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[thefirstemperor]

[Absolute silence. Fou-Lu does not know what an inbox is.]

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[shamebat]

[Nadja looks to the door, and crooks her finger, to shut it completely and psychically. Then she takes the offered arm, giving a short nod. Laszlo too had his strength sapped.]

Of course. Come, this way.

[thefirstemperor]

[If he'd seen that a few weeks ago he'd have been bent out of shape, but he's spent enough time to recognize that the tomb is simply a copy, nothing that could or would respond to his power. He just nods back. Up close, the air around Fou-Lu is cold, and his arm moreso.]

At your disposal, Madam.

[He misses having courtiers. He hadn't realized that, among all the things now gone from his life, but mortals who could meet him as himself, at a place of social if not magical or theological equality.]

[shamebat]

[Nadja feels very much like a grand duchess, on the arm of a true emperor. She beams, and clasps her strangely equally cold hands around his arm. Vampires don't need to feel temperatures]

It's only this way. Are you able to eat or drink anything?

[thefirstemperor]

[She's clearly clocked him, and in ways he's oddly reluctant to bullshit past. He's been insisting on his ruse in the face of all logic for months, but that was people pointing out the inconsistencies in his story. Simply seeing him for some small part of what he is and behaving accordingly? That hits different.

So while he's not immediately going to lay a confession at her feet, he doesn't dissemble.]

We are able, but 'tis not a pressing need.

[shamebat]

Mmn. Then I think you wouldn't mind if I couldn't offer you any refreshments? We don't have any in the cabin.

[She asks, hopeful that he won't take this as an insult. It's been a long time since Nadja entertained people who didn't have her particular diet]

[thefirstemperor]

Nay, 'tis no inconvenience.

[He knows how to do a politeness duel, even a friendly one. It's been awhile, but these are deeply ingrained habits.]

We wouldst far more gladly enjoy the pleasure of thy company.

[shamebat]

[Nadja preens, pleased with such praise, and bobs her head. They reach her cabin, and she unlocks the door to her home for the last 150 years or so. It's the image of an old house but a little...dusty and cluttered with remnants and weapons belonging to the other roommates of the house]

I apologize for the state of things. Our familiar didn't come with me to the ship.

[thefirstemperor]

[He doesn't have a leg to stand on considering his own inability to invite her to anything but an empty copy of a decaying tomb. Besides, it has personality. He finds the barge's plain décor relentlessly dreary. Arches, polished wood, richly patterened walls and carpets, it's all foreign to his sensibilities but has the look of honest effort. He's been to the homes of allies before, and it's an easy etiquette.]

Never wouldst We be so churlish as to complain, but 'tis charming indeed. One must think our... admiral had never heard of tapestry or statuary.

[shamebat]

[She purrs at the sound of olden, out-of-date speech that, to her, is music to her ears. Nadja invites Fou-lu to take whatever seat he would like, beaming]

You are too kind. Here, sit. Enjoy whatever you like.

And yes, it's very sad, the state of this vessel. I think it could do with an overhaul but you try telling that to anyone here and see if they listen.

[thefirstemperor]

[He takes a plushy chair with faded upholstery that might be comfortable enough to sit in through a whole interminable house meeting.]

When one hast elaborate systems of aqueducts and unceasing light sources and not even a small troupe of musicians, one's priorities are unmistakably clear.

[Stupid admiral. So... gouache.]

[shamebat]

[Nadja herself settles on the couch opposite. It's torn up in the back with claw marks but it's old and serviceable]

Mmn. Yes, exactly. Do you play, or do you like to listen?

[thefirstemperor]

[He decides not to take credit now for the few bars B taught him on the piano. It's a possible future skill, not one he can boast of now.]

To listen. 'Tis simply that we understand the plain orderliness of a peasant village that hath not the resources to spare, but ugliness in the face of plenty bespeaks sloth or worse.

[shamebat]

[Nadja pauses, before struggling, politely]

You...don't know many peasant villages, do you?

[thefirstemperor]

[It's really just the one, which was a rather prosperous farming town in a stable part of the empire. He has mixed feelings about it, none of which he feels like explaining. He's considering telling her something more like the truth than he has anyone else here, but not about that.

He chooses, after a moment's contemplation, a careful half-truth.]

I have dwelt only in one.

cw; tales of cannibalism

[shamebat]

Mmn.

[she hesitates again, before deciding to let a part of herself slip;]

I will tell you a solemn secret that only myself and my husband and our roommates and a few cameramen know.

I grew up very very poor, in one of these villages. It is not the sort of romantic notion people have nowadays. There was so much hunger, so much anger. My siblings and I would sometimes try to sleep very lightly because we feared one of us would kill the others and gobble them up, or maybe sell the meat for more food money.

[thefirstemperor]

[While he does suspect something more of blackly humorous exaggeration (mortals do things like that), he takes the gist of it seriously. This, after all, is why he was summoned.]

'Tis the greed and the grasping of unfit rulers at fault. Resources put to war and excess that should have gone to the people of the land. Supply lines and trade choked by conflict and worthless borders. That any should sit on a throne and not see first to the security and comfort of those their subjects be among the first and greatest harms of mortalkind.

[shamebat]

Unfit rulers? We were gypsies. We lived on our own terms. We did not have a king or a throne or a kingdom. There were only villages. And people to come and burn them to the ground.

[thefirstemperor]

[Without knowing the specific term, he can deduce enough from context.]

Then those who held the land failed in their first duties. There should have been granaries and means of distributing the harvests of more fertile lands to the barren, or to hold against famine, and garrisons to prevent banditry.

[shamebat]

They burned our lands because they wanted to take over them. It was an army, not bandits.

[thefirstemperor]

Then bandits they were, or no better. Only a fool wishes to rule over ash and blood.

[shamebat]

What does it matter?? So he was a fool. He still burned my village to the ground.

[thefirstemperor]

We... wished to express displeasure. Simply on multiple levels.

[Courtly reserve works against him sometimes. As does the fact that he considers disapproving of someone's approach to warfare and governance to be the most scathing insult imaginable.]

[shamebat]

Mmn. You were raised in luxury?

[thefirstemperor]

[He wasn't raised at all, but he interprets what he thinks is the spirit of the question. Luxury means very little when sleep and hunger and danger more or less can't touch you. Not that he minded the fancy outfits.]

We were... meant to ensure an end to suffering, and what means our own power did not provide were available to us. Our days were lived in camps and shipboard, not in palaces but for rare lulls between campaigns, and for occasions of note.

[Did anyone else in the camp have a vast retinue of priests, courtiers, advisors, secretaries, concubines, diplomats, body servants, beaurocrats, guildmasters, and magical constructs? No. But.]

[shamebat]

I think you would have a lot in common with my housemate Nandor. He was a prince, but he was a conquering sort of prince. Someone who went around to villages like mine and ruled them.