Celyn's Perceptions of Veltor

Veltor was turning out to be quite a lot to deal with.
        It wasn’t that it was a particularly large city - it certainly wasn’t.  Celyn had been in larger.  Though when he had been in larger, he had been able to be invisible to politics, because he wasn’t someone who mattered.  Now he mattered, and it wasn’t even in the simple ways that he wanted to matter, the taking care of his people and, he supposed, dealing with monsters with the sort of violence that would frighten people back in Clawyn.  Even if Ellis maybe wouldn’t be surprised.
        He wondered briefly if Pryce would be surprised.
        Dealing with all the politics was something that he found deeply discomfiting.  Proximity to the levers of power was the sorts of thing that nothing in his childhood had prepared him for and he did not like the change at all.  It did not have enough honest, practical work about it, though he suspected that people would probably look at him oddly if he said so, but his own apprenticeship had been its own sort of dealing with honest, practical work.
        Also, he suspected Robin was more comfortable with the barracks than he was, overall.  On the other hand, the two of them had managed somehow to land their own room, the third bed empty, and that was so much easier on his nerves than sharing with anyone else, particularly since he had been working hard on turning ‘wanting to trust Robin with this’ into ‘actually kind of trusting Robin with this’.  It was more of a refuge than any crowded inn, at least.  And the others did well making friends with their roommate, and that turned out to be useful in the long run of getting people safely out of the keep.
        It was the aftermath of that where Celyn was disconcerted.  The idea that someone in the court of Twilight’s Grace would have called in a favor to a neighboring fey kingdom to get him a personal guardian who made sure that he made it to Cleenseau was too large to fit into his mind easily without rotating it several ways to see if he could find a way to fold it into position.  He had not done anything important back then, when it started.  And that was no small favor, for someone to go into such hostile territory alone and unprotected.
        It was unnerving, is what it was, and he was not actually used to things throwing him that far off his game.  It did not do much good to protest that he was a farm boy in the face of things like that.  The part of him that wanted to argue that he oughtn’t have been that sort of important, particularly months ago, was small but insistent, despite the Wyrdling’s hand in prophecy and fate, his secure knowledge that whatever his fate was would come to him, for better or for worse.
        He was absolutely going to have to get a nicer shirt.  One with embroidery.
        He did promise Robin that he would explain it later, but right now, there was the Duskhound to deal with.  And that was a different sort of concerning.
        Celyn knew, in a distant sort of way, that most people in this circumstance would be afraid of dying in that fight, particularly people who had, two months before, been knocked out by a Duskhound with a single strike.  He was not most people, but still, he was concerned.  Concerned enough to ask for a kiss for luck from Robin, though that was also an excuse for the touch needed to bestow the Wyrdling’s blessing that quieted the sounds of his armour moving.
        And maybe he was notably more cautious than usual, only going up the stairs when Robin did rather than slide up ahead and trust to his stealth alone.  Because, well, he was concerned about how things would go, and being picked off one by one was not a good idea.  He did not want to be alone with it.
        Sometimes he was wiser than he was reckless.  Sometimes.
        In the end, killing the Duskhound was not precisely a surprise - they had all learned a few tricks - but he had not at all been confident that that was the way the dice would fall.  Dealing with the aftermath did not add any complexities that were distressing, and he was glad enough to get to retreat back to the barracks and sleep in the hope that— well, there was no point in hoping for a less complicated tomorrow, but maybe it would have complexities that were more in the realm of things that he could handle without fussing about them.
        Of course, being woken up out of that put him in an irritable enough mood that he responded to the page with the message as if he were himself fey, rather than merely carrying a note from one. And that meant having to go back into the keep and talk through what to do with it before getting to go back to bed, though at least it worked that time.  And he prayed for an adjustment to his blessings, and they went and prepared themselves for dinner.
