Ignorant Farmers and Smart Men [Hadrian + Keating]

[Keating Ash]

Keating took a long pull of the ale, as if he had not had a drink in too great a while. His adam’s apple bobbed rapidly swallowing as he poured the alcohol in. When the mug finally returned to resting on the flimsy table, Keating’s eyes almost closed in relief. He drank too much, and too often… but he went there willingly, and with his eyes open. The farmer was not the type of man to try to deny the obvious. Staring at his bloodied knuckles, Keating flexed his hand and absently tried to push the broken skin back together. After remaining quiet during this task, he lifted the considerably less full mug once more and said to Andry, “To Zeltiva then?” And with a wink added, “and to their women!” He drank again. “So Professor…, here’s something to ponder,” Keating said heartily, his eyes narrowing, “what’s a smart man from Zeltiva doing wandering the back alleys of Ravok… at night?” He didn’t really care about the answer, but Andry seemed so learned and uptight compared to the men Keating normally associated with on the docks, that he couldn’t help but rib him a little.

[Hadrian]

He laughed and raised his glass, toasting and drinking along with Keating Ash. The girl that Hadrian had most admired in Zeltiva had returned to his life in the guise of a boy, which was strange business, but he remembered there being many a woman to admire when he lived there. "To Zeltiva and to their women!" The question didn't exactly surprise him, but then Keating had been fighting in those selfsame back alleys and he was supposed to be a farmer or something with his devotion to Bala and his dirty hands. "You learn more in the back alleys sometimes," he admitted. "Anyway, I know my way around them as you may have noticed. What were you doing there, other than fighting?"

[Keating Ash]

“…Other than fighting?” Keating asked incredulously. “You might need another reason… but I don’t.” His companion was naïve, or just too much an intellectual to understand. Either one was foreign territory to Keating. “I told you before… I was defending a farmer’s honor.” Reverently he touched the entwined vine on his muscled forearm, Bala’s gnosis. His palm rubbed the mark roughly, as if to remember what he had once been; a man of the earth, and seeds, and crops. How distant that man seemed now. A melancholy frown wrinkled his heavy brow. Keating’s mood threatened to shift into something darker, but he only lifted the mug, and tilted it to his lips as he drank the memory down. “Ain’t nothing more important than that. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!” Threat clung to the words. A farmer’s life was demanding, yet simple. It was not the life he lived in now, and it ate at him. Ravok aggravated him, as did most city folks. Keating had no hidden agendas, or fancy ideals. There were no plots or plans in his mind, there was only Rose, and the question of when he would ultimately leave and go back to the run down farm.

[Hadrian]

"Well, I'm not a fighter, so I suppose I wouldn't understand," he said, implying that he wouldn't understand unless Keating explained it, but he didn't know that the man would take his invitation. The man's aura writhed and Hadrian sensed the threat of violence, at least in mood if not in physical expression. He certainly didn't want to be the recipient of such violence, especially after helping the man out of a predicament. "Anyway," he said, his aura reaching out to twine with his words soothingly, the gentlest of hypnotic suggestions, "I have nothing bad to say about farmers. But where do you farm? I suppose the island is safer than the rest of Sylira."

[Keating Ash]

Keating’s eyes dropped to Andry’s hands suspiciously. They were smooth, nothing like his own scarred and battered palms and knuckles. The young man had probably never done an honest days labor in his life. “No,” he agreed, the tone cold, “I don’t suppose you would understand…” And Keating tapped his battered knuckles none too softly upon the rickety table for emphasis. The action left spots of almost dried blood upon the grimy surface. Suddenly, Keating’s words slowed, as if his thoughts were far away. His dark lashes blinked, and his gaze returned to Andry’s face, but there was a slight lessening in the intensity of it. “Ain’t nothing wrong with farmers, or farming,” Keating replied with a mellower tone, and the words were spoken more in agreement, than from his normal argumentative stance. “Farming…” he started again. “ain’t so bad, but safer?” A loud snort was forced out of his nostrils, and his brows lifted in dark amusement. “Maybe you’re dumber than I thought.” Ravok was anything but safe, for farmers or anyone else in his opinion. “And there ain’t no farms here, boy. Not proper like. Not like back home… outside of Syliras. Course that’s just a shyte hole now… I’m a common dock worker here. Nothin’ more.” It was more information than he had given to anyone in a very long time, yet Keating failed to wonder why that was so.

