all of it at once, all of the tin bin; fixed the first part a little for the full garbage set
She put her feet up on his table and couple of papers glided down, landing in front of him. Both followed the seemingly chaotic flight with their eyes – Jervonne as an unmovable pinnacle of impudence, Yu Chun as an unwilling witness and even more so an unwilling victim of the intrusion. Sodom and Gomorrah incarnated were happening in front of him, her feet up on his table, and as once Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt, he too, briefly became a living statue.
It seemed like Jervonne pulled his chair out beforehand, to stretch her legs more comfortably. Really didn’t have to, he told her that. She shifted a little, turning to him.
- Why? – Her feet moved, sending down even more of carefully balanced paperwork.
- Because you are too short.
She turned away.
Lot’s wife looked back on flaming sulphur consuming Sodom and Gomorrah and it consumed her as well. He really didn’t want that to happen to him.
She sits at his questioning as if she came here to question him. Jervonne, a bookbinder, arriving to Zaiwei to sell her trade. Looks like she wants to add “And you?”, but holds herself back.
- Those are yours?
Neat stacks of books with butterfly bindings, saddle stitch, a couple of treasure bindings encrusted with jewels and enamels, embroidered encasements, a scroll and tools are spread on a table between them. This is not all – a little of everything from her chests. The scroll is an extra.
- For now, yes.
- For now? – He raises his brows.
Jervonne leans forward to whisper.
- When I sell them… they will belong to lucky buyers.
- You won’t sell anything with this attitude. And with that.
Yu Chun touches the scroll lightly with his knuckles. Her merchant badge might be real, his orders are definitely not. Although the signature is his and seal is his, even careless letters in strong strokes spreading neatly on the paper belong to him – Yu Chun doesn’t recall ever writing it. It’s a game of “never have I ever” they are playing. “Never have I ever assigned additional supplies and medicine to be sent over to the Grand Harvest Square” he claims. “Never have I ever forged a document” echoes Jervonne.
Keeps saying she has nothing to do with Lumang Syndicate and recent invasions around Zaiwei. Yu Chun tells her he doesn’t believe her. Jervonne assures him he doesn’t have to. That’s where she is wrong, with her crossed legs and a dress a season too light for their weather. He does. Not that Yu Chun doesn’t – on the contrary, he is sure she isn’t involved with the Lumang, but he wants to wait a little longer. Jervonne is like one of her books now, spine bound and stitched, and can’t get unstuck. Yu Chun is speaking to her himself in this cramped room, paper thin walls and strong smell of incense making him talk quieter and scrunch his nose when she isn’t looking. He reaches down to pick up the scroll and she scrunches hers.
- A first bookbinder that I saw to be that well-armed and passing false orders to my officers.
- That doesn’t make me a worse bookbinder. If only a better one.
- Were you selling them your trade too?
- Well they paid me for delivery - Jervonne looks almost genuinely offended – and Yu Chun can’t pinpoint if that is because she doesn’t like him bringing her obvious offense up or him not acknowledging her as a bookbinder is an insult in itself.
- Impressive stitching work. – He nods at the table for some reason and there is a pause where they both stare at her books in silence, - But crime is a crime.
To his relief the fox seems to know of her burning tail. She stopped looking him in the eyes and taps her thigh now.
- What exactly were your motives?
- Motives?
Jervonne looks up at him and Yu Chun barely manages to make his face look relaxed - not disgusted, as though he has been breathing fragrant smoke of ginger incense for half an hour and is by now nauseous. Is she too?
- Surely you did not forge the seal and signature for fun, - her face goes sour for a brief moment, - where is it by the way?
- Where is what? – Jervonne tilts her head and there is a moment of undisputed, triumphant guilt in her eyes that he can’t prove. Yu Chun feels sure they won’t find it – she doesn’t have the first copy of the seal, if she even had it in the first place. If her book bindings look professional, she took forging to the state of art.
Yu Chun lets her feel victorious for a little while - she might have won this fight, but he won the entire battle. And she knows it, he realizes, by how quickly her triumph turns into a heavy wistful sigh.
- I don’t really understand why you didn’t send someone else to deliver the report. Pidgeon post would have done the job.
- I don’t really understand why you won’t get someone else to question me. Your man would have done the job.
If Yu Chun gets someone else to question her, they will dump Jervonne back on him in a matter of hours anyway, so what’s the point.
