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It was a nature scene, as far as Hornet could tell.
She crossed her arms and regarded it with weary scrutiny, but the stain glass window refused to reveal the intentions of its creator in any clearer way than the largely shapeless blobs of off-color green, rising up through dark, earthy reds and yellows to touch a faded blue near the top. All streaked and unevenly darkened by the run of the City’s rain down the glass, following the metal veins laid through it like lines down a face, all too ambiguous to pin down.
Perhaps it was a tree? It reminded her of Greenpath, if Greenpath was a miserable sickly emerald. Mostly, the thing looked like a homebody’s idea of… A spindly hill? A sky behind it? Maybe the smear of blue near the top represented the Blue Lake overhead? Whatever it was, it was unappealing, but perhaps Ghost would like it.
“And this one?” Hornet resigned herself to ask, casting the question back over her shoulder to the bug behind her who, from the incessant grumbling and the muffled, regular splatter of water falling to mildewed rug, hadn’t yet gotten frustrated enough to remove himself from her presence.
“It’s a central piece in a hall of artwork, pick something less valuable to scavenge.” Lemm replied, still wringing the rain out of his beard, and Hornet closed her eyes to find the patience to respond.
“I’d thought the last one was the ‘central piece’,” Hornet gritted out. “And that was not what I meant. What does this mean?” She clarified, gesturing shortly to the window.
“The last one was a massive trifold meant to be seen by the whole congregation from the front of the hall to the back, of course it’s central to the layout of this structure. If you’d tried to take it out like the petty thief you’re so determined to be, you’d have just shattered the whole thing to pieces, and the world would be down an irreplaceable piece of art.” Lemm said, nearly word-for-word as he had when she’d asked after the damned thing the first time, and completely ignoring what she asked of him now.
“Again, this was not a temple.” Hornet reminded him stiffly. “This was only some long-dead noble’s personal hall. No matter the inflated importance you’re so determined to place on it.”
“I’m sure you’d like me to think that, wouldn’t you?” Lemm scoffed. “Move over, let me look at it.”
Hornet clenched her fist beneath her shawl and stepped to the side to let him peer up at what she’d found, glaring through the stained glass to keep from glaring instead at the Relic Seeker’s miserable, impudent, good-for-nothing–
“It’s a narrative,” Lemm said, frowning up at the sickly-green thing with interest. “I’d wager it’s for one of the Great Knights, maybe a retelling of their ascension to knighthood. Look, there’s an abstraction of the symbol, on the breastplate-“
“Ah. Isma.” Hornet hummed and turned away.
“What-“ Lemm blustered after her as she paced down the hall, evaluating the art glass as she went. “Isma? Who’s Isma? Was that this Great Knight’s name?”
“Ask the painting.” Hornet said dryly, stopping before the next window that wasn’t immediately recognizable as any figure in specific. “Better, figure it out yourself, Relic Seeker. You say the Kingdom’s history is written in its antiques, who am I to take the mystery from you?”
“You stuck-up, vainglorious piece of-“
“Quiet, Relic Seeker, before I find less reason to tolerate you than you stake your life on.” Hornet said sharply. “If you won’t go, then make yourself useful. What does this one depict?”
“You- You-!” Lemm sputtered. “I am here to make sure you don’t take a sword to any priceless artworks of an ancient kingdom, not to be your personal docent, you brainless miscreant.”
“I have a clearer right to the City and everything in it than you have to anything in your cache of ill-gotten goods, plunderer.” Hornet snarled, consciously keeping her hands at her side and away from the handle of her needle. One day, the habit to do so would take, she hoped.
“Plunderer?” Lemm shouted after her from the other end of the hall, having made no move to follow her when she’d walked off. “I’m a historian and you know the difference, princess.”
“I told you not to call me that, thick-headed-“
“Well, if you’re going to call in your right to the ruins, I’m going to call things as I see them.” Lemm sniffed.
“Look at this gods-damned window and tell me if it’s secular enough to go on a greenhouse, or so help me-“ Hornet hissed.
“You’ll what, kill me?” Lemm said impatiently, finally tearing himself away from Isma’s stained glass to follow her to the next. “I’ve half a mind to call you on it, just to watch from beyond the grave as you try to explain that one to your grubby little sibling.”
