The Progression of Tarquin
an excerpt

The Baron's manservant eyed the gently-steaming cup with vision slowly becoming accustomed to the lack of light. It had not been an auspicious start, he noted, and that raised layers of questions about the contents of the mug in front of him. Although if the old man intended to poison him he might have been friendlier to put him off guard... unless he'd thought of that... unless he'd thought that Khevyn had thought he had thought of that...

A man could go mad trying to unravel the considerations of such intriguing, so Khevyn put it from his mind for now in an attempt to make the situation more clear both for the Brewmaster's memory of events past and for his own grasp of the circumstances he was in now. “I left because I saw an opportunity for us as an order...”

“US? There is no us now! You murdered the Daimyo's cousin! You fled to the southerners to escape vengeance, you sold yourself to a Mardaen so-called noble in an attempt to conceal yourself!” The High Brewmaster's sudden anger was as unexpected as it was shocking. “Your right to associate yourself with 'us' ended the day you stole away from Syar like a whipped cur rather than face your destiny and confront your accuser, and your excuses – weak as they are – will do nothing to change this! Milk and sugar?”

He poured a splash of milk into the cup, withdrew the proffered sugar bowl at a curt motion from Khevyn, and gave the liquid a brief stir before leaning back in his chair and taking the teaspoon with him. Khevyn smiled, still determinedly ignoring the tea, and tried again. “And what if I told you that the man I engaged my services with is currently planning a stroke that is to make him master of not only the usurped southern kingdom but the entirety of the world?”

There was a rustling noise from below the table; Oh god, thought Khevyn, not the biscuits. He must be angrier than I dared fear. But as he cringed, waiting for the expected sudden concussion and rain of deadly yet delicious oaty shrapnel that never came, the High Brewmaster slowly withdrew his hand and, clasping both, rested them on the table. “Explain.”

He did so hurriedly, convinced by the awful sound of biscuit wrappings that his only hope for survival lay in being direct, concise and truthful, laying out Garasiuce von Naradach's plan as far as he knew it while the head of his order's face shifted through a range of expressions from shocked to merely enraged at the temerity of the assassin's erstwhile master.