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[we_bring_hell]

The Bar has not relented in her attempts to get Harrow to eat something with slightly more calories than air. After many false starts, she seems to have struck gold with potatoes, a vegetable Harrow has never had before.

Mashed was a success; soup went well, too. But chips--ahhh, chips. Hot, salty, taste like almost nothing at all. Harrow may never eat anything else again. After several false starts in the dipping sauce area she has made peace with a light sprinkling of vinegar. The only problem is they make her gloves and her papers greasy.

Therefore, find Harrowhark Nonagesimus at a table with her journal and a skeletal hand, drawing spirals and... God help us... eating chips with a fork. It could be worse. The hand could be feeding them to her.

Comments

[acrookedpath]

Two nights now. Two mornings. No sign of Lan Zhan.

Last nght Wei Wuxian stayed in the common room, drinking pot after pot of tea to stay awake as long as he could, but sleep took him at chǒu hour and spat him out again, muffling a scream on his arm, a few shichen later. The poor woman on the next couch over almost jumped a meter in the air from fright. He made his apologies, reassured her he was fine, and went upstairs to keep any more of his nightmares from bothering the rest of the inn.

This doesn't feel like bad luck anymore, or Lan Zhan growing so disgusted with him that he decided it would be better to spend his evening in Cold Pond Cave. The certainty gnaws a cold pit in his stomach: something is wrong.

"Harrow," he says as he approaches. He made an effort to tidy up after his largely sleepless night, but there is no disguising the bags under his eyes, dark as a bruise. "Hello. Have you seen Lan Zhan lately?"

[we_bring_hell]

"No." She surveys his appearance. "I take you have not seen him in some time?

[acrookedpath]

He shakes his head. "Not for nearly three days."

Without invitation, he slumps into the chair across from hers, forehead resting on his palm. "I went drinking with Ingress in London Above not long after we last spoke," he says. "I returned -- later than I should have, and he wasn't here. I am not sure if he came into the inn at all. And he did not turn up last night, either."

[we_bring_hell]

"Does he come most nights, then?" she says.

[acrookedpath]

"Every night since he found the inn." He shapes a brief, tired smile; it's gone by his next words. "And when he last left, he gave every indication he would return that evening. This is not like him."

[we_bring_hell]

"Does he not have obligations to his sect that might call him away?" she asks. "I suppose I know little enough about where he comes from."

[acrookedpath]

"Not right now."

The cold weight in his belly sinks further. Lan Zhan is meticulous; Lan Zhan is careful. Surely --

"He is in seclusion," he says, lower. "Imprisoned."

[we_bring_hell]

"Ah," she says. "I did not realize."

She doesn't ask why; why is obvious enough.

"What are the terms of his penance?"

It happens that she has sentenced people to seclusion before.

[acrookedpath]

"Three years in Cold Pond Cave. Which is as accurate a name as you think," he adds, wry. "He has three weeks remaining, and it sounded as if the strictest parts of his seclusion have relaxed slightly -- his brother can visit sometimes, to bring news and offer company. But otherwise he is left alone to meditate on his crimes."

[we_bring_hell]

She frowns. "If he has visitors, even rarely--is it possible his absence was discovered by accident? Or by an inspection?"

"Scrutiny often intensifies towards the end of such terms."

[acrookedpath]

"His brother visits at a set time." Unconsciously, Wei Wuxian's hand tightens in his hair. "He has always been careful to leave the cave late in the evening and return early in the morning. Always."

How often has Wei Wuxian said, too concerned to be truly lighthearted, that Lan Zhan should take care not to get caught? Every time Lan Zhan reassured him he would be fine, he believed it. In recent nights, the worry had hardly even crossed his mind: of course he would take care. Of course he would be safe.

He cannot have been caught.

[we_bring_hell]

"If I were his confessor, I would choose just such times to look in on him," she says quietly; apologetically.

"How would they punish him in such circumstances?"

[acrookedpath]

"I don't know."

He's staring fixedly at a small crumb on the tabletop, not quite seeing it.

"I know how they punished me when I broke their rules at lectures. But I do not know what they might do to him. He is the Second Jade of Lan; they could as easily offer leniency as they could make an example of him."

(He does not want to admit how much the former is a foolish hope.)

[herald_ingress]

Ingress breezes in through the door from Valdemar in a much better mood than the last time she arrived here. She sees Harrow and approaches her table.

"Hello, Harrow," she says. "Oh, yum, chips. I love chips."

[we_bring_hell]

"Is that what they're called?" she says. "The Bar's communications are wordless, if often pointed."

[herald_ingress]

“She wants to make sure her patrons are taken care of. I’m going to get some, too.”

Ingress is gone for just long enough to bring back her own order of chips along with a milkshake. She also brings chopsticks because they worked so well last time. She clicks them at Harrow playfully before scooping one into her mouth.

“How are you?”

[we_bring_hell]

She raises her eyebrows at the clicking chopsticks. The skeletal hand on the table stirs and snaps its fingers twice, Addams Family-style, in response.

"I am well enough. Reviewing my studies of Lyctoral matters and considering matters of communication."

[herald_ingress]

Ingress giggles at the hand. That’s adorable!

“What kind of communication matters?”

Sorry, Harrow, she’s a little extra cheerful today. She got a letter.

[we_bring_hell]

"I am endeavouring to communicate between my world and Milliways by having this construct--" She gestures at the hand-- "Mirror my writing when I choose it. It is very much a work in progress, and rather difficult to test."

[herald_ingress]

“That’s a great idea. You write here, and it shows up there?”

Better than waiting for an owl or a pigeon.

[we_bring_hell]

"In theory," she says. "Or rather, I write there, and this construct also writes the same thing here. I thought to rely on the Bar to deliver the finished missives and replace the paper."

"I do not wish to vanish entirely when I return to my own world, even if it is a final scribbled missive."

[herald_ingress]

She furrows her brow. “Are you bound? If I’ve asked you before, pardon me, but I’m not sure it’s come up.”

[we_bring_hell]

"No," she says soberly. "I have chosen to remain here as a--sojourn, from the fraught events now taking place in Canaan House, and to steal more time for my studies before facing what is to come."

"But I anticipate when I return that I will be--quite occupied, perhaps for the foreseeable future."

Especially if the foreseeable future is, 'until somebody kills her.'

[herald_ingress]

“That doesn’t sound good at all,” she says, and the brow furrow doesn’t go anywhere.

“But you have your cavalier to help you, yes? You have allies and supporters?”

[we_bring_hell]

"That remains to be seen," she says, as dispassionately as she can manage.

"My first task on returning, I think, must be to restore the trust of my cavalier and my allies among the Sixth."