Deception: The lesser part of Valour – Heartless: Part 3
by Commander Isha t'Vaurek
Post Details
OOC: With thanks to Jools, who read the early drafts and persuaded me to go ahead with this. :)
ON:
The Elements had a sense of irony, that much became apparent to Raedheol shortly after his interview with Ael’Riov Latasalaem began.
“You knew?” Rh’vaurek said across the wide polished desk that dominated the small office in the wing commander's residence on Coriel VII.
Ael'Riov Latasalaem smiled, “The problem with you bright young things is that for some reason you think that everyone over the age of eighty is weak in the head. Of course I knew!” he said with a shake of his head, “its my job to know. Why don’t you tell me about it Rh’vaurek – after all, you’ve been waiting some time for this moment.”
”Ten years,” Raedheol replied as Latasalaem leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach.
“She’s still alive, I assume? Of course she is,” he said as Raedheol nodded, “You like to play with your food, don’t you? I never saw the appeal of that myself.” Latasalaem said with distaste. “Go on then.”
The interest of Latasalaem did not surprise Raedheol, the man was his mentor, having spotted his potential he had funded his education and tempted him to join the Tal’Shiar then, after Isha had betrayed him he had ensured that Raedheol was given a new and improved posting after a suitable period of ‘disgrace’. It was Latasalaem who had listened after Isha had betrayed him … he seemed to understand his desire for revenge. Raedheol paused at that thought, but catching the quizzical glance from Latasalaem he continued to relate the highlights of the last forty six hours
“You enjoy your work far too much,” Latasalaem remarked as the story concluded, then to Raedheol’s surprise he burst out laughing.
“This is the best story I have heard in years. You abduct the beloved wife of a man who could buy you a thousand times over, kill her pilot, assault her, shoot her, brutalise her and plan to kill her, but not until she acknowledges the damage that she has done to you! And what was that damage? To jilt you and cause you to lose your job, an event which did more to further your career than a century undercover would have done,” he paused to draw a long chuckling breath. “Before she met you that woman had probably suffered nothing more painful than an ill fitting pair of shoes, yet for what is arguably the most trivial of offences you stalk and harass her for ten years and then subject her to an ordeal that would break the most hardened whore in hell. Your retribution is magnificently disproportionate, don’t you think!” He began to laugh again.
Raedheol shrugged slightly. Disproportionate? Of course not? though he thought it an odd opinion for Latasalaem to venture.
“I always knew you were special! I could hardly have asked for more, Rh’vaurek. I found the need to open a window for you, and you used the opportunity perfectly.”
“Open a window?” Raedheol asked.
“Isha has been making a nuisance of herself,” he said, “So much so that I had to activate my insurance policy.”
The man was talking in riddles, “How so?” he asked. There was something about the conversation that was wrong but Raedheol could not quite identify it.
“Isha broke her word to me. She was supposed to support in my bid for a particular senate seat which is in the gift of her husband, however, when that seat recently became vacant after its previous occupant suffered a fatal mishap, she put her support behind a different candidate entirely. She has been growing increasingly difficult to deal with over the last few years and that was the absolute last insult. I needed her brought back into the fold with a timely reminder of how wide my reach is. There was no-one who could provide that better than you.” Latasalaem slid a blank padd over the desk, “Once you give me her co-ordinates I will alert her husband and no doubt they can have a touching and tearful reunion. He will be so grateful that even if she is still inclined to oppose me, which I doubt, he will overrule her.”
Raedheol reached for the padd, pausing as he was about to enter the requested information. “Isha knows that I work for you?” he asked.
The genial smile on Latasalaem’s face was full of teeth, like a ravenous Kaa`hhz “Of course, otherwise the message I sent would be meaningless,” the Ael’Riov replied. “She will also believe that I have restrained you from taking any further action to harm her, that in itself should be enough to guarantee her co-operation.”
“Ael’Riov, what is to stop her from telling tr’Illialhlae that I was responsible?”
