'Al' — not his Warlord-second, not the target of the assassination attempt floating refreshed in his thoughts and memories, no, but the Al who is present, here and now on this enTrenched rooftop — is present, suddenly and viciously, mouth open and venomous fangs bared mere inches from the shrike's own.
(Augustine's breath catches, beside them, for the slightest moment of surprise/resignation, before he lets it out in a sigh that chooses not to insert a joke about kissing.)
«You think her soldiers were less selfish than yours, is that it? Nothing but the tools she used to reach forth to exterminate you like an unwanted insect, squished under their boots?»
(Another silent twitch from Augustine, whose awareness of those subdermal hematomas had evidently been borrowed at some point without asking; still, he lets his brother's scolding continue, as the one of them who better understood how to talk to the troops, to lead them, to forge them into a unit with a single goal of fulfilling a holy mandate — rather than merely seducing them, in small numbers that nevertheless progressed through the crowd. Perhaps Cassowary needs to be scolded soldier-to-soldier, rather than comforted by a lover-priest sort; perhaps he needs more of a one-two punch. They'll see.)
«If you never ordered an assassination attempt, why would you expect her — a priest who loved her people! — to order extrajudicial murders? Here I thought your people practically fetishized explicit-contract-adherence! Did your world just not have any universal conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners of war? Executing a surrendered soldier is dicey enough — doing so without getting all your paperwork in order first, though — without them making certain you've made peace with your gods, without letting you speak to any priests, even if it isn't the one they're worried about you trying to assassinate yourself — ARE you fucking kidding me, here, or are you just too busy being certain that she has to have betrayed you to consider how incredibly fucked-up the entire situation is, for her to discover that her long-term lover, the father of her children, has been murdered by her soldiers after his surrender?!»
"I would like to add something," Augustine murmurs delicately, even as he forces down the chills along his own spine caused merely by being adjacent to his brother's tirade — and then scrambling to have his thoughts in an understandable order quickly enough to avoid a lengthy pause.
... Oh, right.
"How the fuck did the two of you end up on opposite sides of a war in the first place?"
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'Al' — not his Warlord-second, not the target of the assassination attempt floating refreshed in his thoughts and memories, no, but the Al who is present, here and now on this enTrenched rooftop — is present, suddenly and viciously, mouth open and venomous fangs bared mere inches from the shrike's own.
(Augustine's breath catches, beside them, for the slightest moment of surprise/resignation, before he lets it out in a sigh that chooses not to insert a joke about kissing.)
«You think her soldiers were less selfish than yours, is that it? Nothing but the tools she used to reach forth to exterminate you like an unwanted insect, squished under their boots?»
(Another silent twitch from Augustine, whose awareness of those subdermal hematomas had evidently been borrowed at some point without asking; still, he lets his brother's scolding continue, as the one of them who better understood how to talk to the troops, to lead them, to forge them into a unit with a single goal of fulfilling a holy mandate — rather than merely seducing them, in small numbers that nevertheless progressed through the crowd. Perhaps Cassowary needs to be scolded soldier-to-soldier, rather than comforted by a lover-priest sort; perhaps he needs more of a one-two punch. They'll see.)
«If you never ordered an assassination attempt, why would you expect her — a priest who loved her people! — to order extrajudicial murders? Here I thought your people practically fetishized explicit-contract-adherence! Did your world just not have any universal conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners of war? Executing a surrendered soldier is dicey enough — doing so without getting all your paperwork in order first, though — without them making certain you've made peace with your gods, without letting you speak to any priests, even if it isn't the one they're worried about you trying to assassinate yourself — ARE you fucking kidding me, here, or are you just too busy being certain that she has to have betrayed you to consider how incredibly fucked-up the entire situation is, for her to discover that her long-term lover, the father of her children, has been murdered by her soldiers after his surrender?!»
"I would like to add something," Augustine murmurs delicately, even as he forces down the chills along his own spine caused merely by being adjacent to his brother's tirade — and then scrambling to have his thoughts in an understandable order quickly enough to avoid a lengthy pause.
... Oh, right.
"How the fuck did the two of you end up on opposite sides of a war in the first place?"