I almost feel bad about it.  I might actually if he hadn't hit me so hard.  I'm using the man's love for a woman I no longer am and don't really even remember being to try to subvert him.  Of course, the other thing keeping me from feeling sorry about it is that I have no desire to see Dara, Grandmother (Is it something about grandparents that makes them generally so nasty?), kill either me or Aunt Gen, and I'm certainly not going to let her get her hands on Merlin if I can help it.  I don't want Merlin to even have to talk to her.  I suspect that her knowledge of how to manipulate him is unrivaled.

     Anyway, I knew there was something odd about Merlin calling me to the gardens at five or so in the morning, but I thought I was being cautious by keeping a Trump handy.  It never occurred to me that anyone would send more than one person after me.  It's not like I'm particularly formidable.
     I do wonder who the cloaked figure was.  I think Tevis was the other one, the one who actually knocked me out.  I know it's possible to move fast enough for me to hear footsteps on all sides when I'm dealing with one person.  Anna did that.  I do think that I would have noticed if the person I was facing managed to slip around behind me in order to bang me on the head.  I'm not that slow.
     I suppose it says something about my priorities that my first thought on waking up was that I was going to miss my appointment with Luke.  My second was that riding in this position was even worse than riding any other way I'd tried.  Being slung over the back end of a horse, tied hand and foot and tied to the saddle is a really lousy way to start the day.  I suppose I should be glad that I did most of the traveling while unconscious.
     I tried shifting to Linette to see if I could slip my bonds that way, but the bonds shrank when my body did.  Obviously somebody knew I was a shapeshifter.  I was going to my natural form to see if my claws would cut through when my kidnapper noticed that something was going on.  That's when he banged me on the head again.  That's also when I got my first look at him.
     I'm not sure which kept me more quiescent, pain or surprise.  I'd been kidnapped by the blond man from my memories, the one my other self had thought loved her.  That lead me into a maze of paranoia about deceptions and conditioning.  I wondered if I'd been molded deliberately into something by forces from outside of Evara.  It made a certain sick sense given that my beginnings had been there and that I'd had to escape there in spite of having memories of being elsewhere for a time.  I'm certain that a long term plan of that sort would not be beyond imagination for people who live for millennia.  Anna might even have deliberately shown me the way out; leaving the talisman might have been a way to get me to go to Amber.  Too bad I was too paranoid to use it.  I suppose that serendipity in the form of Jared (who I refuse to suspect!) worked just as well.
     The blond man rode into a circular keep.  I'd never seen it before, but that didn't really surprise me.  There's a lot of stuff I haven't seen before or don't remember seeing before.  From my point of view, hanging head down, I probably wouldn't have recognized Amber's castle.
     When we got inside, he cut me loose from the saddle but left me tied otherwise.  The level of paranoia with which he treated me physically would make me laugh if it wasn't obviously habitual.  I don't think he actually considered me a threat.  Especially not in the way that I actually am...  One of the men inside address the blond man as "Tevis" which gave me a name to hang on him.  Since they were speaking a language I knew, I assumed that it wasn't just a title or something else equally confusing.  They talked about someone they referred to as "the Lady" and mentioned that I'd be company for the "other one" and maybe stop her from yelling and complaining.
     Tevis put manacles on me before cutting my bonds.  The precaution was pretty unnecessary since I wasn't about to do anything stupid at that point.  I suppose it's all the years of slavery.  I always keep watching for a point when nobody's looking.  Acting directly is foreign in spite of Fayne's lessons.  I still assume that there'll come a point when people stop noticing me and I have a little more freedom.
     There was another person at the other end of the room.  I got a good look at her while there was still light in the cell, while Tevis was chaining me up.  I wasn't really all that surprised to recognize Merlin's sister, Gen.  Sophie was the only other woman I could think of that had been out of touch lately, and Luke would have checked on her often.  Besides, I couldn't imagine Sophie producing the complaints about bad temper that I'd already heard.
     Our initial conversation was a little odd because I was trying to be cautious.  When it finally occurred to me that my captors already knew that I'm Merlin's daughter, Gen was already thoroughly confused and threatening to kill Luke.  She seems quite capable of doing such a thing impulsively and then regretting it later.  I think I can understand why the prison guards would be afraid of her.  If she does get loose, she will kill as many as happen to get in her way to whereever she's going.