Hornet took a deep, slow breath of the musty air and reminded herself, for the umpteenth time, that killing the Relic Seeker would be actively working against her own best interests. Moreover, she reluctantly tacked on when the urge to throw him through the colorful window glass remained alarmingly strong, he was a line of defense against any actual plunderers more interested in destruction and profit than picking apart the history of her kingdom. Not a good line of defense, but perhaps whatever looters that might get past her guard would be vulnerable to impassioned nagging.
He had a use. He was annoying, not a threat. And in all truth, being rid of him wasn’t worth Ghost’s grief, wasted upon the old squatter as it was.
Not when this was for them to begin with.
“That’s what I’d thought.” Lemm said smugly when Hornet only responded with fuming silence, and she considered killing him all over again.
“Fine.” She spat spitefully. “I will tell you of the Great Knights-“
“Finally, the close-mouthed living fossil concedes to reason. Let me get my notebook-“
“After you aid me in finding a proper stained glass for my sibling’s greenhouse.” Hornet finished.
“I’ve already told you why you can’t just take one of these windows home with you, they’re in situ! You’d be removing a whole, unique piece of the past and culture of an entire extinct people! Every single one is a work of art lasting the span of centuries, in place and never disturbed until the likes of you comes along to lift it for-” Lemm growled. “For a personal project!”
“Not to mention the mechanics of it; we’re six stories in the air, in an eternal rainstorm, with no tools to remove it with. It’d just as likely fall to the street and shatter into a million pieces as come down nicely, and even if it did, the exposure to the humidity would rot every tapestry and painting on this floor in a matter of years!” He ranted at her. “You can’t just take it.”
“Noted.” Hornet said with disinterest, eyeing the next piece to catch her attention, watching how the dim city light filtered in past the rain, dulling and brightening the dyed colors intriguingly.
The hall’s stained glasses were all fairly interesting, each a complex of hues and saturated, varying colors and each having stood the test of time far better than their moldering surroundings, the faded mulberry fabric of the walls and greyed, simple plainness of the tower’s stone and metal, yet this one was brighter than the rest, and smaller. Flanked on both sides by grander windows, it wasn’t an overt thing, but there was something about it that caught her eye, regardless.
Perhaps that there was nothing resembling an insignia anywhere on it, and no pale-silver colored glass to indicate the same.
“This one is appealing. What do you make of it?” She gestured to this window’s design, something that seemed far more impressionistic than she was entirely comfortable guessing at the subject matter of.
Lemm shoved his hands into the pockets of his bedraggled raincoat. “I’ve no idea why I should tell you.”
Hornet turned to give him a pointed look. “I have forgotten more about this kingdom than you will ever know of it, and if I don’t need to spend all week picking out a stained glass, I may be more inclined to talk about what I remember. That is reason enough. But perhaps it will interest you to know which event, exactly, I suspect that depiction of Isma to be regaling. The means by which a Great Knight is knighted are not so well-preserved as the glass.” She dangled.
Lemm wavered and, like the wet paper bag he was, folded.
“Hmph. And how would I know you weren’t just pulling my leg with this? You could tell me just about anything, and I’d have to take your word for it.” Lemm said, sounding every bit like he was putting up a last protest just for the sake of it. “And besides, I’m sure you’ve forgotten most of the important bits.” He added bitterly.
“You would have my word as Protector of this kingdom.” Hornet said somberly. “My memory is more reliable than interpretive art.”
“Yes, well.” Lemm rolled his eyes. “Most primary sources don’t despise their interviewers, so I’ll take that with a grain of salt.”
Hornet bared her fangs before she could think better of it. “If you’ll only stay to antagonize me, I would advise you to try your luck with the aspids, first; at least they will occasionally miss what they try to slay.”
“We’ve been over this, princess,” Lemm said, waving an unimpressed hand at her. “I have on good authority that you’re supposed to be on your best behavior, or your family won’t be pleased. Don’t be putting them to shame, now. The little one might cry.”
Hornet glared coldly at him, debating again how worthwhile it was not to at least menace him with her blade and how many of his wagging claws could be cut off before he started to wail, and perhaps some of that showed clearer in her expression than she meant it to, because Lemm quickly held up his hands in surrender.
“Aye, alright, that was low of me.” He said, shrugging stiffly. “If I can’t stop you, there’s no one who can say I didn’t give it my all. Might as well try and aim you towards something that’s not… As priceless. In exchange for information, of course.”
