[Text] / [Location: a cafe in Speares]

[personaldemon]

Does anyone know if transfer of credits can be accomplished from one person to another, here? So far all I have managed is using them at the stores or with the hatches, and as it happens this 'allowance' they give us isn't really adequate.

Where I was from, I offered my services in a consulting capacity, but if I cannot get payment for such here, then that isn't incredibly practical.

....on a similar note, if anybody wishes their tarot read, it appears I'm doing this for free until I figure out a way to return an investment on the deck I just hatched.

If so, I'm at the version of the Café Procope that they have apparently stolen from Paris and transplanted here. It is in the Speares district. I may be found at one of the upstairs balcony tables.

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[Location: Cafe in Speares]

[personaldemon]

Etrigan makes an obscene sigh of pleasure in his head. He can see the demon, running that too-long tongue over his lips as the demon tastes the girl's anguish and fury. Drinks it down like wine. Gluts himself with it.

Some days Jason wishes he was still capable of being nauseated by this sensation, by the vicarious, sick pleasure that radiates to him through their bond in such moments.

The best he can do is remain impassive, to pretend he feels nothing.

"Well-done," he says distantly. "Hold on to the feelings. Keep them in your head, in your heart." Keep feeding Etrigan.

He stares at the bowl. The surface of the bowl begins to ripple as if raindrops are hitting it, as if drums were making the surface vibrate. That much, the child can see, but the images belong only to him, courtesy of the bargain he makes with Etrigan in every waking moment.

A black sky. A field of wheeling, unfamiliar stars-- no industrialized pollution here to cancel them out, or dull their brilliance. The sullen red glow of fires over stone walls.

"Betrayal," he murmurs, but she knows that, it is nothing new. "The lion's roar spurs the twins to treachery..."

A woman, proud of features but looking tired, exhausted, drained by struggle.

The same woman, her throat slit. A fox gnaws on it in his vision.

"Her throat was slit," Jason says, his voice and eyes both distant.

[Location: Cafe in Speares]

[thelonewolf]

"The Lannisters..." The lion's roar spurs the twins to treachery. But Arya cannot remember seeing their banner amidst the battle, nor on the lion on their armor. But if they were there...

Even though Arya knows this, even if the Freys were supposed to be her brother's friends, that her uncle was supposed to be marrying one of Lord Frey's daughters, that her mother's body was in a river, cold and white and naked with blood on her throat, she still shudders.

Grief and anger wells up inside her, and unwanted tears that did not fall. She knows all this, but it makes her sad all over again.

"Who?" she insists, stubbornly.

[Location: Cafe in Speares]

[personaldemon]

"A fox, a weasel," Jason says automatically, although he knows this is but symbolism only. Allegory.

He closes his eyes, trying to work backwards from the red moment that the vision focuses on. The man, the blade, so many screams. He traces it back in time, like watching a video on rewind.

Another man says to the killer, before everything goes to blood, Now, Raymund!

"Raymund Frey," he says, opening his eyes again. The name means nothing to him-- he's a stranger from another land with its own wars and stories-- but he knows the girl may benefit from it.

[Location: Cafe in Speares]

[thelonewolf]

She chews on her lip as he concentrates, half-wondering if this was all a ruse, some cruel trick. No one ever gave her what she wanted. When she asked Thoros to return her father to her, to raise a dead man like he had so many times before, his answer was 'no.' Jason Blood's answer would be no too, she was sure of it.

And then he spoke.

Raymund Frey.

She doesn't know the name. She doesn't have a face to imagine, a face to hate. She has a new name to whisper at night, and one day she will find him and cut his throat and maybe throw him in the river, or to the wolves, but right now the answer leaves her cold.

"Raymund Frey," she repeats, for the first time. Something dark slithers underneath her voice, something muted and far away. "Do you see anything else?" she blurts out suddenly, her voice rushed and her eyes wide and desperate. "My brother Robb, or--or what happened? Or why?"

Tell me, she thinks. Tell me everything. Tell me tell me tell me.

[Location: Cafe in Speares]

[personaldemon]

Her agony-- and the hatred-- are like gasoline on the fire that is Etrigan's power. The visions come harder, faster; Jason sucks in a harshly hissed breath as the demon throws horror after horror at him.

He is no stranger to gore and misery-- he's perpetrated more than his share of it-- but what shreds of conscience remain to him object to telling the child the things he sees. Old beyond her years she may be, heart hardened by slaughters witnessed, but she's a damned girl.

His oldest daughter had been nearly her age.

Etrigan brooks no qualms, no second thoughts, no pity.

You swore you would read for her, fool!
Keep your part of our bargain: be cruel.

"Your brother was shot with arrows," he says, his voice losing some of its impersonal distance, more ragged. "Many of them. A man-- pale-- a walking leech-- stabbed him through the heart. I don't find a name."

More images. A wolf, slaughtered. The head severed, swapped for the man's in a grotesque mockery and sacrilege. It's bad enough but what follows on its heels is worse.

The dead woman on her feet, one hand clutching at her throat, all sanity gone from her pallid gaze.