“Ah, that is perhaps the most charming part of this story, you’ll like this. As you are no doubt aware I brokered her marriage along with Llaiir t’Khellian, her mother. It seemed a perfect arrangement, My mistake was to think Isha would be easy to manipulate – No-one said a bad word about her, everyone loved her, I could only imagine that she routinely agreed with whoever she happened to be talking to at any one time – desperate to please - how could I conclude otherwise? Nveid was besotted with her from the moment they met - I had no doubt that he would do whatever she asked and that I would be the one guiding that advice. It turns out that the woman has an obdurate will and adheres to some contradictory and unfathomable code of duranium coated principles. She also developed a deep and genuine affection for her husband.”
Raedheol shifted uncomfortably in his chair, this was history. Why was Latasalaem revisiting this chapter of his life.
“Not long after their marriage I had reason to visit the newly installed Ihhei t’Illialhlae. In return for a little knowledge about my own senatorial ambitions she was good enough to give me her side of your story. Now, the tale you told me was one of a man wronged by a cold unfeeling harridan, dripping with righteous rage and scorn for any man foolish enough to trust a duplicitous woman, yet hers was a sad song of love and heartbreak. She loved you Rh’vaurek, even then, and she could not understand why you had been so cruel to her when she was only doing her duty; she would probably have given anything for your good opinion. I’d wager that she’d have returned to you after her marriage, if you’d given her the option, and Nveid would have looked the other way too if it meant he could keep her,” Latasalaem added with an unpleasantly lewd chuckle.
Latasalaem extended a finger and pressed a button on the panel inlaid in the desktop. Shortly after, a recording played, Latasalaem spoke and the voice that replied was unmistakably Isha’s, although lacking the energy Raedheol remembered from that distant summer.
“I want your soul, Isha and I need the truth. You are already my creature, you became so when you got involved with my man. Of course you will protest and complain and curse me for a fool when my wishes conflict with your own plans, but you will do as I wish all the same. Your friend has been working for me for some time now. Imagine my chagrin when he was summarily dismissed and stripped of his rank. I admit that I was not watching him as closely as I might, it is not unusual for my son or one of his friends to borrow my yacht. I also admit that I had known him to be ambitious but I never thought he would try and reach so high as you … But Isha, was it not was it not just a little vindictive to do that to him once he began to bore you?”
“So he does blame me?” she said, “Not an unreasonable assumption for him to make given what I said to him, though it is wrong, one does not always act on words said in anger.”
“I had some trouble preventing him from exposing the details of your affair, but eventually he saw reason when I pointed out that you were about to be placed exactly where I wanted you and that his petty act of vengeance would have to wait.”
“This is not a very persuasive case, Ael’riov..”
“No, but I think you will see reason. He has told me the truth as he knows it but I need to know what really happened.”
Isha sighed, “I no longer have a soul to offer you, Latasalaem, so you will have to settle for my candour, but do not presume to control me. My mother gave me an ultimatum, to end the affair or never return to the House, you know which choice I made. He,” she couldn’t bring herself to say his name, “took the news … badly. He thought that I had always planned to throw him over and a lot of things were said that can never be taken back, I wished him to feel as much pain as I was feeling and so I threatened to destroy his career: even after all our time together it was a few seconds before he understood that I really could do that. He struck me then, and I attacked him without control or dignity. I left that place with my heart in shreds.” Isha said flatly, “I do not remember how I got home but I am told I was in a delirious state. They kept me sedated for several days. Afterwards I learned that my mother had been true to her word, it was she who had h im stripped of rank and expelled from the Galae, I am only surprised that she stopped there.”
“She didn’t, I intervened. She might have been able to displace my agent but he was much too valuable for me to allow her to have him killed,” Latasalaem said.
“What happened to him?” Isha asked after a pause.
“He was reinstated at his previous rank the situation explained officially by a clerical error. Then he was transferred with immediate effect to a diplomatic post. Neither you, nor I will appear to be connected with it.”
“My mother must be apoplectic,” Isha said. “Don’t ever tell him the truth, it is better that he thinks I am responsible,” she said.
“You think that? He will not do anything for now but sooner or later he will attempt to take revenge.”