“Of course.” Hornet said coolly.
They stood in increasingly uncomfortable silence then, with the gentle fall of the rain over the glass outside and the stifling quiet of the tower around them almost tangible in the humid air. Hornet glowered resolutely at the stained glass she’d stopped on and refused to be the first to speak; if the historian was so intent upon provoking her, then she would give him nothing to work with. She did not kill people for making nuisances of themselves, even if they would make jabs at her family while they did so.
And if she repeated that to herself often enough, it would stick eventually.
The artwork, at least, was promising. Though she scrutinized it for anything resembling a kingsbrand or symbol of Hallownest or its gods, it seemed only made up of airily twisting curves, lead metalwork twined and coiling about itself and running in offshoots that turned invariably up towards the top of the window. It was done in richer emeralds than the one before it, shaded with cutouts of bottle-glass green and deep blue instead of any warmer colors. Up near the top there were circles of golden yellow, not laid out in any particular pattern and framed by others of the same size in silvery white.
“… I can’t quite say about this one.” Lemm at last offered gruffly. “I’ve not really seen anything like it yet, here. The form’s all wrong, not as formulaic as Hallownest styles tends towards. Looser. Hardly any repeating patterns. Yellow as the key color, and I haven’t seen much of that before.”
“Hm.” Hornet said, looking more closely.
It did look strange, in light of Lemm’s take on it. Curls along the lines of green, but not as tight as the coiling she often saw in surviving metalcraft from Hallownest’s artists. Nothing that might’ve been taken as the emblematic six-winged carapace, nothing that looked like a wing at all.
No, if it reminded her of anything, it was-
“Dandelions.” Hornet realized. “It is dandelions. There, the bloom on a long stem, and the white once it goes to seed.” She explained, reaching up to run her claws across the lead lines as she did.
“Dandelions?” Lemm scoffed. “Why would a Hallownest artist spend the weeks it’d take to make something of this complexity on dandelions? It’s… It’s more likely to be…” He trailed off, squinting at the window.
“Huh. Would you look at that.” He said. “Right smack in the middle of a hall of works of Great Knights and kings and gods, and it’s just… Dandelions. Not even as detail work for a bigger picture, it’s its own entire full-size piece. Was there any symbolism associated with those? Maybe a connection to nobility?” Lemm wondered aloud as much as he asked, already lost in thought, mumbling into his beard.
“None that I know of.” Hornet said, stepping back to study the size of the window.
A little shorter than her eyelevel, and with most of its size in its height. She’d be able to carry it under her arm if she was careful. It would fit perfectly with the panels of a greenhouse’s walls, and she could cut the glass she’d already prepared down to size to fit around it. It could go… On the eastern side.
Ghost might like it there, to see the dawn light filter through the gold of the flowerheads. They might even find it funny, if she said that it reminded her of them. The most stubborn, unkillable flowers she’d ever known, that bloomed the brightest when all else lay dying.
Or rather, in spite of it.
“It could’ve been someone’s passion project,” Lemm mused to himself. “Probably not a commission, though there’s no way to really know. Wonder why it’d be here, except that it either had some significance to match the works around it or… It meant enough to someone for them to put it up here anyway.”
Hornet laid her hand where the glass met the window frame, scratching her thumb over the beading in consideration. There was a narrow strip of aged caulk at its edges, sanded neatly down and nearly unseeable beneath the elytron-shiny framing that the soft, rotten fabric covering the walls ended at. Still solid under its iron framework, and weathered into place by years and the swell of water into the seam.
Doable.
Hornet dug her claws as far beneath the window moulding as she could, the caulk just soft enough to force the points deep enough to gain a good handhold, and yanked.
A whole section of the window beading came loose under her hands with an almighty, splintering crack, and Lemm yelped in surprise as Hornet tossed it aside and reached for the next.
“What the hell are you doing?” He swore at her as soon as he’d recovered.
Hornet spared an annoyed glance over her shoulder at him, and tore free another piece of framing. “What does it look like.”
“You’re- that’s- that is centuries old! You can’t take this one, I’ve no idea why it’s here! It could be work from an entirely separate period as the rest, all we know is that it doesn’t match – stylistically or subject-wise – with anything I’ve seen so far! This could be anything, and you’re tearing it out of the wall!” Lemm said, nearly apoplectic.