        At least that bit of fencing was within his realm of things he understood, and he was happy to take the shapeshifter’s saccharine sympathy on being betrayed by someone who was not what they seemed to be and twist it around on her.  Who could eat when dealing with such news, after all?  He suspected he sounded sarcastic, but she already knew what they were, and knew they knew what she was, so it was fine.  The dice would fall where the dice fell.
        He was not at all expecting Viepuck to drive her to utter distraction by throwing a tantrum about the food, but it was, fundamentally, hilarious.  Even better was that it drove her to take the first aggressive action, which meant that they could stop playing games and just roll forward to the inevitability of the fight.  Perhaps, in another world, they would have been able to tease more information out of her.
        On the other hand, in that world, Robin might not have gone up and over the table, not remotely worrying about what that meant for the enchanted food, and that was absolutely a glorious thing to witness.  Celyn was fairly certain that Robin would not have done something like that a few months ago.  He was also extremely certain that he liked seeing it, very much indeed, and he was only a step or two behind, though sticking to the floor on his way to the attack.  It was very cheerful, really, until some ward blasted him back; then he was a little irritated, but not so much so that he could not be very, very precise with the sword once he jumped back to where he ought to be, next to Robin in the fight.
        He was not at all surprised the fey tried to flee; he was vastly amused that the Wyrdling had their eye on the situation and thus she went out the window next to Viepuck’s companion and wound up plummeting to earth wrapped in creature.  He made it to the window in time to hear her say “You’re going to want to hear what I have to say” and let the arrow fly anyway; the dice would fall where the dice fell.  With luck - and luck was well with them - Viepuck could get the information out of her somehow.
        She was still breathing, if raggedly, when he got down to see, and of course they had to decide whether to risk waking her up so Viepuck could read her mind.  Celyn was keenly aware that Robin was against it; it wasn’t like Celyn could ever be entirely unaware of Robin being furiously worried about her being a danger to everyone.
        But Celyn could also never not try to calculate the odds.  The dice would fall where the dice fell; the question was always whether it was worth throwing them.
        He was also well aware that his bias was more often than not towards throwing the dice.
        He was also glad for the opportunity to take proper stock of his madness.  The peace his inner light gave him came with an ability to feel out the razored edges of his mind without cutting himself, and of course he found his reactions to Robin infinitely fascinating.  ‘What would make Robin happiest in this situation’ was a heavy, heavy weight on his personal scales - not that scales were a natural metaphor for him, but of course with the Wanderer’s touch there were scales - but it seemed that it only weighted his dice so far.
        He felt Robin’s disapproval of every shallow breath the fey woman managed like a lodestone drawing his attention, and still he held back the sword, trying to weigh the risks, rolling the dice back and forth in his mind without throwing them.  One of Viepuck’s odd berries would not be much, perhaps, it might bring her around without giving her enough to escape with? Or perhaps that was too much, too risky.  Certainly he would not invest a miracle in the matter, and he was even hesitant to put the sword down long enough to fumble through binding a wound.  He’d learned some about that, over the last few months, but she was not something he wanted to practice on, even if he wouldn’t particularly mind if he messed it up and she died.
        He had been woolgathering long enough, it turned out, that the fey woke up again.  He was immediately on alert, the sword ready to strike, as she said “It’s about the baroness”, and then he was watching Viepuck, trying to judge whether the boy had gotten anything useful, adding a sharp stab of his own fey tricks to help when he spotted the flicker of frustration.  Viepuck had something now, he could see it, the thing that the roll of the dice had been gambling for; the odds shifted, the weights and the risks and the scales tilting so very far now rather than resting in uneasy near-balance.
        She said “Are we going to be honorable,” and he shifted his attention back to her, “or are you going to murder me?”
        He did not even have to look at Robin before striking, before twisting the power of luck and fate to see his strike true, to make sure that she was dead.
        Veltor was going to continue to be a lot to deal with now.  He did hope that whatever Viepuck had gotten was actually worth having.  And that Robin was not too upset with the way he was with the dice.