“I know he will, but if he ever learns that it wasn’t me who tried to ruin him he will come back and destroy everything built here in the belief that he can put things right and revive the dream. I don’t want that, and nor I think do you. It has been three months and things have moved on. You have my co-operation in this matter, Latasalaem, I trust that you will return the favour should I require it.”
“She didn’t know you very well, did she!?” Lataslaaem chortled, “Put things right, indeed? She'll not mention your involvement because she really does think she deserves what you did to her. I knew what the reality was, and recognised that there would come a time when this knowledge would be useful – as I said, an insurance policy. She lacks rationality, and you, my friend, well, there is not a forgiving bone in your body. It was perfect!”
Raedheol’s hands dropped to his knees, Latasalaem's padd held tight between his fingers. The rush of blood through his brain as he finally understood was deafening. He had sat in this room many times, early mornings over hholaer (coffee) and first meal, late evenings over a glass of rhennish or heimnhu; sometimes Latasalaem would speak of his friends and in those tales he would weave new details about Isha's excesses and Raedheol, in his blindness had been only too willing to believe them, to feed his obsession, to keep that spark of rage from dying.
“You knew this?” he spluttered. He could hear her pleas, taste her fear, a creature defenceless against him.
“If you had known would you have given her such a convincing performance? I don’t think so!”
Latasalaem thought Raedheol to be a man like himself, ruthless and without principles; a reputation Raedheol cultivated and largely deserved. Yet now Raedheol felt as though Ihhuein herself had laid her hand on his brow, the water elemental flooding him with a wave that cleansed and promised rebirth, crystallising into an icy calm through which he caught a momentary glimpse of pure clarity. He was not a spiritual man, but in that instant Raedheol recognised that he was being given one last chance to become something more than just another dark and unscrupulous hand of the Empire. With the realisation that he could not have harmed Isha had he not genuinely thought she had acted with deliberate malice came the possibility of redemption.
“You acted as my instrument and I’m sure you have done an admirable job of subduing her but it leaves us with a problem, useful as you are to have on hand, I have no choice but to reassign you – we can’t have you going around kidnapping innocent women, can we?”
Disproportionate?, Raedheol reflected with a short bitter laugh, it was monstrous.
Misinterpreting the sound as amusement Latasalaem continued, “there is a suitable vacancy at the Embassy on Cardassia Prime, it should fit you quite well, actually - nice and distant, you can operate without much interference from home, the usual reporting lines – and you speak the language, don't you?”
“I do,” Raedheol said rubbing his hand over his jaw, the scent of Isha’s hair still lingered there; he breathed deeply before lowering it.
“Then its settled, I think this stint at the Embassy will do wonders for your career.” Latasalaem observed Raedheol for a moment, “You just don’t care about what you have done! You really are a heartless bastard, aren't you?”
No, Raedheol thought, but you are. “Its the nature of the game,” he said getting to his feet.
“The co-ordinates,” Latasalaem reminded him.
Raedheol dropped the padd onto the desktop. As he did so, Latasalaem slid another padd across the desk, “Report to this location within an hour,” he said, “there isn’t time for you to take a detour to finish the job, Isha is more useful to me alive,” he said, misinterpreting Raedheol’s intentions, “she’ll be ‘rescued’ in a day or two.”
A day or two? She would wake in about four hours, alone, trapped in the dark.
Time and distance, Raedheol told himself. Let the man win the power he craved, let him manipulate his way into the senate and line his coffers with latinum, let him think Rh'vaurek Raedheol to be his tool.
Ael'Riov Latasalaem was not the only one who recorded conversations. Raedheol had every word in that room recorded, every lie about Isha that Latasalaem had ever fed him and countless other schemes and details that would compromise him. Latasalaem had used him and he held him ultimately responsible for what he had done to Isha; Raedheol had waited ten years for her and he would wait a lifetime if necessary for Latasalaem's blood.
It would take an angel to forgive him, Raedheol knew, but if Isha would consent to see him, and if she would listen to what he had to say; he would play her the recording and let her decide what was to be done.
This act of vengeance was one that would belong to both of them.