“And you will live without knowing. You’ve already agreed to this, and you needn’t help. Only, stay out of my way.” Hornet advised. “I’m unsure of the stability of the moulding. In fact,” she considered, and knocked lightly at the barrier where she’d already torn away the paneling and fabric while he’d rambled, the wall beneath bare and crept over with a layer of dark, glistening mold.
The sound came back light, almost hollow. Just a layer of thin shellwood, and behind it the sealant and the mortared outer shell, then. No supporting beams or iron. Good.
Hornet grabbed her needle and eyed the spot she’d cleared thoughtfully. And then, ignoring Lemm’s confused questions and then alarmed protests and then frantic pleading, raised her arm like she was preparing to throw a spear and, with a huff of effort, drove the point of her blade into the thinnest part of the wall with all her might, just a foot or so to the side of the window.
It sank in an inch or two with a deafening slam, and then stopped. The wall shuddered, but nothing broke. She yanked her needle free, considered, bounced it in her hand while Lemm begged her to reconsider, and drove it into the weak point again.
With a stridently dusty, grating crack, it punched through, and this time when she pulled her needle back it came with the scent of the rain and a cool draft, and Lemm made an entirely melodramatic noise of infinite despair.
Hornet disregarded his histrionics and widened the hole she’d made, clawing at the plaster and harder outer shell until she’d cleared away the wall up to the side of the window.
“There. A handhold, so that it might not fall to the street and shatter to a million pieces.” Hornet informed him, replacing her needle at her back. “I may have use for your help after all; if you’d keep a hold of the edge, I’ll break it from the wall.”
“No!” Lemm said, his voice breaking. “How the- No.”
“No matter.” Hornet said to him, and dug her claws into the next section of paneling around the window.
As expected, it took less than a minute of wincing at the snap of aged shellwood for him to break. “Wait, wait, I’ll help. You’ll bring down the whole building if someone’s not keeping an eye on you, you lunatic.” Lemm blustered.
“Exactly. If you think about it, you are preserving the sanctity of all the artwork in this tower. Nay, the whole City; if I brought the building down, there may be an old signpost you haven’t fully deciphered irreparably damaged somewhere.” Hornet deadpanned. “I think I saw one downstairs, even, nailed to the wall over the bathrooms – what ancient wisdom could it hold?”
“Hysterical, princess,” Lemm said nastily. “Just don’t drop the damned thing.”
“I am not so careless, Relic Seeker.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” Lemm sneered, but he wedged his arm out through the hole she’d made in the wall and braced the glass from behind.
She worked in silence, save the splintering of the window beading as she carefully worked her claws beneath it all around the edges, for long enough that Hornet nearly suspected Lemm would keep to moody silence just out of spite, for being made to take part in the destruction of an old tower. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be.
“… Why’re you going to all this trouble to set the grimy little grub up with a greenhouse, anyway?” Lemm grumbled, lowering his elbow so the rainwater wouldn’t drip up his arm.
“You assume much, to think it any of your business.” Hornet warned him, working her claws beneath a particularly stubborn piece of paneling affixed flush to the edge of the glass.
“Yeah, well, I don’t see you starting any smalltalk.”
“And I wish you wouldn’t.” Hornet replied.
“I’ve been told it lightens the mood.” Lemm said, as though reciting his least favorite piece of bingo night trivia. “And now that the spectacle’s over, sitting here getting half-rained on isn’t especially riveting.”
“So you go for my profound personal motivations? Is smalltalk not supposed to be small? What of the weather?” Hornet asked, incredulous.
“I don’t get visitors much, and I don’t like ‘em when they come. I’ll just speak my mind, thank you much.” Lemm said gruffly. “Not like I’m afraid of driving you off.”
“Perhaps you’d be better served to be. If you must talk, choose something else to pick at.” Hornet said.
“No, no, this is interesting, now that I think about it; why are you poking around here for a piece of home décor? Couldn’t you have just, I don’t know, sewed them a doily or something? That’s what you do, right, spider?” Lemm waved his free hand carelessly to say.
“At risk of giving you confidence unearned in your own misattributed assumptions, you crochet a doily, you utter fluke-sucking idiot.” Hornet said venomously, tearing out another piece of moulding. “My business is my own, so stay out of it before I think of a way to make your death look like an accident.”