- On the other hand, I wouldn’t be here now, talking to you. Pass on an opportunity to have a private meeting with Guard Captain himself? That would make me a fool.
She seems to also be really good at cheering herself up. “Never have he ever” met a person, caught and charged with a serious offense, look so pleased with life. Although Yu Chun is exaggerating by saying “charged”. He is investigating this privately and haven’t pressed any charges against her yet. He wonders if he wants to keep it that way and if Jervonne believes this is how it will go. He also wonders why he lets her talk. He probably shouldn’t. He probably really shouldn’t.
- Flattered. – Replies Yu Chun instead, - I have to admit, it was a very noble report. In someone’s eyes, at least. Do they pay you well for that sort of thing?
- Don’t you worry about me and “that short of thing”, - Jervonne sits comfortably and looks like she wants to ask him questions.
- If only I could.
- You can.
- You forged captains’ orders – for that alone I should strap several heavy metal chains on you.
- Kinky, - she mutters.
- Sorry, what?
Jervonne shakes her head, lips pressed together in a hard line (her lips can’t make a hard line, so she is pouting instead and Yu Chun quickly looks away).
- But I might not. Won’t make me worry less, but the choice will be yours.
- Really now, I get a choice.
- May be we should call it “an alternative”.
- May be we should. – She is playing with her fingers now.
- You go to prison under charges of forgery and fraud against Talus Empire, - Jervonne nods solemnly, - or I put you under house arrest and contract you for personal requests.
- How personal? – comes her immediate keen interest.
- Payed personal, per job done.
- And house arrest part?
- My men are watching you here. And in Zaiwei, under some… surveillance, you live where we want you to live.
- “We”? I thought it was “personal”, - teases she him.
- Where I want you to live, - agrees Yu Chun, but that “I” bites his throat painfully for some reason and he swallows.
- I have a place where I usually stop in Zaiwei though, - tries for a bargain Jervonne, elbows on the table.
- And that is where?
- In Hao District.
- Oh, - says Yu Chun. “Oh”, indeed. They don’t speak for a little while, until he breaks the silence first. Mostly because he can’t take the smell of incense anymore.
- So?
- So? – Jervonne repeats the question.
- Which will it be? Going “kinky” or living where I want you to live in Zaiwei.
Jervonne bites her cheek so she doesn’t start laughing.
- Oh I don’t even know. Both sound just so good. But I assume you won’t visit me in my cell?
- Unfortunately, - he clucks his tongue.
- Well, - Jervonne shrugs, - if you ever do decide you want me to move to Hao District, I can get you the address.
She stretches out her hand and Yu Chun shakes it. Hers is ice cold, as if she wasn’t sitting in a stuffy room for last half an hour.
- Can we go outside now? – She asks, letting his hand out of hers, - Another minute and I won’t be able to look at ginger for the rest of my life.
- Isn’t it amazing how we agree on so many things? – He muses, leaving the room first.
Caught Jervonne looks at how ocean wind makes the Skypetal fields flutter in a setting sun, endless carpet of flowers restless and fluid. Everything always goes according to her plans – because Jervonne always has none. This is good enough. That is good enough. Yu Chun still has to be in ten other places today, but she has only one left. She always has one, so she closes her eyes and listens to the wind chime at her new house.
There is a certain convenience to living close to the Talus office in Grand Harvest Square. There is a certain inconvenience.
This morning Yunsang – not her good old stitch and word, but song and cage imprisoning him - calls her a mouthful girl.
- You mean an “earful”?
- No, you’ve heard me right, a mouthful.
- Ew, - Jervonne plays with her fingers, - What’s that supposed to mean.
- That means you are a mouthful. Talking to you makes me feel like I’m chewing on wet sand with bits of stones.
- Thanks, - says Jervonne, - got to go.
- Don’t be late, - says Yunsang.
It picks up, perhaps too quickly. People who never saw her, never heard of her, don’t know why she is stationed close to the Talus soldiers – they know she is a mouthful girl. “****ing help me here, mouthful girl” – calls her over granny that very evening. “No problem” – says Jervonne. No one knows what she has done, except for Yu Chun, but he is chewing on reports instead of wet sand with bits of stones.
It drops off just as fast.
She confronts him in Zaiwei between yet another meeting and the start of the Royal Martial Arts tournament.
