“Says a lot, doesn’t it.”

I’m pretty sure it’s by design that the woman is out of my line of sight when she speaks to me, far enough behind me and to my left that it’ll take turning and leaving Amber to her own devices if I want to respond.

That’s fine. Amber can handle herself, and she’s got a perfect target; smart enough to know what’s going on, stupefied by talking to a beautiful woman, it’s like looking in a twisted mirror at myself thirty-odd years ago. “I don’t believe I caught your name.” I’m face to face with the talker, which seems like a mistake for my equanimity. She’s staring at me with a disturbing intentness, and breaking eye contact means risking looking downwards. Unlike the popinjays in the main area under the pavilion, her clothes cling, what clothes she’s bothering to wear; there’s more body paint than fabric, and it’s little enough of the latter that it would be far too pleasant to run my eyes over her ample curves. I keep my eyes above her shoulders without much difficulty regardless. Her choice of conversational opening means we might be having some of my least favorite kind of trouble, and I’ve had enough of chasing after that at this point in my life.

“Zidanya.” She smiles at me, wide and glinting, teeth a pale, shining green that is just a shade lighter than the paint that swirls from her jaw down to her collarbones and then darkens to wrap around her shoulders, a dappled forest against loam. Green’s a motif for her; brilliant green eyes with barely any whites and hardly any pupil, hair three shades of green so dark whichever one you’re looking at looks almost black. There’s green trim on the cowled robe riding on her arm, and the others standing with her - Druids, I’m guessing, whatever that means in this context - are wearing similar robes with trim of different color. Their hoods are mostly up, but for the ones that have theirs down, I can see that their eyes, hair, and paint match their own robes’ trim. “You’re an interesting one, and bold, for what you brought. Half here’d kill it on principle, other’d do it as statement.”

“Amber is a person.” I smile back at her, my smiling is socially appropriate at this moment smile, the one that had people backing off and finding somewhere else to be. “We use people-words with people, not thing-words. Even,” I add after a moment, pre-empting her, “when we’re pretending to be barbarians.” It’s suddenly a lot easier to ignore the physical attraction, and I’m grateful that she’s chosen to be a jerk so quickly, rather than waiting.

Her eyes narrow. “She’s someone to you. Dressed like that, and saying that... you’re an Outsider, then. Not just a Magelord. Interesting.” I blink a couple of times, and she steps forwards, waving at her delegation in a way that has structure and hand wiggles.

The rest of her group is fanning out, covering an arc between the two of us and the rest of the party. In their cowled robes with their arms making wider gestures than they were before as they talk between themselves, we’ve got the closest thing this party’s got to privacy, and I let an orb work its way out of my jacket to tuck itself, fully visible, above my ear. “And what’s that to you, who calls herself Zidanya?”

She takes another step forward. She’s in close, too close for comfort, and I’m a hair’s breadth away from putting, say, three orbs through her head. One fire, one ice, one lightning, with Empower and Amplify to boost them; no prefatory debuffs, just in case it’d give the move away. “Put that away,” she growls softly. “If I can see that and know it to be aberrant runework, so can someone else. Do you want to die?”

She’s a Runewright? “I really don’t trust you,” I say quietly to her. “I’d rather keep the insurance in play. Besides, the urge to kill you is extremely strong.” I don’t intend to say that last bit, but it comes out anyway, to a tinkle of chimes and the smell of burnt peppercorns. A Skill, I’m pretty sure, either on her part or one of her delegation’s.

The Empower and Amplify trigger before I can catch myself, and the three attack orbs are in the open, halfway between us. She looks at them and the light browns of her skin get a little lighter, but her voice is almost steady. “I’d rather you didn’t kill me right now, but if you want the insurance, put them here.” She runs a finger up from the nape of her neck to where her hair is up in some kind of complex arrangement, held together with light brown sticks that make her hair look even darker. “The pins are magic, and they’ll hide the orbs.” She smirks at me with barely a hint of shakiness, running a finger across the fabric stretched across the base of her breasts, tapping where the shadows of her cleavage are deepest. “No magic here, what an awful oversight. I’d have liked to ask you to find a spot for them.”