OFF
Ael'Riov Latasalaem
Rh'vaurek Raedheol
by Commander Isha t'Vaurek
Post Details
| Title | Heartless: Part 3 | |
| Mission | Deception: The lesser part of Valour | |
| Author(s) | Commander Isha t'Vaurek | |
| Posted | Sat Nov 22, 2008 @ 8:47am | |
| Location | Coriel VII | |
| Timeline | 2355 - ancient, but pertinent history |
ON:
The Elements had a sense of irony, that much became apparent to Raedheol shortly after his interview with Ael’Riov Latasalaem began.
“You knew?” Rh’vaurek said across the wide polished desk that dominated the small office in the wing commander's residence on Coriel VII.
Ael'Riov Latasalaem smiled, “The problem with you bright young things is that for some reason you think that everyone over the age of eighty is weak in the head. Of course I knew!” he said with a shake of his head, “its my job to know. Why don’t you tell me about it Rh’vaurek – after all, you’ve been waiting some time for this moment.”
”Ten years,” Raedheol replied as Latasalaem leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach.
“She’s still alive, I assume? Of course she is,” he said as Raedheol nodded, “You like to play with your food, don’t you? I never saw the appeal of that myself.” Latasalaem said with distaste. “Go on then.”
The interest of Latasalaem did not surprise Raedheol, the man was his mentor, having spotted his potential he had funded his education and tempted him to join the Tal’Shiar then, after Isha had betrayed him he had ensured that Raedheol was given a new and improved posting after a suitable period of ‘disgrace’. It was Latasalaem who had listened after Isha had betrayed him … he seemed to understand his desire for revenge. Raedheol paused at that thought, but catching the quizzical glance from Latasalaem he continued to relate the highlights of the last forty six hours
“You enjoy your work far too much,” Latasalaem remarked as the story concluded, then to Raedheol’s surprise he burst out laughing.
“This is the best story I have heard in years. You abduct the beloved wife of a man who could buy you a thousand times over, kill her pilot, assault her, shoot her, brutalise her and plan to kill her, but not until she acknowledges the damage that she has done to you! And what was that damage? To jilt you and cause you to lose your job, an event which did more to further your career than a century undercover would have done,” he paused to draw a long chuckling breath. “Before she met you that woman had probably suffered nothing more painful than an ill fitting pair of shoes, yet for what is arguably the most trivial of offences you stalk and harass her for ten years and then subject her to an ordeal that would break the most hardened whore in hell. Your retribution is magnificently disproportionate, don’t you think!” He began to laugh again.
Raedheol shrugged slightly. Disproportionate? Of course not? though he thought it an odd opinion for Latasalaem to venture.
“I always knew you were special! I could hardly have asked for more, Rh’vaurek. I found the need to open a window for you, and you used the opportunity perfectly.”
“Open a window?” Raedheol asked.
“Isha has been making a nuisance of herself,” he said, “So much so that I had to activate my insurance policy.”
The man was talking in riddles, “How so?” he asked. There was something about the conversation that was wrong but Raedheol could not quite identify it.
“Isha broke her word to me. She was supposed to support in my bid for a particular senate seat which is in the gift of her husband, however, when that seat recently became vacant after its previous occupant suffered a fatal mishap, she put her support behind a different candidate entirely. She has been growing increasingly difficult to deal with over the last few years and that was the absolute last insult. I needed her brought back into the fold with a timely reminder of how wide my reach is. There was no-one who could provide that better than you.” Latasalaem slid a blank padd over the desk, “Once you give me her co-ordinates I will alert her husband and no doubt they can have a touching and tearful reunion. He will be so grateful that even if she is still inclined to oppose me, which I doubt, he will overrule her.”
Raedheol reached for the padd, pausing as he was about to enter the requested information. “Isha knows that I work for you?” he asked.
The genial smile on Latasalaem’s face was full of teeth, like a ravenous Kaa`hhz “Of course, otherwise the message I sent would be meaningless,” the Ael’Riov replied. “She will also believe that I have restrained you from taking any further action to harm her, that in itself should be enough to guarantee her co-operation.”
“Ael’Riov, what is to stop her from telling tr’Illialhlae that I was responsible?”
