Kendra turned between Janice and the man who'd just entered. ~She called him 'General,'~ she pointed out, staring at Janice, who felt somehow different than she'd been before. Kendra could feel the stabbing pain in her bond's calf, and she had the disturbing realization that Janice wasn't in to take her calls right at that moment.

~Janice!~ she hissed, but her bondmate still didn't answer as she pushed herself further into the woman's mind. ~Hello! Anyone home?~

Janice didn't answer. Instead, her face was twisted to a mask of hatred as she grabbed the teacup and set it firmly on the hearth. She covered it with the folds of her heavy outercoat and made to step on it when Lina dove forwards and steadied her.

"Now, let's not do that, alright?" she asked cheerfully.

But Janice's hands were quick and they grabbed the kitchen knife from Lina's apron. The fury snapped to her face again, and she quickly stalked from the room, Lina heading her off by going the back way. Kendra felt no choice but to follow her bondmate, and hurriedly fluttered after her.

Kendra peeked over her shoulder as Lina stared from the other end of the hallway, absolutely aghast, over Marley's shoulder. The General turned towards them, and Janice's face twisted to a sadistic smirk Kendra knew was not her own.

"Good evening, Liam," she purred, holding the knife firmly at arm's length and advancing towards him. "I'm so glad you've come to call."

"I was going to be a carpenter," he said as Faline watched him from across the fire. "It's not so different, really, carpentry and Making. You choose wood, nails, tools, embellishments. And in the end, someone will be spending an inordinate amount of time in the bowels of your creation." He shrugged.

"I met Vera when I was eighteen. Technically, Makers aren't supposed to stay in one city for too long. Just long enough to conduct business and move on, but she stayed for two years. That's enough to make two, maybe three boxes. We put a lot of people in the ground those years."

"What was it, like a war or something?" Faline asked.

He shook his head. "Plague. Famine. Drought. Everything seemed to pile up, but I wouldn't be surprised if war came to us then, either. Just outside the city there was a shrine to Fate, holding the Copper Ring, made by her prophetess, Alliyah. The blasted thing has long-since been sought by kings and princes, and it was a curiosity after so long without an owner.

"But I digress. I met Vera when I was eighteen, and when I spent years watching her work, trying to understand why she accepted no offers of help, even when the recipiant of her work seemed to be ready to pass any moment. I understand it now, though. I understand it perfectly. You feel them, once you enter contract with them. You feel how and when they'll pass of natural causes like you feel the tickle of a breeze on your skin."

He reached his hand out to the stars. "I was scared. I didn't want to die. I didn't want to grow old. I didn't want to live, though, either. Not in that town. Not forever. Not with all those corpses piling up around me. I'd be buried in bodies before I knew it. So I begged her. I begged her to teach me."

He blocked the constellation of the serpent with his hand. "Stupidest thing I ever did."

"Why?" Faline asked. Every time he told it, it was a different feel to the same story. This time, it was aching, yearning for the days of a younger self. Earlier this week, it had been absolute conviction that this was the right path. She wanted to help him as much as she could, but she wasn't sure she was able. He seemed so beyond her reach, so absolutely unattainable that... well.

How else could she help him but by letting his thoughts fall to order?

"It would've been quieter as a client than a Maker," he answered. "And I wouldn't be saddled with this absurdity." He shook his hand angrily for a moment before returning it to its position in the sky.

"What is that ring that you hate so much?" she asked.

"It's nothing. It's a twist of metal and my life and my soul," he snarled.

The desperation was swelling into his voice again, and Faline propped herself up to better look at him across the flames of the campfire. The mountains were close now. Tomorrow, maybe the next day or the day after, they'd reach them and have to start hiking up the foothills if he intended to cross them.

"Why'd you leave?" she asked.

"Home?"

"Yeah."

When you're a Maker, you don't have a home. You have a couple years to figure out of this is right for you, but you don't want to experiment with it in your own back yard. You want to experiment in a guise of anonymity. You want to avoid the people you know and love. You don't want to make boxes for them."

She nodded slowly and turned away, and he added, as if to himself, a single whisper. "Doing so would be putting them in the ground."