No! Damn you, Etrigan, no!

He's shoved his chair back from the table barely aware he's done so, gripping the edge in a silent struggle with the devil's will, his eyes fixed on things invisible to Arya Stark.

[Location: Cafe in Speares]

[thelonewolf]

She chews on her lip so hard it draws blood, hands balled into tight little fists in her lap under the table, nails digging into her palms. Robb...

She doesn't want to believe it. It can't be true. They called him the Young Wolf, and he was King in the North. He could have beaten them, he could have beaten them all.

Jason suddenly draws back, she notices for the first time. His eyes pierce the bowl of water and his hands grip the table so hard she thinks they break fall right off. What does he see? she wonders, peering over, seeing nothing but still water, thinking of her older brother Robb with snow in his hair. "What?" she asks. "What do you see? Tell me!"

[personaldemon]

There's ten second of silence following Arya's demand. Jason's breathing is ragged, audible; his knuckles white on the table's edge-- not so much for the horror of what he sees as symptom of the internal battle with Etrigan, but Arya Stark has no way of knowing that.

tellll heeerrrr roars the fire. He resists. He has to pick his battles with Etrigan-- he cannot win them all, attempting to do so invites rude lessons from Etrigan in the futility of this-- but he is picking this one.

"Nothing," he grits out finally. "I see nothing."

It's a painfully obvious lie, but the fact that he manages to say it at all is his making a stand on a battlefield Arya Stark is not privy to.

Sadly, making a stand guarantees no victories. As Arya would know.

[thelonewolf]

Her face falls and she realizes only now she has been standing up so she could see better. She slowly sits back down, eyes on him the entire time, trying to look with her eyes at his face. His hands are clenched and white, his face just as pale.

He did see something. He did.

She chews on her lip. Raymund Frey. And a nameless man who stabbed Robb in the heart. It's what she wanted, and yet it's not enough.

"You're lying," she says, not particularly loudly, but cutting all the same. "I want to see for myself." She knows she can't; all she sees is water. But she wants to.

[personaldemon]

You're lying. The girl states the obvious and he almost laughs. Yes, yes he is.

Etrigan tries to force him. He can feel the demon's will working to seize control, move his jaw and tongue to shape words. It's very rare that Etrigan seeks to overpower him with such brute attacks; he can hold out against it if he tries, but it's exhausting for the both of them.

Arya has just become a pawn on the battlefield between the Devil and his keeper. A tactical location, a piece of ground to be fought over. Etrigan seeks to force him to yet another cruelty in a long, long line of them. He refuses, visualizes a door and slams it shut as hard as he can.

Tell her, Blood, or I swear I will
When first I'm free, I'll seek her out
I'll describe her mum, and drink my fill
Of the misery I'll bring about.

Then do so and be damned to you, I'll not play this game!

You already are. You always lose.
You only think you can still choose.

Jason visualizes the door. Again. Slams it over and over in his mind until Etrigan growls and falls silent.

The struggle has taken perhaps five seconds in the real world. Arya's declaration of I want to see for myself still hangs in the air.

"No," Jason says, his voice hoarse. "You do not. And I will not tell you, Stark. You have all you asked for-- your mother's killer."

[thelonewolf]

Her jaw sets, glaring at him. Tears start to gather in her grey eyes, full of anger and disappointment and yearning. It's not enough. She wants more. She wants to see her mother for herself again, one last time. Yoren wouldn't let her see her father; she'd only heard the strange sound, and maybe that was for the better. But now all she wanted was to see her mother's face, her brother Robb's too, even if it made her sad. She wanted to be with them, and die with them, so none of them would be alone.

She'd been so close. If only she'd made it to the gates, if the Hound hadn't stopped her, maybe...

But it doesn't matter now. Jason Blood has given her what she asked for and nothing more. Raymund Frey. If there was something else, anything else, he would not tell her. Maybe he might have before, but not now. She can see that now in his eyes.

For a moment, she hates him just as much as she hates Raymund Frey and whoever killed Robb, and the Queen, and Ser Ilyn Payne, and Ser Gregor, and Dunsen and Raff the Sweetling and Ser Meryn and the Hound. Maybe I'll add Jason Blood to the list too, she thinks fleetingly, but she knows she won't. He gave her what she wanted.

So she abruptly stands up and in one fast motion, strikes the bowl of water off the table and to the floor, making it spill everywhere. This earns looks from everyone on the bottom floor, but Arya doesn't care. "I could've saved her," she says angrily, as if he's accusing her of something. And then she stomps out, leaving him and his stupid cards.

*bows to you for this awesome thread*

[personaldemon]

The girl hits the bowl. He lets her. The impotent rage coming off her is palpable; impressive from one so small.

Etrigan is sulking; the demon says nothing. But Jason knows Etrigan has marked this moment. That Etrigan will remember his making a stand. Etrigan's memory is long.

He himself says nothing to Arya's spat words. There is nothing he could say, nothing that would in any way help her.

He watches her walk away, his hands still holding tightly to the table's edge, no sound but the water-and-blood dripping down to the ground below.