“The vamping is a little much.” I’m not usually crass enough to say something like that. It’s still true. The orbs settle in, touching the back of her skull, and I add two more, Dispel and Disenchant. Her face twists a little when those two land. “Something wrong?” I can’t help the sympathy in my voice, but I’m not taking the risk that she has some sort of defenses that would nullify my attack. Besides, there’s no reason why she should have even noticed a difference between the orbs. Then again, if she’s a runewright...

“It’s a great deal of power I was putting in these paints.” I can’t tell what mood she’s trying for, something on the flippant end of things. “More power than is in me, filled to the brim; there’s a discomfort in their end being so near them, ah?”

“What a shame.” I manage a smile at her. It’s not hard, and it becomes genuine a moment later, because she’s smiling at me with that intent look of hers, and I’m still mostly the same idiot I’ve always been. “What now?”

“What’s now is I cast a spell, I do.” She touches the hair assembly that my orbs are buried in, still smiling. “We call this the lookout’s warning, climb the mast loud, sing to yourself, in case they’re on the rigging. Never secured, they are. Just so: please don’t flinch, Magelord, and fall, with me with you.”

The spell coalesces somewhere in the middle of the explanation. Shell, half of it whispers, and the other half murmurs something complex about privacy. It’s not like any of the spells I’ve cast or seen cast in the Temple; far more subtle, far more delicate. Five of the different flavors, not that they’re actually flavors, that I usually associate with elements; mental, sound, light, and illusion tying it all together, and a taste of metal, like iron in the air.

“They’ll see and hear a conversation more suited to their expectations,” she’s saying when I start paying attention again.

I’m frowning a little, and smooth it away. “Based on their expectations, that’s the mental component. What are their expectations going to be?” The metal is interesting.

“A Magelord dancing with the barbarian?” She smirks as my eyes narrow. “Flirtation. Mayhap I’ll invite you to visit, break the Arcadian embargo. Perchance you’ll suggest I do, or be minded to wonder out loud what the child of Magelord and High Druid would be.” Her smirk fades. “Or if they’ve some knowledge and wit, I’d be trying to convince you of the coming Demon War, or railing against the Stillness, and you will be … well.” She steps another step in towards me, putting a hand on the small of my back and pushing just a little. “They will see in you what they would see in themselves, and to them, there’s little to commend my company.” She’s side by side with me now, angled a little bit in, hips touching mine and shoulder bumping against my shoulder. My arm moves to mirror hers entirely by reflex, and she takes a step towards the main area of the pavilion, looking over at me when I don’t follow, the pressure of her arm notwithstanding.

“Let’s backtrack,” I say with a mutter, “to the part where we’re going dancing.”

“This is a party, Magelord.” The dryness in her voice reminds me of Amber, whose soft laughter as she banters with the Ranger she’s picked out is audible enough to unravel most of the knot in my lower back. “Walk the floor with a nose in the air, you’ll attract notice, and wouldn’t the Magelord want to dance? You don’t find me so ill looking as that. Anyone can tell; everyone.”

“Problem with your logic is,” I say, letting her steer me towards the floor, “I don’t know this dance.” I knew some dances, highly structured sequences of movements that were as much about performing that you were invested enough in the community to learn the community’s patterns as anything else. Festival dances, those were, and a few offshoots, scaled down from eight to two, for you to show off how comfortable you were with each other and how pretty your partner is. What they’re dancing here isn’t anything like that; it’s two opposed spirals, with people moving faster on the outside and slower on the inside, and people drifting in and out. If there’s a pattern, I can’t tell, and what their next motions are at any point, I can’t tell either.

“- a spell,” she’s saying, and I realize I drifted for a bit. That’s okay, there’s a spell, I think she’s saying. “You won’t get what you need out of the fringes. Trust me a little.” She’s smiling at me, and she’s beautiful and has been kind, despite what my impression was at first; so when she starts casting the spell, I don’t do anything to stop her. “[Phantasmal Guide].”