in a singsong tone. "Not very used to having to care about losing face, are you?"

He feels like his back teeth are about to split. But:

"No," he answers, very sweetly. "I'm quite new to failing to live up to high expectations. Do you have advice for me?"

"Oh, I don't think you need any advice from me," Miles says with aggressive geniality. He even reaches out to pat Byerly on the hand. "You seem to be doing spectacularly well all on your own."

"For less than a year, though," he says, voice turning positively syrupy. "You have an entire lifetime of experience to draw on. I can just imagine it - " He doesn't really have to imagine it; he knows well the scandalous divide that came of that birth - "You come out of the womb, and the family immediately fractures. How powerful, to cause a rift merely by existing."

That seems almost...too pointed a jab. It gives Miles an awful chill, a nasty, slimy feeling in his stomach. He resents it fiercely. This is no newer territory than his sex life -- this is much, much older -- but there's a certainty behind Byerly's words that lends it a piercing sting. Miles's smile doesn't waver; the wattage only seems to increase, dangerously bright.

"Oh, you don't give me enough credit," Miles practically sings. "I was causing a scandal long before I was actually born. A master of drama in utero." He takes another (unwise) sip from his glass, tilting his head to one side, as if in concession to some point. "Every family has its own fault lines. I wonder where yours lie." He searches out the young hostess in the crowd again, glancing her way. Hmmmmmm.

"How could I possibly give you credit when you make comments like that?"

He doesn't like the way that Miles' eyes are wandering. Not at all.

"You can open any history book. Look to the tales of the Rutyers during the Occupation and before. Vicious." Then, with a click of his tongue - "I thought you were doing your research. Not very well, it seems."

"Oh, I'm taking the anthropologist's approach," Miles says brightly. "Filling out the family tree, as it were. You can only learn so much from the history books, after all."

And some scandals never quite make it to the page, either. Why so skittish, Byerly? Actually have something to hide?

"A family tree may even prove useful to your marriage," he adds thoughtfully, glancing away from Byerly again, into the crowd. "Unless you have gone out of your way to obscure your relation to your cousin from your wife -- which seems like it would be rather difficult to do, considering it doesn't seem to be much of a secret."

What is he on about? "What makes you believe I have obscured anything from my wife?" Byerly asks, and then takes a sip. Whatever conversational gambit this is, he doesn't trust it.

Miles blinks, wide-eyed innocent, and there is a trace of genuine surprise that Byerly actually does not seem to know what he's talking about. Huh.

"Oh, you know," he says, "just the part where when I asked her if you had any more family around here -- I was quite surprised when she introduced herself as your wife -- and she told me in quite certain terms she did not know of any relations to the Rutyer clan in Riftwatch."

He smiles and watches Byerly over the rim of his glass. The marriage itself strikes a funny chord with him -- Byerly is obviously hiding something. He must be. Just look at that sneaky sonofabitch.

Ah. He feels a little swell of gratitude towards Sidony. An attempt to protect him, he expects.

"Perhaps," he answers levelly, "my good wife recognized you for what you are, and chose to withhold information."

What, for someone who can smell bullshit from a mile away? Miles makes a show of tossing back what is left in his glass (worst idea he's had all night, but give him about two minutes) and asks, "And what would that be?"

"A nosy son-of-a-bitch," By answers with level calm, "who's never been denied anything." And he takes a deep drink himself.

Miles grits his teeth behind a fixed smile. Never been denied anything? Yes, he's Vor, yes, he's privileged, he'd be dead if not for his privilege, but -- no, no. He swallows the kneejerk reaction, knowing that this is just Byerly returning fire. Like hell he's going to ground now. Of all things, Miles cannot abide not having the last word.

"Or maybe," he says, watching Byerly drink, "your wife recognized you for what you are."

"Oh, please do tell me what that is," he says, a droll smile fixed in place.

If Miles had half the sense he claimed, he'd stop right there. Hell, if he had any sense at all he'd have passed up the glass Byerly poured for him, but as it is, he is slightly drunk, spiteful, and absolutely convinced he knows something that Byerly does not want him to know. This is an extremely dangerous situation for Miles. Specifically for him and no one else in this room.

"I'm not your wife," Miles says glibly. Coming out and just saying it would be incredibly gauche, and he's hardly sure of the details, but he is reasonably certain that this is the only reason that Byerly Vorrutyer -- Byerly Rutyer would be so skittish on the subject of family. So certain. So, so incredibly stupid. He pauses just a beat before saying, stupidly, "Very cousinly hug you gave the lady hostess back there."

Byerly goes very, very still. It will not do, he tells himself, to draw premature conclusions about what he means. No; it will not do.

Not at all.

"What," he says, "are you trying to imply, Vorkosigan."

For a moment, Miles hesitates. Not in spite of Byerly's reaction, but because of it. Obviously he's chosen to prod this particular point not just because Sidony and Byerly seem weirdly fishy about it, but because he thought (or hoped, maybe, you asshole) that it might be a twin sore point to that of Barrayaran Byerly. Miles doesn't know the truth about the rumors about Byerly Vorrutyer and his sister, although he suspects that like most things in the Vor rumor mill it has been greatly exaggerated. He wasn't exactly a man of high moral character, and it wasn't as though there weren't actual counts of certain types of wickedness in the Vorrutyer clan, but right now, in this moment, Miles sees the way Byerly goes still and doubts for just a second that this is a wise course of action or even remotely worth the trouble.