“You’ve a knack for taking things personally, hm?” Lemm commented. “On second thought, I don’t reckon you even need to tell me why the tiny collector’s got you on their bad side; you probably just got a little too reactive with that sword of yours, and somebody paid the-“
“Shut up!” Hornet snarled, throwing down the moisture-swollen shellwood in her hand. It hit the padded floor with a muffled thud, unsatisfying and quieter than the pounding of her heart in her hearing. “How many times-“
She made a frustrated noise, and turned to sink her claws with ferocity into the next piece of paneling, one of the last surrounding the stained glass. “How many ways must I tell you, I do not want to talk about it. I will tell you once more; I do not. Want. To talk about it.” Hornet enunciated every word with bitter clarity and as much dripping hatred as she could.
Lemm looked taken aback, as far as she could tell from what she saw of him out of the corner of her eye, while she ignored him in favor of beginning to work her clawtips between the metal framing soldered to the glass and the fastening affixing it to the wall, seeking to break the seal between it and the outer shell of the building. It took several minutes to find a weak point to work her claws into, and several more for her picking and methodical disassembly of the last layer of mortaring to yield results, in the form of a thin trickle of water running over the scratched, dusty chitin of her hands from between the stained glass’ edge and the end of the wall against it.
For that time, the tension gathered in the heavy pause in the conversation and in her shoulders, coiling tight in her belly and inflexible down her back as she panted and wrenched at the sealant, careful of the force she made on the glass. All the while, the expectation for Lemm to bark out what terrible reason he must’ve guessed at, however wrong, grew until she could hardly stand it.
Gods, perhaps he’d just start laughing, if he truly valued his own life so little.
How the thought sank sickening into her stomach, both for the mockery she envisioned and how easy it was still to think to end him for it. He was not a mindless husk screaming for her blood, and neither was he a warrior to desecrate what was not his. Few were, any longer.
How easily the world had changed. How hard it was to meet it.
She had just to work the glass free of the wall, and she never need speak to him again. This entire miserable situation was her own fault, truly, for being so foolish as to make herself known in coming here.
Lemm grumbled something under his breath, and irritation caused Hornet to bristle. She tightened her grip on the hard, creaking outer wall she’d dug through to until it snapped sharply beneath her hand, spattering her with rainwater from outside. “Speak up, simple bug.” She said cuttingly.
“I said I was sorry, you-“ Lemm unsubtly cut himself off and repositioned his arm behind the window. The whole thing shifted slightly as he did, creaking in place; it would come free soon, with just a little more work.
“S’not right of me to pry, if you’re to be prickly about it. Keep your secrets.” He said disdainfully. “You’ve given me enough to work with already anyway, if you’re right about the name for that Great Knight. I think I’ve seen it before, in a few journals I’d taken as unrelated, and if I can draw those descriptions back to the details of their achievements-“ He drew himself up short with a vaguely embarrassed huff.
“Well, I won’t talk your ear off about it. Let’s just get this damned window out of the wall and back to our lives. We’ll pretend this never happened.” Lemm said gruffly.
Hornet stopped working, frowning across at him in bemusement. “… You don’t want any information on her? If this is because you think my memory untrustworthy, I swear to-“
“How are you the most difficult person to reason with? Folk have the nerve to call me unbearable, when you exist! Me!” Lemm exclaimed. “I’m trying to offer you the olive branch here, goddamnit! I didn’t know you were all, ugh, all emotional about this, and I put my foot in it when I didn’t surely mean to. Just accept the apology so we can skip to pretending the other doesn’t exist.”
Hornet stared at him. “Is this because you are frightened of me? You had the right of it before, I will not harm you. I am only… Unused to doing things this way. The long way.”
“The long way?” Lemm asked, dismayed. “What’s the short way, just killing me? Dumping my body out the window?”
Hornet dropped her eyes from his perplexed grimace to scratch at the mortaring again, in what she’d never stoop to call sheepishness.
“What, really?” Lemm said.
If Hornet hunched her shoulders some to hide her face in the neckguard of her shawl at the dawning alarm in his voice, there were no credible eyewitnesses to prove it.
“Good gods.” Lemm said faintly. “You’re a real piece of work.”
Hornet flinched before she could master the reflex to, and then grit her fangs in frustration, mostly for herself. “You veer dangerously close to insulting, for one who claims to be making an apology.”