- You’ll have to really strain your imagination to come up with tasks for me here. Unless, of course, you wanted a royal book binder.
- Great, - says Yu Chun, papers in both hands - I’ll talk to someone today for an official appointment. You’ll be registered as a royal bookbinder. Let’s start with…
- What? - he stops, catching her sourest expression yet,- I’m just kidding, I thought you liked that, binding books?
- I better like knowing why I’m not in the prison.
- I’m sorry we didn’t have any free cells! You will have to do with your private quarters, I’m afraid.
- Oh I will, for whatever reason, - Jervonne is an angry wisp of a girl and the sound of that thought gets stuck in his head.
- You agreed to it, - he points out, not looking at her, - In the meantime, do your own very special bookbinding, or whatever you do with your free time in privacy.
- Sure, - finally says Jervonne half a minute later to his back.
For next few days Yu Chun disappears, but on his return he is about three times more tired and three times more satisfied, and has a copy of Talus Empire Statute with a note waiting for him on his table. The statute spine is embroidered with a caricature on male reproductive organ in golden thread.
“My very own special bookbinding”, - says the note, for some reason in his writing, - “I tried to catch your likeness and I think I did well”.
There is a “with love, Jervonne” too and he keeps the note. He keeps the book too – someone might misunderstand him throwing away the official Statute – but most importantly, the note.
- Did you like it? – she asks first thing first, entering his cabinet.
- Extremely, - Yu Chun nods to the shelf, her present placed pages front, to hide the binding, - I did not call you here to express my gratitude, however. Take a seat.
He doesn’t have to ask twice - she is all attention, not even bothering to comment on an unfavourable placement of her gift.
- I believe we have a lot to discuss.
They do indeed. “Can she tell a forgery when she sees one?” – she haven’t really tried, may be if it was done by herself? “But surely there are some standards you have to check for in your work“ – sure there are. “Are they the same for everyone” – not exactly the same, but she gets where he is going with it. “How long does a forgery take” – anywhere from several minutes to weeks. “Where do you get the originals” – haha, a trade secret. “No, really, you better tell me”.
Either his imagination is all strained, - decides Jervonne, - or it’s really good.
She doesn’t get to live in Hao District, but with the information Yu Chun can provide her she can do what she has to with no problems. And Jervonne has to do a lot.
Her own safety precautions are questionable – once Yu Chun walks in on Jervonne shaping hot wax with bare hands. Only ice magic is preventing her from serious injuries, but her fingertips get burnt now and then.
His safety precautions are that of a whole town, so as a citizen of Zaiwei, Jervonne gets strict instructions to always use proper tools. Once she explains that this way the quality of her work would be compromised, a healer is assigned for her hands. It unnecessary, but somehow both parties are please.
Rumours don’t lie and he plays mean lute – Jervonne hears it sometimes in the evenings, passing his cabinet. One day she knocks and he stops playing to let her in.
- Can you please continue? – she asks.
He does.
A month after they return to Zaiwei Yu Chun says she feels like a mouthful. It hurts a little, but Jervonne is not sure why.
- What’s that supposed to mean, - she asks anyway.
- I’m not certain myself, - Yu Chun doesn’t look up from his report, - But I feel that if I talk to you when I’m hungry, I won’t be anymore.
Jervonne laughs with amusement, but mostly with an unexplained relief.
It’s obvious to Jervonne they are collecting information on her.
- Do you need me to confirm or clarify anything? – she chimes in one day.
- We will need both of those letter to be sent cross pigeon post by tomorrow, - he reminds her, - Leave the rest to us.
She shrugs and leaves the rest to him, not “us”. “Us” appear trust worthy and chess with intelligence officer Doesun is always fun, but letting Yu Chun in particular hold her is more pleasant, and Jervonne is all about enjoyable experiences.
Bits and pieces of her come into a whole picture at his table. The report in Grand Harvest that landed her in High District Central Garrison was her own initiative, he finds out. She is a citizen of Talus Empire. Her favourite drink is munbaeju. When she sits in the chair opposite of him, playing with her fingers and reading through another request, he thinks only some sort of commitment issues is missing from the picture.
- Oh I do have those, - she agrees offhandedly, not lifting her head.
Jervonne doesn’t always know what she is doing, but she is always doing what she wants.
Yu Chun doesn’t have weekends or free time, but a ridiculous parody of that. As a compensation, during stuffy cabinet meetings and on hot summer days, he now thinks about her hands and how cool they would feel on his. The first cold days come and he still thinks of her hands. It’s distracting.
