It isn't that the gesture is difficult to decode so much as the question itself is, for a moment, a surprise. A great many things about Riftwatch are new to her, but the most immediate thing is simply—
No one has ever had to ask. No one has ever not known the things that matter, because for as long as Tsenka can remember and one way or another she has been surrounded by people to whom those things also all matter. Templars locking doors behind her or trying to put swords through her gut—mages, debating rebellion or concession. (The Venatori, determined that there must be a way to bend her to use.) Even the handful of people somehow neither of those things had always been somehow adjacent to them, and certainly not somehow unaware of the capacity of the slight and sly woman in front of them.
She's always wanted her world to be bigger. It's just going to take some getting used to, now that it is. Her instinct is a little incredulity—who else is going to meet a mage in short pants and call him so close—but she swallows that, better prepared for it now by a man who'd not known the Gallows to be a Circle. Jone isn't being unkind, and she isn't stupid. The world is bigger than Tsenka was allowed to see, and freedom means the seeing.
“Aye,” she says, instead, “that's so. So was the Nevarran traitor up in Minrathous,” as it happens, “very saucy, him and Orlov. Star-crossed.” She is absolutely going to kick the shit out of both of them.
no subject
No one has ever had to ask. No one has ever not known the things that matter, because for as long as Tsenka can remember and one way or another she has been surrounded by people to whom those things also all matter. Templars locking doors behind her or trying to put swords through her gut—mages, debating rebellion or concession. (The Venatori, determined that there must be a way to bend her to use.) Even the handful of people somehow neither of those things had always been somehow adjacent to them, and certainly not somehow unaware of the capacity of the slight and sly woman in front of them.
She's always wanted her world to be bigger. It's just going to take some getting used to, now that it is. Her instinct is a little incredulity—who else is going to meet a mage in short pants and call him so close—but she swallows that, better prepared for it now by a man who'd not known the Gallows to be a Circle. Jone isn't being unkind, and she isn't stupid. The world is bigger than Tsenka was allowed to see, and freedom means the seeing.
“Aye,” she says, instead, “that's so. So was the Nevarran traitor up in Minrathous,” as it happens, “very saucy, him and Orlov. Star-crossed.” She is absolutely going to kick the shit out of both of them.