Will purses his lips, keeping his eyes trained on the wall as he makes his way out of the history sector and more towards the main reading area for the library. "I'd prefer not," He answers. "Could we just stay in here for a little while?" But Will's already sitting down onto one of the lush leather sofas. His eyes skim the synopsis of Kazimir's biography. He briefly glances up to the young servant. Surely Ivan wouldn't disagree with him.
Ivan hesitated for a very long moment, hands fidgeting for just a moment. "I…suppose so." he finally replied slowly, hands returning to his sides. What else was he supposed to say? Will outranked him, and he could not order the concubine around. Kaz would not be happy if he came back and found out a mere servant had tried to tell his concubine what to do, so Ivan had no choice but to agree with what Will wanted.
(What sort of stuff do you think Will will find in the biography? Maybe you could 'play' the book and give a vague synopsis and stuff on what he finds in different sections or something?)
Will flips open the front cover of the book, noting the author and date published. There's a short table of contents, though there are no page numbers. He'll have to flip through the entire book to find what he needs. However, exactly what he needs is a full mystery. Past battles, his family, his method of destruction (because Will knows the Snake always has one). Without a doubt, the perspective will be biased towards the Fae King, but Will hasn't spent years in corners with books obtaining critical thinking skills for nothing.
(I can do that!)
The book was not as thick as it could have been, really, and it seemed to skim over the Snake's childhood, too, starting more with his career in crime than anywhere else. Even then, it skimmed over most of the details, glamorizing it and making it into something more admirable than it had been. It detailed how he became the previous king's righthand man, and then became king from there. There were less details than perhaps there should have been, less precise information than many biographies would have had. This was likely on purpose, to obscure Kaz's origins so that the thing people knew most was his power. Not where it came from.
(swag!)
Will purses his lips, vaguely skimming over the even vaguer details. Nearly nothing on the childhood, though Will wasn't quite expecting much to begin with. He sweeps his hair out of his eyes with an agitated huff. They're glossing over the violence, Will murmurs internally. He knows how the Snake works. And he knows his rise to power wasn't a pacifistic affair. Mostly skipping over the rest of the pages detailing Kaz's past, Will finds himself at the next section: his first years in power.
This section had more detail, and was more interesting. It laid out the various laws Kaz had put in place (none were overly punitive, and they all made logical sense. The Snake had never been one for nonsensical laws), and what he had done in his first years as king. Then it took a sharp turn, and told of the country's fall. Of an attack from a larger country. Of the king, taken captive. The details of the imprisonment were vague, and it moved then into telling of how, in Kaz's escape, he left swathes of dead behind, paying the rightful price for what they had done. What, precisely, it was that they had done, was not related. If Will wanted to know, he would have to ask Kaz for those details. Then, it narrated how Kaz had regained power, and then turned the country into an empire through conquest and, in one case, marriage, to the woman who was now his wife.
A kidnapping? Will's brow shoots up to his hairline. He… was not expecting that. It doesn't take a thousand lifetimes to know that the Snake is a powerful man with great capabilities, how could he have let himself become abducted? What sort of people– Ah, there's the massacre. Will involuntarily purses his lips and nods in tune to the second shoe dropping. Now the victims could have deserved it (Will doesn't trust this biased text's claims that they had it coming), but Will holds off on drawing his conclusions. He mostly skims over the part on the wife, catching her name once or twice and then not truly caring enough to remember it. Mary? Marie? Maria? Something along those lines. And so he continues past the sections headed Abduction and Reclaiming the Throne to find himself at the fourth section of the biography.
This last section was slightly more…propaganda-like than the others, with praise for the way Kaz had taken control of the country again, coming down with laws slightly more strict than before. It did touch on the fact that Kaz would punish some offenders himself, in ways that were not pleasant. It also spoke of an attempted coup, which had been swiftly dealt with with an iron fist. The Emperor, it seemed, did not tolerate dissent.
Will barely even bothers to read the last bit of the book. He skims for important events, momentarily glances at propaganda articles and stops only to marvel at a very well drawn sketch of Kazimir on a throne. I bet that's where he is now, Will concludes as he finishes reading the author's miniscule biography. He closes the book. The sun sits off the middle of the sky. It's sometime after noon, perhaps three or four hours. For the first time since he sat down, Will clears his throat and acknowledges Ivan. "What time is it?"
Ivan startled slightly when Will spoke, having sat down a while ago and fallen into a light doze. "I, uhm…" he checked a watch, then looked over at Will again. "About two in the afternoon." he replied, rubbing sleep from his eyes and shifting, ready to leave if that was what Will wanted to do now.
"Two in the afternoon," Will repeats quietly. He bites the inside of his cheek, questions weighing on his mind about Kazimir's biography. "Do you know when Kazimir will be back from his duties?" He stands from the plush chair, feeling his back crack and his ankles pop.
Ivan shook his head a little bit. "I don't." he replied. "It…depends on what he is planning to do today." he shrugged a shoulder, looking over at Will and exhaling faintly, tired and a bit unsure what Will wanted from him next.