“Oh, terribly sorry, I’m just coming to terms with my imminent demise.” Lemm snapped.
“I’ve already told you I wouldn’t harm you. You’ve been saying as much from the beginning.” Hornet said, exasperated. “Did you think I was, what, exaggerating for effect when I told you I’ve survived this kingdom from the beginning of its fall? It was a ruin for centuries. A dangerous ruin. Nothing survives what Hallownest became for long, unless it is more dangerous than the Kingdom itself.”
“And what’d that make me? I’ve been around from before the husks quieted down, and I’ve never killed anyone.” Lemm shot back.
“It makes you ignorant. And, had things not changed, it made you temporary.” Hornet snapped without turning to meet his stare.
Then she took in a deep breath, and held it, and when she let it out, there was precious little anger in her to hold to. “… It makes you lucky.” She said quietly.
She worked in silence for a time then, for which Lemm, thankfully, seemed more interested in mulling that over than in pestering her for details. It wasn’t long before she was bidding him to shuffle out of her way so she could loosen the last section of the window’s border, and felt the entire thing shift under her claws as she did. Then Hornet backed away to take it in, studying the edges for any places she’d missed.
All looked well. “Push at it from the outside. Gently.” Hornet instructed dispassionately.
Lemm grunted a hesitant affirmative and, to his credit, pressed at the glass with the care of one whose profession often relies upon steady hands. The border of the window grated against its undone sealing, and then caught, and Hornet stepped closer to pick at the piece of mortaring it was snagged on until it scraped free, and she only just caught its weight as it fell forward into her with a rush of damp, clean air.
“Sorry there,” Lemm said for having dropped it on her, shaking out the arm he’d had bracing the window and flicking drops of rainwater to the carpeting.
“There is no harm done.” Hornet said with indifference, brushing the clinging pieces of wall and paneling from the lead-lined edges of the stained glass, the humid air from the newly opened window-shaped hole in the wall brushing cool against her hands.
Up close, it truly was an admirable thing. The dandelions, those stubborn little flowers, were finely made as little emblems of sunny yellow, their stems cleanly cut, and each streak of green at their bases carefully shaped into a dulled representation of the plant’s toothed leaves. A simple design, but a clean one, of good craftsmanship and cheerful, lovely coloring. Hornet rested its bottom edge carefully on the ground to lean the top back with a hand, and couldn’t help but run the backs of her free claws over the dappled inconsistency of the paler flowers, the wavers in the glass.
It must have been intentional, even this fine detail that surely none would’ve ever spared a glance to look close and see, to make the flowers gone to seed look downy. It was… Pretty.
Hornet quirked a small smile. Ghost would love it.
“Hey, ah, prince- Hornet.” Lemm began, subdued, and the expression fell from her face.
“I’ll be back within the week to tell you what I know of Isma. If it will make it easier, I may write the highlights and deliver them to you, though that will take more time.” Hornet said coolly.
“I’ve already said-“
“I made a deal, and you have kept your end of it. You will have your information.” She commanded without tearing her eyes from the stained glass, held carefully up as she hefted it to fit under her arm to carry back to the stag station.
“Shut your gob and listen, before I think better of staying here another instant.” Lemm said loudly. “That’ll be the real reason your sibling’s cross with you; you don’t know when to give it a rest.”
“Make your point.” Hornet advised emotionlessly.
“I’ll get there when I’m good and ready, hooligan. And if you’re going to be difficult about something I already said I didn’t need, then you can at least have the decency to let me be the one to invite you down, so I’ll be ready for you to tell the story right.” Lemm blustered. “If you show your face down here while I’m out and muck up all the displays in my shop with your surface-town grime, I won’t be responsible for my actions. Better to plan out a visit in advance, for everyone’s sake.”
Hornet only looked at him, scowling. “Are you-“
“I’m not finished.” Lemm said. “In fact, if you’re going around telling tall tales about forgotten knighthood rituals and namedropping ancients, you may as well be doing it to me. What my colleagues wouldn’t give for a source like you, even if three-quarters of everything out of your mouth proves to be bunk. At least I have the materials to confirm any of your claims or, more likely, disprove them.”
Hornet waited impatiently. “Are you done?”