Then, because he's drunk and full of spite and will not admit just how much he enjoys having the upper hand on Byerly, he ignores the flashing TURN BACK HERE sign the small, still-sober corner of his mind is desperately holding up, and says some more stupid shit.

"Imply?" Miles feigns wide-eyed innocence, a hand to his chest. "Oh, I wouldn't dare to imply anything. Just speculating in the absence of any established fact or explanation. Why, one can imagine all sorts of reasons a wife might want to claim ignorance of her husband's close relations or personal pastimes, given your reputation."

Here, Miles means Byerly's readily-available past reputation, generally speaking, as a despicable lout, something a little more artfully vague than the direct implication of I think you're fucking your cousin. Maybe they trip Fereldan acid and Sidony is embarrassed to have a raver husband, for all he knows. (He is pretty sure something is Up with that marriage though. It doesn't track.) He has yet to have actually dug up the Thedosian counterpart to the Tragedy of Byerly (Vor)Rutyer, but it sure sounds like he has.

Edited 2020-07-29 23:54 (UTC)

There's a moment where the din of the party fades away altogether. Things go very quiet. It's rather nice, thinks Byerly distantly, to find a moment of peace, where he feels nothing at all. For in that moment, truly, he is utterly numb to the world, altogether apart from it, and it is nice.

And then it comes back, as inevitable as a wave. The water draws back, but then it smashes against the seashore.

By finds that he's grabbed the man by his shirtcollar. The glass he'd been holding is on the ground, broken, and Miles is flat against the wall. If By had just a bit more strength, the man would be hauled up to eye level; unfortunately, though Miles is slight, Byerly is rather weak of arm. And so By is hunched over nearly double so that he can shove his face into Miles' face, voice a snarl of rage.

Under normal circumstances, of course, he'd have registered this barb and smiled and walked away. But he, too, is very drunk.

"And what do you know of my reputation, Kosigan?" His hands twist the fabric further. "You're nothing but a sad little dream of a sad little man. You'll be gone as soon as you came, and no one will give a damn."

Well, that escalated a little more quickly than Miles was counting on. He's never really taken Byerly for a violent person -- the most violence he'd ever seen Byerly in usually entailed the town clown getting kicked out of an otherwise more or less respectable bar. Perhaps he has...miscalculated?

"It's Vorkosigan," Miles bites out despite himself, angry pride welling up like blood on a pricked finger. He only belatedly registers Byerly's weird emphasis on the prefix earlier. Does he know that can constitute a deadly insult back on Barrayar? Is he only guessing, the way Miles has been guessing at Byerly? But Miles actually knows another Byerly, so it's been a little more than just guessing. He's too drunk for this, and the room swims dizzily around his head for a moment before he closes his small hands over Byerly's fist, trying to pry his fingers away.

"Threatening to make me disappear?" There is a tiny, distant voice in his head (and it sounds a little like Ivan's) saying quit now, you're not even ahead. He barely registers it. The drunken smile that sprawls over his face looks uncomfortably vicious, the lips pulled too far back. Half of what Byerly's saying only vaguely makes sense. He's always assumed that Byerly's vitriol at him stems from the usual condescending ableist bullshit in combination with Byerly's vile personality, but something feels distinctly personal about this. Well, Miles concedes to himself in a fleeting moment of clarity, he had gone and made it pretty personal himself. "If this is a dream, then by all means, wake me the fuck up!"

"Oh, poor little creature," By sneers in response. "Hurl yourself off a tower; that'll solve your problems."

The optics of holding a tiny man against a wall, though, register to Byerly as being damnably poor as soon as his wave of fury starts to ebb. His breath comes quickly; he tries to slow it, tries to calm himself. He forces his hands to relax, extracts his hands from the cloth.

Do you laugh at me, then, dear Miles? In your head, are you always smirking at By the filthy, By the disgraced, Byerly the pervert? Do you share the rumor with those around you? Are you one of the ones who keeps it alive?

"Rifters disappear often," he says. "Our misfortune that it's taking you so long."

A slow whoosh of breath exits Miles's lungs as Byerly lets go of him, and he slides down the wall to the floor, a relatively short distance, mercifully. All things considered, actually -- considering just how livid Byerly had been -- Miles is probably lucky to be unscathed.
On the other hand, maybe he read Byerly right, and he didn't miscalculate at all, in which case he will have learned almost nothing from this exercise.

"I'll be sure to mention you by name in my suicide note," Miles mutters through his teeth, straightening his shirt with a tug at the hem. He gets to his feet, a little stiffly, but doesn't make a great show of dusting himself off, because for once, he isn't interested in the attention. Yes, Byerly looks the worst of the two of them when he's got Miles up against the wall, but then, Miles had accused him of dallying with his own cousin. That's not a great look either. Getting drunk was a mistake. He decides it's Byerly's fault.

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