When Divine Mandate starts, there is a lot of things to worry about besides a hell hole opening in the sky and a falling sphere nearly crashing him. Between havoc and small victories, collapsing in fire buildings and lucid unreal sky, there is no place and no time for him to stop. But once main attack comes to a halt, demons turn to dust, princess and the emperor are confirmed safe, Yu Chun starts searching. He haven’t seen Jervonne since morning.
He finds her with healers in Gossamer Inn, not on the injured side. Relief washes over him in one big wave and Yu Chun slows his steps. The weight of other things he has to take care of is coming instead, but he gets a break.
- So now a healer too?
She looks tired. There is no usual green shimmer under her eyes, only blueish dark circles.
- You can’t be just one thing, you have to be a lot to be one,- Jervonne even sounds tired, half-heartedly coming up with a new profound wisdom on the spot. Or she might have thought this one beforehand, this one is good.
- I still think you just have commitment issues.
- May be you are still right, - Jervonne smiles getting up, but stumbles. Yu Chun catches her by the shoulders, keeping her upright.
- Have you slept?
- Have you?
For a second there is fear in him.
- You were not injured, were you? – Yu Chuns grab on her shoulders gets stronger, but she shakes her head.
- Were you?
- Stop turning all questions to me, - he pleads.
Her gaze examines him anyway.
- Once you stop worrying, may be, - finally comes her response, - don’t forget, you still have to be in ten places right now.
- What about you?
Jervonne presses her lips in hard line – and fails, and he falls again.
- I only have one.
“That’s not true” he wants to say, but she is already sending him out.
- You seemed angry, at the inn.
There is a silence in response, similarly angry, until finally she turns around. Jervonne is standing a few steps above him and it turns out they are talking face to face.
- I didn’t want that.
- Didn’t want what?
- They were going to look at you, look at me, and they were going to gossip about how much your priorities changed!
- Rumours? You are afraid of rumours?
- I’m not afraid of rumours. - She shakes her head, and there is a bitterness to her first words, but also a certain pride to the ones that follow - But if they happen, I want them to happen on my terms.
- And your terms are?
- They will be saying I was seducing Guard Captain in Gossamer Inn in the middle of chaos and destruction! No, I wasn’t. I didn’t even have my make up on!
- You didn’t, - agrees Yu Chun compliantly.
- I won’t have rumours of a half-hearted seduction!
- But you will have rumours of that?
- That seems to be a popular topic anyway. What else would they gossip about, my bookbinding?
- Right, I’ve heard that. How you want to gain control over the military force.
Jervonne laughs softer than he is used to, as if all fight leaves her for a brief moment.
- You know, “military force” does not quite define you… You are the vigilante. – she accuses him amiably. He raises his brows.
- I thought you were the vigilante, while I am officially appointed to be, would you believe it, a Guard Captain - head of exactly military security… force?
She comes to stand really close, and with each her step down the stairs, he has to tilt his head down even more.
- I know what a Guard Captain is, - she informs Yu Chun somewhere from his chest in a secretive whisper, - Were you officially appointed to sneak around Chancellor’s house in tight black clothing too?
- How do you know what happened in Chancellor’s house that time? – Yu Chun even groans a little, - It’s that guard, isn’t it?
- Was hiring forgery artists also in Guard Captain job description?
- You! – he is almost at loss of the words – but only almost, - You better not admit to anything. You are no longer under arrest after the events of Divine Mandate ritual, you know that?
- Was I under arrest at all?
- Unofficially, yes.
- Very unofficially, I assume. Hardly anyone knows. – sighs Jervonne.
- You didn’t want that to be a topic of rumours, did you?
She gives him the look of an offended dignity and continues to climb the stairs.
He notices something familiar, absent-mindedly tracing intricate patterns of one of the books, as she is passing back and forth papers on her desk.
- This one is not for sale.
- I thought you had them memorised, - Yu Chun turns towards her the books cover with tiniest, pressed together side by side, carvings of all official seals used in Zaiwei. They are made into a pattern on the edges, unrecognizable on the first look.
- I do. This is a souvenir, - she takes the book from his hands and he hesitates for a second to release it, but allows Jervonne to put it back on her table.
- I hope you are not planning on making it mainstream on the market? Tourists would go wild.
