As if to prove the accuracy of his friend, William Abbott was, at that very moment, scowling. This scowl was directed at a map that lay upon the table before him, drawn from one of Lucy Turner’s many ancient manuscripts, and purporting to depict a timeworn tunnel linking certain castles together, one of which he held out hope might be this one. If so -- this path having been long abandoned -- it would give them a route straight into the heart of the other edifice of which its current inhabitants were, at least in theory, entirely ignorant. The search, however, was not going as smoothly as it might.
Their present base was cradled amongst the ruins of a castle whose crumbling roofline and few intact rooms put one in mind of nothing so strongly as the legendary snowcapped towers of Yilankale, whose decaying stones were said once to have sheltered the mother of the resistance in bygone ages. Yet, unlike Yilankale, there was nothing oppressive in the overgrown tresses of the trees which ran like rivulets over the causeways and decrepit fortress walls, tripping and trickling and choked with fallen leaves, till the ruin seemed half constructed of stone and half of forest green.
So far, however, there had been no luck in positively identifying this derelict building -- which, in terms of it not being discovered by curious seekers was a positive, but in terms of outlining a secret route...decidedly less so. The scowl was, then, it was to be understood, born of some frustration on the point and had nothing whatever to do with Roland’s cheery tirade (something which Will secretly enjoyed, though he was unlikely ever to confess it). Nonetheless, when -- without having bothered to shift his expression at all -- he fixed his friend with the self-same look, the result was not a particularly friendly one.
It would take far more than that, however, Will was sure, to scare off Roland, by now. In truth, no one better understood Will’s moods than Roland who was to him a brother in all but blood, and who had seen far more ferocious flashes of temper than this, in his time.
Frowning, Will shook his head. Despite himself, his lips tugged into something resembling ironic amusement. “Merchant you might manage,” he allowed at last, following a long surveying look. “But I think you’d best skip the sea. The people of Elsbridge are more likely to believe that you’re an exiled prince in need of their financial restitution in order to secure your crown, than to believe that you know even the first thing about the sea. You’re not near briny enough to pull off a year away upon the water, though you might manage it if you commit enough to the role to cut a limb or two off and adopt an accent,” he drawled.
Will laughed, then, a derisive snort. “But if that princely ruse works, perhaps we can later commandeer it for the rebellion,” he added, leaning forward against the table before him on both his fists. “Gods know we’ve precious need of something wild to stir things up, and I’ll venture you’d make a far less incompetent monarch than our current one.”
The scowl flashed into return in that moment and, straightening, he crossed his arms across his chest. Generally if asked any such question about his brooding, he’d give a sarcastic retort to such a question, telling his interlocutor that they should try losing everything and living on the streets and their wits for a time and it might do the trick -- but Roland had, indeed, done all those things right beside him, and, as such, was due more respect than that. Instead, he took it for what it was: a friendly tease, and simply answered with the scowl in question.
Bending, he poured once more over the map before he began, once more, to speak without looking up. “Instead of going to sea, perhaps you were gone across the moors, searching for your lost love, but are now returning having found her -- just in time to lose her, again. That ought to jerk a tear or two, particularly if you break off to stare blackly towards the horizon and think of all the things you hate most. That,” he added with a self-directed smirk of laughter. “Is, in short, what I do, but I can’t speak to how effective it is in wooing. You already know how things transpired with Miss Turner well enough not to wish to walk that path, I’d wager.”
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