“Ah, that is perhaps the most charming part of this story, you’ll like this. As you are no doubt aware I brokered her marriage along with Llaiir t’Khellian, her mother. It seemed a perfect arrangement, My mistake was to think Isha would be easy to manipulate – No-one said a bad word about her, everyone loved her, I could only imagine that she routinely agreed with whoever she happened to be talking to at any one time – desperate to please - how could I conclude otherwise? Nveid was besotted with her from the moment they met - I had no doubt that he would do whatever she asked and that I would be the one guiding that advice. It turns out that the woman has an obdurate will and adheres to some contradictory and unfathomable code of duranium coated principles. She also developed a deep and genuine affection for her husband.”
Raedheol shifted uncomfortably in his chair, this was history. Why was Latasalaem revisiting this chapter of his life.
“Not long after their marriage I had reason to visit the newly installed Ihhei t’Illialhlae. In return for a little knowledge about my own senatorial ambitions she was good enough to give me her side of your story. Now, the tale you told me was one of a man wronged by a cold unfeeling harridan, dripping with righteous rage and scorn for any man foolish enough to trust a duplicitous woman, yet hers was a sad song of love and heartbreak. She loved you Rh’vaurek, even then, and she could not understand why you had been so cruel to her when she was only doing her duty; she would probably have given anything for your good opinion. I’d wager that she’d have returned to you after her marriage, if you’d given her the option, and Nveid would have looked the other way too if it meant he could keep her,” Latasalaem added with an unpleasantly lewd chuckle.
Latasalaem extended a finger and pressed a button on the panel inlaid in the desktop. Shortly after, a recording played, Latasalaem spoke and the voice that replied was unmistakably Isha’s, although lacking the energy Raedheol remembered from that distant summer.
“I want your soul, Isha and I need the truth. You are already my creature, you became so when you got involved with my man. Of course you will protest and complain and curse me for a fool when my wishes conflict with your own plans, but you will do as I wish all the same. Your friend has been working for me for some time now. Imagine my chagrin when he was summarily dismissed and stripped of his rank. I admit that I was not watching him as closely as I might, it is not unusual for my son or one of his friends to borrow my yacht. I also admit that I had known him to be ambitious but I never thought he would try and reach so high as you … But Isha, was it not was it not just a little vindictive to do that to him once he began to bore you?”
“So he does blame me?” she said, “Not an unreasonable assumption for him to make given what I said to him, though it is wrong, one does not always act on words said in anger.”
“I had some trouble preventing him from exposing the details of your affair, but eventually he saw reason when I pointed out that you were about to be placed exactly where I wanted you and that his petty act of vengeance would have to wait.”
“This is not a very persuasive case, Ael’riov..”
“No, but I think you will see reason. He has told me the truth as he knows it but I need to know what really happened.”
Isha sighed, “I no longer have a soul to offer you, Latasalaem, so you will have to settle for my candour, but do not presume to control me. My mother gave me an ultimatum, to end the affair or never return to the House, you know which choice I made. He,” she couldn’t bring herself to say his name, “took the news … badly. He thought that I had always planned to throw him over and a lot of things were said that can never be taken back, I wished him to feel as much pain as I was feeling and so I threatened to destroy his career: even after all our time together it was a few seconds before he understood that I really could do that. He struck me then, and I attacked him without control or dignity. I left that place with my heart in shreds.” Isha said flatly, “I do not remember how I got home but I am told I was in a delirious state. They kept me sedated for several days. Afterwards I learned that my mother had been true to her word, it was she who had h im stripped of rank and expelled from the Galae, I am only surprised that she stopped there.”
“She didn’t, I intervened. She might have been able to displace my agent but he was much too valuable for me to allow her to have him killed,” Latasalaem said.
“What happened to him?” Isha asked after a pause.
“He was reinstated at his previous rank the situation explained officially by a clerical error. Then he was transferred with immediate effect to a diplomatic post. Neither you, nor I will appear to be connected with it.”
“My mother must be apoplectic,” Isha said. “Don’t ever tell him the truth, it is better that he thinks I am responsible,” she said.
“You think that? He will not do anything for now but sooner or later he will attempt to take revenge.”
