i know what i'm doing

He didn't do it just to mess with the young'uns - surely not! He may be a scoundrel, a mongrel, a pauper and a half, but Minoth is not mean-spirited. He had left that burden of influence to Malos (and even Amalthus, in terms of the interpersonal, was not strictly mean-spirited).

Out of all the ways to go, though...persecution against the empire for reminding an adolescent monarch of the trials and tribulations commensurate with puberty, whether late or early or circumvented? Sounds like a good story, is all I'm saying. There are worse hormones latent in his own body to which Minoth has been subjected, when considered against the simmering urge to cast just the littlest stone, stir the pot just enough to bloom the spices and keep the bottom from burning.

Maybe it's a test of how well he really knows them, the ensemble cast of characters. Say, self-serving, but mean-spirited, eh? How well can the playwright really pull the strings, and still be praised for skillful pathos and ethos?

If he knows Haze, she loves fairytales. She superimposes them and their mores onto every moment, finds no struggle in the differentiation of appreciation and attraction in the reductive sense that she is not entirely altogether clued in to the fact that there is a difference, at all.

If he knows Hugo, he loves a challenge. He has been trained never to speak his thoughts aloud, always to measure himself, and yet something in Minoth so sorely wants to be able to tease out what lurks beneath the surface, those personal challenges ongoing where no one can debate with him right from wrong.

(And there is, of course, Aegaeon, the tidal impetus, to be served his lines in due course; Aegaeon the busybody who wasn't there to defend Hugo the last time the fraternity got joshing about the as-yet-unspoken developmental advantages and disadvantages of their smallest, most junior member.)

Haze had thought that it was a revenge against Aegaeon and his solicitous comments toward Lora, to engage Lora herself in commentary about Aegaeon's finely-sculpted-ness. Two can play, and talk over the heads of a third. Of course they can. They always have.

Haze had thought this, and then fallen for her own trick. In the same way, she had sought to honorably compliment His Majesty the Emperor, and ended up looking up to someone half a head her diminutive. She used to speak to Jin following battles, but with so many other options, she doesn't anymore. And see where that ploy has gotten her.

What is it like, being an emperor? You carry yourself with such elegance! Are you sure you haven't garnered any stray cuts or sustained any unexplained bruises in the night? I can help with that. I'm the only one! Let me heal you, by which I mean, let me touch you, with a tender hand.

It's almost like doting. And Hugo doesn't do that. Hugo doesn't know how to do that. Aegaeon knows it well, and conveys it via bonbons, like an indulgent grandparent.

So what if he's set Hugo on a wild goose chase, to exploit Haze's pivotal weakness in needing, needing, needing? Which she got from Lora, of course. They're all so needy Malos is liable to puke.

It'll be good for the young master, eventually. He's plenty sharp, just like any of his tools. He can see Haze for all her faults even where dear Aegaeon might be blind. He can see this task laid as a gentle gauntlet, promising him honest work of a kind he has never enjoyed.

Haze is already thinking it, seeing and hearing it in a glorious surround-sound theater of the mind. She doesn't like to let herself, but she is. Eventually, she will capitulate. Eventually, Hugo's earnestness - his sweet sincerity - will break her down.

It's all just a matter of time.

Time, their luxury, beyond all manner of military money. Rest, their vice. Indolence, their sin.

And if it's not a happy ending, then this may be the last thing Ser Minoth, in utilization of his humanitarian gifts, ever does, among anyone that matters.

He will have changed something, he thinks. Even such a little change will have its ripples. Even just one additional line, one trivial direction for the turning of heads.

For the contact of eyes. For the grasping of hands. For the bending of knees and the offering of momentum.

For the joy of youth, eternal or conscripted, and having such a choice.