He purses his lips slightly, glancing to a large window peering out to a fairly empty area of the gardens. He is growing rather tired of deciphering words on pages, desperate to give his mind a short rest and his bones a well-deserved stretch. "Well, Ivan, do you have a favorite area of the palace?" He sets the biography down on a small end table. "Anything that you'd like to show me?"
Ivan hesitated. "I'm not allowed to take you anywhere but your chambers, here, and the gardens." he said carefully, fingers knitting together in his lap as he eyed Will to see what the young man's reaction to that would be. "So, I cannot show you anywhere." he did not want to get on Kaz's bad side, after all. That was never a good idea for any of the servants to do.
Will only barely withholds the exhausted sigh that escapes him. It's barely two in the afternoon and he already feels an unpleasant headache forming behind his eyes. "So you can't do anything entertaining?" He puffs his cheeks out slightly, momentarily looking like a fish. "Tell me, Ivan, what do you do for fun? You don't live and breathe working under Kazimir, do you?"
Ivan blinked at him slowly, clearly debating the question for a long moment internally. "Ah…no. I do not. But…" he trailed off. "I don't understand why you want to know. It is not particularly interesting of a subject." his wings twitched and shifted again, though they remained closed tight against his back. Spreading them in the library stirred up far too much dust, and he would risk knocking them into one of the shelves.
Will inhales as slow as he possibly can. "Listen, Ivan." He steeples his fingers below his nose and steadies the servant with harsh eye contact. "I am incredibly bored and I need to wait until Kazimir returns to even bother doing anything useful." He takes a single step towards the teen. "Please, tell me anything you wish or I might just order you to."
Ivan's gaze skittered away after a moment, and his wings pressed tighter together against his back. "I…yes sir." what else was there to say? Will was Kaz's concubine, and he knew better than to displease the emperor. Displeasing Will would be the same way, in all likelihood.
Will clenches his jaw. This child is… so frustrating? All Will's asking for is a conversation! To get to know the lad a little better! Is he not being forward enough? "Alright," He says slowly, trying to still the irritation bubbling in his chest. "So, Ivan…" Will glances at the wings pressing against the servant's back. "How common are winged folk such as yourself in this… realm?"
Ivan thought about that for a moment. "We…not in this area. We're more from the North and East. There are only some of us in this area." he replied, shrugging his shoulders faintly and glancing around the room rather than make eye contact. "If you went up to the northeast, there would be a lot more of us."
Will nods, slowly, and sits back down in the chair. He has to admit that this is fairly fascinating to him. He had only read about winged folk in snippets from his storybooks. "And so why are you here? Why aren't you northeast with the rest of your kind?"
He shrugged a shoulder. "My mother was brought here as a…spoil of war." he said carefully, skirting around the details of what, precisely, she would likely have been brought back here for. "She still lives here, and I'm not going to leave her." he shifted faintly, eyes flicking to Will and then away again.
Spoil of war? Will would love to say that he's surprised to hear that, but he's well aware of the Snake's war tactics. He nods, biting the inside of his cheek. "Does she also work here at the castle?" He asks, picking up Ivan's hesitation towards the topic and trying to pick the best route to go.
He frowned faintly, brows gathering together. "Sometimes." he replied, a touch cautious on how he responded to the question. After all, Will was Kaz's concubine. Directly tied to the emperor. Questions had to be answered carefully. Ivan didn't have much of a choice in that, really. It was always better to be cautious and careful in response to questions from someone powerful.
"Sometimes?" Will… isn't sure how to process that information. It's clear the servant is being skittish, not quite answering what Will's asking. How is he supposed to have a decent conversation when the recipient is hardly participating? He exhales, blowing a piece of hair from his face, and decides to change the subject. "Do you enjoy working here? They treat you well?"
He shrugged a shoulder. "For the most part, yes. It's…a good place to work, mostly." he replied, glancing over at Will again and flashing a quick, slightly nervous smile.
"That's good," Will nods. He rubs at his forehead; then he uses his arm to prop his jaw up. "Ivan." He exhales slowly. "I want you to know that I am not one you need to be scared of." He bites the inside of his cheek and sits up. This boy desperately needs to relax. It's not like Will is dangerous. He's nothing but a bookish human abducted from his village because he ventured into the woods at night. "I won't report what you tell me to Kazimir. Hell, you could tell me you were planning a mutiny against him and I'd probably help you."
Ivan studied him, still uncertain about this. Could Will's words be trusted? Could Will be trusted? Or was this a ruse? He wasn't sure. "If you say so, sir." he said slowly, blue eyes still studying Will carefully, still clearly cautious and distrustful of the young man seated across from him. The palace was not always a kind place, and just because Fae could not lie did not mean that they were always truthful.
The silence that falls over them once more is just growing increasingly and increasingly frustrating. Well, if Ivan won't talk about himself, then Will supposes that he could… "Ivan, are you familiar with reincarnation?" He inquires as casually as asking about the weather, picking at a small fuzzball on the couch.
Ivan's brows knotted together faintly at Will's words, and he shrugged. "I, ah, know what it is, yes." he replied slowly, cocking his head at Will and wondering why the other man had brought it up. It was not a concept that was popular, after all. Not something that most really considered about.