“I know he will, but if he ever learns that it wasn’t me who tried to ruin him he will come back and destroy everything built here in the belief that he can put things right and revive the dream. I don’t want that, and nor I think do you. It has been three months and things have moved on. You have my co-operation in this matter, Latasalaem, I trust that you will return the favour should I require it.”
“She didn’t know you very well, did she!?” Lataslaaem chortled, “Put things right, indeed? She'll not mention your involvement because she really does think she deserves what you did to her. I knew what the reality was, and recognised that there would come a time when this knowledge would be useful – as I said, an insurance policy. She lacks rationality, and you, my friend, well, there is not a forgiving bone in your body. It was perfect!”
Raedheol’s hands dropped to his knees, Latasalaem's padd held tight between his fingers. The rush of blood through his brain as he finally understood was deafening. He had sat in this room many times, early mornings over hholaer (coffee) and first meal, late evenings over a glass of rhennish or heimnhu; sometimes Latasalaem would speak of his friends and in those tales he would weave new details about Isha's excesses and Raedheol, in his blindness had been only too willing to believe them, to feed his obsession, to keep that spark of rage from dying.
“You knew this?” he spluttered. He could hear her pleas, taste her fear, a creature defenceless against him.
“If you had known would you have given her such a convincing performance? I don’t think so!”
Latasalaem thought Raedheol to be a man like himself, ruthless and without principles; a reputation Raedheol cultivated and largely deserved. Yet now Raedheol felt as though Ihhuein herself had laid her hand on his brow, the water elemental flooding him with a wave that cleansed and promised rebirth, crystallising into an icy calm through which he caught a momentary glimpse of pure clarity. He was not a spiritual man, but in that instant Raedheol recognised that he was being given one last chance to become something more than just another dark and unscrupulous hand of the Empire. With the realisation that he could not have harmed Isha had he not genuinely thought she had acted with deliberate malice came the possibility of redemption.
“You acted as my instrument and I’m sure you have done an admirable job of subduing her but it leaves us with a problem, useful as you are to have on hand, I have no choice but to reassign you – we can’t have you going around kidnapping innocent women, can we?”
Disproportionate?, Raedheol reflected with a short bitter laugh, it was monstrous.
Misinterpreting the sound as amusement Latasalaem continued, “there is a suitable vacancy at the Embassy on Cardassia Prime, it should fit you quite well, actually - nice and distant, you can operate without much interference from home, the usual reporting lines – and you speak the language, don't you?”
“I do,” Raedheol said rubbing his hand over his jaw, the scent of Isha’s hair still lingered there; he breathed deeply before lowering it.
“Then its settled, I think this stint at the Embassy will do wonders for your career.” Latasalaem observed Raedheol for a moment, “You just don’t care about what you have done! You really are a heartless bastard, aren't you?”
No, Raedheol thought, but you are. “Its the nature of the game,” he said getting to his feet.
“The co-ordinates,” Latasalaem reminded him.
Raedheol dropped the padd onto the desktop. As he did so, Latasalaem slid another padd across the desk, “Report to this location within an hour,” he said, “there isn’t time for you to take a detour to finish the job, Isha is more useful to me alive,” he said, misinterpreting Raedheol’s intentions, “she’ll be ‘rescued’ in a day or two.”
A day or two? She would wake in about four hours, alone, trapped in the dark.
Time and distance, Raedheol told himself. Let the man win the power he craved, let him manipulate his way into the senate and line his coffers with latinum, let him think Rh'vaurek Raedheol to be his tool.
Ael'Riov Latasalaem was not the only one who recorded conversations. Raedheol had every word in that room recorded, every lie about Isha that Latasalaem had ever fed him and countless other schemes and details that would compromise him. Latasalaem had used him and he held him ultimately responsible for what he had done to Isha; Raedheol had waited ten years for her and he would wait a lifetime if necessary for Latasalaem's blood.
It would take an angel to forgive him, Raedheol knew, but if Isha would consent to see him, and if she would listen to what he had to say; he would play her the recording and let her decide what was to be done.
This act of vengeance was one that would belong to both of them.
OFF
Ael'Riov Latasalaem
Rh'vaurek Raedheol