- All of the court would go wild too, - she smiles weakly.
- That’s a sight I would like to see. But maybe not at the cost of compromised security.
There is sense of duty fighting with trust and bias in him, and Jervonne takes pity.
- You can have it, as long as you promise me to take good care of it.
She hands the book back to him and Yu Chun takes it with a sudden care – there is new weight to it.
- I remember them all anyway, - Jervonne repeats just to keep him in check and shakes her finger.
He chuckles.
- Are you forgetting already not to compromise yourself?
- I’d never let myself be compromised in that way. There are much more interesting ways to get compromised anyway, you know?
She is referring to the rumours of seduction, he realizes.
- I imagine you do, - a breath is caught in his throat and he has to turn to another idea to appear okay, - Say, you wouldn’t happen to have any more souvenirs from other places? Like Stratus Empire.
- Well I don’t know. Maybe not. Or maybe I remember just enough to make one. Are you already regretting letting me off the hook? – Jervonne winks at him.
- Well I don’t know. Are you looking for a job?
- I… will have to think about it.
There is a worry to it.
Yu Chun wonders if it was the right thing to do – all of it, from Skypetal Plains to Zaiwei. He doesn’t have to wonder hard - as a Guard Captain, it was certainly not - he should have had her arrested. But that’s a story months old.
However as a Guard Captain who happens to operate with Intel and undercover missions, and internal affairs, he was also wrong. He just had to keep her working for Talus on his terms - no amnesties followed by job offers. They were doing well just like that.
And as Yu Chun, who keeps thinking how pressing lips to her inner thigh would feel like, he was wrong once again, crashing into her long established commitment issues on full speed. But now he haven’t even kissed her on his table once – so hard that her gaze would grow all hazy and she would pull him down for more, and she is already running away.
Yu Chun looks at her legs on his table and remembers overhearing one of the guards calling her ’porcelain’. He can’t agree.
- Are you trying to help me with paperwork? – Yu Chun comes closer, standing in front of the table.
- Is it how you usually do it?
- You figured me out.
That’s an exaggeration, of course - he has to read reports and even worse, he has to write them. Had to, actually, most of those are rubbish now, with much of the old court gone. Yu Chun suspects he was actually paid per word, not for whatever he was doing, but he is playing along.
- Evidently. How are you still a Guard Captain, I’ll never know.
- Why, it’s not a secret. In fact, that is exactly why I’m still a Guard Captain. Only.
Jervonne grins.
- You poor thing.
She removes her legs from his table painfully slowly. With sensual grace not suited for this early in the morning, for his cabinet, full of edges and faint smell of ginger in the air. There is nothing of porcelain in her, but there are clay and flaming sulphur. There is wax stuck to her desk and burned fingertips, and “with love, Jervonne” note he still keeps around.
Not a single paper slides down and Yu Chun realizes he is staring and is holding his breath.
- You’ve changed your mind? – he asks.
- About?
- Leaving. You even put on this beautiful display.
- I’ll take the compliment, - she laughs, - After all, you figured me out.
- That means?
- That means, I’m asking if your earlier offer of a job is still standing.
He tries to make his smile not too obvious.
- As long as Stratus Empire is still standing, assume it does.
- Well then, - Jervonne drums her fingers on the table top, before standing up, - Where is my contract?
- So eager.
- I will need a lot of time to read it through. And no, - she catches his raised brow, - it’s not commitment issues this time. Give me a break, I’m already tackling them.
- What is it then?
- Well, - Jervonne walks to him slowly, counting on her fingers, - there are little footnotes to check, there are conditions for free days. Paid medical leave and employee benefits. Work uniform. And then you are employed somewhat on in the same department, correct?
- I am. That’s something you had to check? – Yu Chun chuckles, but her hands are pressed to his chest and the look on her face is unreadable.
- No, I have to check if I will be able to do this, - says Jervonne, pulling him down.
- Not on the table, - he murmurs.
- Yes?
- I imagined kissing you on my table…
- Do you want me to sit there now? – Yu Chun can feel her smile with his lips, so he kisses it too.
- I guess not, - says Jervonne.
When they say Lot’s wife looked back at Sodom and Gomorrah, they don’t mean she glanced over her shoulder. They mean she considered what she was leaving in her hometown, where her heart was. Being consumed by flaming sulphur in exchange for that one place seems like a fair price to him.