     I went to my natural form because that was the only way that I could see well enough to work and because claws draw much more delicate lines than fingertips.  I wasn't sure if it would work, and Gen wasn't either, but it seemed like something worth trying.  I thought it possible that, since blood mixed with the other media makes a Trump, a Trump drawn only of blood might work.  The floor was the only usable surface, and it was slow going.  I'm too used to brushes.
     Gen and I exchanged information.  She was quite upset to hear about Sophie.  For some reason, she seems to assume that all decisions made by those around her involve thoughts of her.  I think she'll be fun to know if we both get out of here alive, but I would have thought that years would have taken the edge off the impulsiveness she showed.  If she used to be worse...  I don't know if I actually want to know.
     I worked on the sketch of Luke while we talked.  Unfortunately, the interruption came when I was only about three quarters of the way done.  I did my best to keep my body between the sketch and the door and went back to being Cordelia.  Fortunately, I changed before Dara made her entrance.
     Dara's definitely got a flair for theatrics, and she certainly seemed to enjoy riling Gen.  I played mute and mindless for all I was worth and just let the conversation flow by.  I pulled it out to look over later, but I didn't dare react at the time.  I had no idea what these people might know about me or my abilities (or lack thereof), and I wanted a chance to size them up without giving myself away.
     As a result, the conversation was basically between Dara and Gen and consisted of a lot of insults on both sides.  The one thing clear about Dara's plan was that she wants to trap Merlin and wants blood for some purpose.  She played a little game of threatening to pick one of us for bait and the other for death, but I'm not sure that that's really what she was getting at.  It may amuse her in some sadistic fashion to threaten it or even to do it, but I doubt that killing one of us is necessary just to obtain large amounts of blood.  Surely she's got some mechanism for storage?  If it's fresh enough for a transfusion, surely it would be fresh enough for what she wants?
     Shortly after Dara departed, Tevis came and took me out of the cell.  He took me to a huge room with a Pattern on the floor.  It wasn't the Pattern I knew which meant that it could really only be one other, but I wasn't about to let on that I knew that.  Dara worked hard at getting a rise out of me, but I played slave for all I was worth.  I just looked at her blank faced and only spoke in response to direct questions.  I even surrendered my name.  I did get the impression that she's not used to playing her scenes for audiences who don't respond.
     She asked me how Merlin had reacted to finding out I existed.  I simply stuck with "surprised."  The complexities of that situation are none of her business and would have been out of character for B932.  I did get the impression that I wasn't nearly as much fun to toy with as Gen.  A small victory but a victory nevertheless.  Those years in Evara have to be worth something.
     I did consider briefly trying to get onto the Pattern as a means of fleeing, but I didn't think the odds were good.  Not only was I still bound, but I was also exhausted.  Given the length of time it took me to walk the Pattern in the Tir, her people could have killed me easily before I more than got started.  All in all, it seemed like a very bad idea.
     Finally, Dara got bored and told Tevis to take me away.  He took me to room with an actual bed.  He seemed somewhat sympathetic and asked how my head felt and if I was hungry.  I was quite sure by this time that he didn't recognize me.  By the time he returned with a tray of food for me, I'd decided on a gamble.  I asked him who I'd been when I knew him before and how I'd ended up back in Evara.  I'm not sure if I was looking for confirmation that my past self had been too trusting or searching for a lever to use to increase the odds of my survival.
     I think I got the latter.
     He looked confused and said, "Evara?" as if he'd never heard the name before.  He said he'd never been to a place with that name.  I pointed out that that wasn't where I'd known him, that I'd known him at Ygg.  That apparently rang some bells.  His composure cracked enough that I continued.  I told him that I don't know what I looked like then or what I might have been called, that most of my memories are inaccessible but that the Pattern had shaken loose a memory of him looking at me at Ygg.  I stopped at that and ate my meal.  I kept pausing and looking at him, trying to give the impression that I was searching my memory.  He looked at the floor a lot, but he also kept looking at me.  He was obviously upset.  I suppose I could have pushed it, but I didn't want to use all my ammunition at once, and I thought that if he really had loved that me more time for him to think about it would work to my advantage.
     When he took the tray away, he told me that he'd be back later with my dinner.  I wasn't sure that he wouldn't run straight to Dara to tell her that I can talk after all and that I have an interesting past, but I don't think he did.  At any rate, I was too exhausted to do more than curl up on the bed and sleep.  I'll try the Trump sketch again later.  It's probably an empty gesture, but I'll feel really stupid if I don't try and I find out that it would have worked.  I think it'll have to be the floor again, but I'll try the bedding first.
 

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