“Not remotely! You’ve cost me a half-day of research, off on this fool’s errand! In fact, you’ve roped me into defamation of a historical monument-“
“I knew this noble. He was an idiot, and the layout of his tower reflects that; there are, as far as I know, seventeen reception halls, not including this one. One for each connecting building.” Hornet said flatly.
“You’ve involved me in crime!” Lemm insisted. “Crime that runs against the entire point of my profession! Yes, that’s right, you owe me! And I mean to collect!”
“What are you blathering-“
“Can you honestly tell me you have anything planned for, what, a week from today? Of course not, you probably have that time cordoned off just for destruction of public property. Unbelievable. I’ll see you then. Bring your own tea, preferably black.” Lemm informed her in high dudgeon.
Hornet stared at him, genuinely stunned. “What in the world are you saying to me.”
Lemm huffed, smartly tugging at the lapel of his coat and then plunging his hands into the pockets. “You, the most irritating living repository of information I’ve ever had the displeasure of becoming acquainted with, are going to come by my shop this time next week and we’re going to have a discussion about Isma the Great Knight. Over tea, because I’m not a barbarian.”
“Why.” Hornet asked pointblank.
“Well-“ Lemm flustered, scowling into his beard. “It just- You don’t seem- Bah, I’m no good at this.”
“I find it helpful to say what I mean in as few words as possible.” Hornet offered, only a little dryly.
Lemm glowered heatedly at her. “Fine. I’m- Just take the goddamn olive branch, would you? I’m inviting you to tell me about the history of this kingdom over tea. And complain about it, if it suits you. Or whatever else you have to complain about, I know I’ve got plenty. That’s a friendly gesture, isn’t it? Mutually resentful complaining.”
Hornet blinked at him, taken aback. “All that, because you want to be friends? You’re trying to invite me to gossip over tea? That’s what you’ve gotten out of this whole ordeal?”
The historian only responded with a begrudging grumble of confirmation. “You’re a strong-willed creature, spider. I respect that. And I’m not above hounding you for all you’ve got concerning these ruins, if you won’t let me apologize for overstepping. You had your chance to get out of it.” He groused.
There was something strange rising in her chest, and for a moment Hornet nearly thought it was horror. But then it bubbled up to her throat, and when it escaped, it became a surprised snicker she couldn’t fight back. And then, the incredulity of the situation impressing itself upon her, that snicker grew to a cackle, then to an entire, full-throated laugh, her head thrown back. Hornet howled with laughter, inexplicably tickled by a realization that made itself known to her as she watched Lemm’s expression darken dourly while she guffawed at him.
“You- you’re,” she tried, past irrepressible giggles.
“Yes, yes, pathetic, I’m aware. Forget it-“
“You’re worse at this than I am!” Hornet snorted, shaking with humor as she curled over the frame of her window, resting her elbows overtop it. “I can hardly believe it, but you’re truly worse at saying anything without making it unfathomably rude.”
“… So,”
“Yes, I’ll come. We’ll be at each other’s throats in minutes, but perhaps it’ll be interesting; I must be so careful with my siblings. They deserve better than my stumbling attempts at… All that’s expected of me now.” Hornet explained, grinning in spite of herself.
“What, and you want to work out your stifled natural boorishness on me?” Lemm complained. “Just because you can’t act like a decent person for an entire conversation?”
“You are the one asking me to visit. And I think myself wholly capable of decency, when speaking to one who is decent.” Hornet defended.
“I don’t need to listen to this-“ Lemm said, turning away and already walking down the hall, to where the door to the stairwell still stood open where she’d left it.
“You will in a week, it seems.” Hornet pointed out.
“Just take your ill-gotten gains and get out of here, miscreant.” The historian raised his voice to say, already halfway down the stairs.
“Gladly, plunderer.” Hornet replied, and caught the faintly echoed sound of the disgusted noise Lemm made from out of sight.
And so Hornet left, stained glass in tow, to return to her family with something to show for her absence, an olive branch in its own right. They needed her to be better than she’d been for a long time, kinder to fit the kindness they themselves showed, softer so as not to harm them when they offered her softness. What they needed, what she knew she’d become, for it was her trying, was not a warrior, but a sister. A friend.
It was something she’d always try to be.
But she also kept the day free the next week and scrounged up a decent black tea to take down to the City of Tears, and when she thought of any decent insult, Hornet made sure to remember it.