[Hadrian]

"Oh," he said. "No, I didn't think or say there was anything wrong with farmers, with farming. I like eating, so it would be stupid to think otherwise. I forget meals a lot, but I like eating. Huh, no wonder so many people here eat eel..." He looked thoughtfully around. Despite his not staying in Syliras, he didn't think they place so bad if one was in with the Order, but he wasn't going to tout the enemy city here. Looking back at Keating, he looked curious again. "Does that offend you?" he asked. "That I am not a fighter, not a farmer?" The questions might have seemed challenging, but really he was just curious. He understood a distrust of magic and those who wielded it, and while Hadrian's father had a bit of a fortune, Hadrian no longer truly benefited from it.

[Keating Ash]

“Don’t fret, Professor. I believe you.” And for some odd reason, Keating found he did trust the scholar, at least as far as farming went. But to Keating’s eye, Andry looked downright unintimidating, which was not something anyone aimed for in a city controlled by the god of chaos. Trouble was bound to catch up to the young man sooner rather than later. “This is not safe…, Ravok I mean,” Keating said in a confidential tone. “And most cities aren’t, even if you think they are… even if you’re smart.” It was apparent that Andry knew his way around the alleyways, but did he have street smarts? Keating wasn’t so sure… “Offend me?” Keating laughed loudly. “It’d take a hell of lot to do that, ‘cept’n if you’re a whore that doesn’t perform to standard. Let me ask you this… can you stand up for yourself when some bastard wants to take what you have? You’re awfully skinny… and not liable to put fear in the gut of most folks… If I were you, I’d be more concerned about that, than the off chance you might offend me.”

[Hadrian]

Hadrian Aelius could defend himself and those for whom he cared, but he was not yet sure how powerful Andry Ellis should be, how much of a threat. Truly, the powerless might get crushed, but the powerful were brought down by the jealous and fearful. "I have survived this long," he pointed out. "But you've been here longer than me. You must know that power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. Better to be powerless then, unless its corruption you're after. I'm no priest," he was quick to add, "but I want to be me, don't want someone trying to take that away from me. Even the weakest of animals grows ferocious when cornered. A rat in the alley will take your finger off if you put it in the right situation. "Maybe you should go back to farming," he said, just throwing that out there, even if Keating seemed at bit too hard to go back to a simpler life, and clearly too fond of women, wine, and violence.

[Keating Ash]

“Petch Andry! Words, words, and words!” Keating didn’t try to follow the man’s complicated explanation of power. Logical thought was for other men, and certainly not a man from the Ash family. “Words can’t help you when someone’s taken an unhealthy dislike to you… Words can’t help you when - hell, don’t change then. Ain’t nobody telling you to.” If Andy couldn’t see where he was lacking, it wasn’t Keating’s problem. “So you can be ferocious then Professor? Just remember, some folks would let the rat chew off their finger, while they stomped its head with their boot...” Keating was one of those men. Keating’s left eye twitched as a dark cloud flooded his gaze. “Go back…” He whispered. It was an impossible dream. A play of emotions crossed his face, to signal his temper was about to flare. Yet something held it in check. His scarred fingers pressed roughly, almost violently into his arm atop of Bala’s sacred vines. “Why are you here? ‘Cept to harass me… about things you know nothing about,” and dredge up old wounds, Keating thought.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian was not put off, not afraid, which was rare for him. He might be tall, but his body lacked strength unless he fueled it with djed, which he was more likely to use to beat a hasty retreat than to go up against someone. Just because he could be faster and stronger didn't mean he had any skill at arms or will to violence. Considering all things, he might rip Keating's finger off and run before the man could lay a hand on him, but he didn't want to test that particular theory, and he had no real reason to attack. Ah, but there was the trigger. To go back... His aura reached out to explore that particular wound, nudge energy into that darkening of Keating's own aura. Take a crack in a dyke and pull it wide, let the waters flow. The questions, brusque and angry, were a defense mechanism. Keating would not likely be the sort of man who would suffer to weep in front of another man. Hadrian wondered how people went about with these knots and blockages in their auras that led to sickness and injury. Such unhappiness and so unnecessary. "I'm learning more about Ravok so I can advise my father on the best strategy for trade," he said simply. The lie was easy by now. He almost believed it himself, Andry the son that Hadrian would not be for a merchant prince father.