She'd not been informed beforehand that Grey would have been there, her informants had apparently deemed that piece of information not relevant, and subsequently had kept her in the dark - that being the wrong answer, for she knew that her informants would have rather dying rather than aiding the only one that gave them enough money to survive the uncaring roads of the capital during winter.
Not moving from her spot, she continued staring at the scene, taking into serious consideration what to do now that Grey had appeared on the scene.
Had he been collaborating with Clark for a long time without the Apostles' finding out? No, from the information she'd obtained from her knights of the roads were more trustworthy than the ones roaming without end on the streets.
Grabbing a pebble in one of the vases containing the plants close to the window, she made the dust on the floor forcefully move, right before cracking the door open.
Rotating the pebble in her right hand, she threw it on the other side of the room where Clark and Grey were apparently having a great time together, the sweet aroma making Rosalynde close her eyes and savoring the scent.
"What was that?" A delicate voice asked, shuffling of what seemed like cushions falling to the ground made Rosalynde bounce out of her hiding spot, her hands wrapping around Clark's neck completely, quickly cutting off the air supply thanks to the stimulated pressure to induce the anoxia to the brain.
She had to be careful though, too much strength and the neck would have snapped in two, and a woman with a broken neck couldn't exactly explain why her name had been placed on that paper now could she?
"I was starting to think that you'd lost your way," Grey commented cheerfully, using both arms to get up from the chair he'd been offered, dusting off his shoulders what seemed to be specks of dust.
Slowly laying down Mary Clark back on the plush chair she'd been occupying before tying the unconscious woman up, Rosalynde squared the form of Grey, who'd resumed in finishing the tea he'd been so kindly offered, lips posing on the ceramic crafted tea cup with yellow roses as he'd kept his eyes closed to savor the taste.
"Black tea with sliced up pieces of peach and petals of sunflower, I suggest trying it if you ever have time, the taste is quite unique," he told her while he kept on enjoying the tea.
"I'll make plans after I'm done and after you tell me exactly why you're here," he cocked his head aside, setting the cup down on one of the two armrests, standing up to shake off the torpor that'd taken control over his legs.
"Oh, you can probably guess why I'm here," an unsettling sensation crept back into Rosalynde's mind.
There could only be two reasons that'd led Hector Grey to precede her in coming there, and only one that could make sense.
"Her majesty ordered you to keep an eye on me - didn't she? To make sure I carry out her orders in the most precise manner," Hector's silence was enough to confirm her words, his eyes dropping to the unmoving body of Mary Clark for a nameless amount of time before raising his gaze once again.
"Ordered sounds like a harsh word, her majesty did indeed ask me to check up on you, but I don't know the reason behind that.
"Liar, you know the reason, and yet you still deny and act like a perfect gentleman as if nothing ever happened," she replied with a thin smile.
What Madame Hellenia had orchestrated on the night of the opera could not be tossed aside into one of the many speeches that Lord Regulus took his time in drawing it up.
Another factor that had to be taken into consideration is that the Smiling Dame still hadn't reported a single thing about Verity, just like a little kid wanting to keep his greatest secret close to his heart Rosalynde had done the same, keeping all he'd told her about Veruty close to her own heart.
Guilt was not what she'd experienced when she decided to say nothing to both Pharah and her majesty, she would have brought up the argument soon, but there were still many things she needed to find out before even trying to explain what exactly Verity seemed to be.
Verity, Madame Hellenia, the dried windflower that seemed to connect them all. Too many variables that Rosalynde had to keep her eyes on without fail.
For a moment Rosalynde nearly forgot why she'd been sent there, and taking the papers that her majesty had entrusted her she handed them to Grey, who in response raised an eyebrow at her gesture.
The document now in Grey's hand represented a temporary truce from both sides.
"Come on Mary Clark, open those traitor eyes of yours," Rosalynde chuckled with a venomous sweetness as she made her fingers dig holes in the passed out woman's wrists.
"That's going to leave a nasty mark," she side-eyed him with what the philosophers of the ancient times would call sheer exasperation, her eyes narrowing before a whimper made her snap back to meet the now terrorized eyes of Clark.
Keeping her nails locked on the woman's carpus, Rosalynde tilted her head slowly, her smile widening once before it started morphing into a predatory grin.
"Hello Mary Clark, you and I are going to have a long chat, you know?" She heard Grey's footsteps before his handsome face came into view, taking position behind the armchair where Clark had been placed.
He said nothing, his perpetual silence making her deemed it right to continue the unilateral chat she'd been having with Clark.
"Do you know why I'm here Mary?" Clark shook her head violently at that, the purest form of dread showing up in her eyes, a deep brown the same color of the chestnuts before they fell in autumn.
"It's because you've been lurking behind my back Mary," Rosalynde patted Mary's right cheek twice gently, as if praising a child for a test gone good.
Rosalynde had learned from a young age that calling people with their first name instead of their surname had more chance of destabilizing their psyche, Lord Regulus had once told her how the effect took place, but the reason seemed to fail her mind as she kept her eyes on the latter.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Clark replied, a whisper of reply coming out of her lips.
"She's lying," Grey stated all of a sudden, his eyes never leaving Clark's back from where he was standing.
Rosalynde raised her gaze to stare at him, her inquisitive eyes silently asking how he knew that in the first place. If, of course, he hadn't said that to see if she was able to come up with a strategy to actually use that three word long sentence to her advantage.
"No I'm not!" Clark screamed back. But Rosalynde had now shifted her attention to gaze, leaving Clark to scream at the four winds.
"You say she's lying?"
"Oh yes, I can vouch for that if you want, cross my heart with my soul descending to the deepest pits of the Helian definition of Hell if that's what you want. That, or whatever futile gesture to make you trust me for the affordable time we can define as half a minute," he sounded sincere, eyes not lying as she agreed with an obvious tone of sufficiency pending from her lips.
Turning back to Clark, Rosalynde took out from under her sleeves the same knife from before, making its sharp edge slide down the cheek of the latter, a thin line of red all that was left in its path.
"Let's play a game, it's called yes or no. I'm going to ask you a question and you'll have to answer, no shake or nod of head, if you convince me I'll spare your life," She heard a foot stomping to the floor, Grey's polish sole being the culprit of such despising single sound.
"Now, a small canary told me that you've been accumulating quite the stock of goods in the last few months. I've taken the liberty to compare the most recent deals with the ones you first made more or less over a decade and guess what?" She took her sweet time in asking the first question, wondering if Clark would have confessed already or if she would have tried to keep her mouth shut.
When Mary Clark however did not say a single word, Rosalynde bursted laughing out loud, nothing but amusement and pleasure filling the room in contrast with the futile resistance that the tied up woman was posing.
"What did I say Mary? You need to speak if you don't want to die," The knife started traveling once more over her face, now slicing the other cheek.
She hadn't even pressed the blade and the woman's cheek had already been stained red with her own blood, Rosalynde started wondering how her face would have been after she would have started applying the faintest of pressures.
And that moment wasn't at all far away as she'd initially imagined at the start of their little chat.
"Now let me ask again, what did you think I saw when I read those reports?" This time the other womans' tongue started moving on its own, her voice feeble as the first gushes of wind in the middle of a dry summer day.
"What did you find?" Rosalynde halted the path of the knife, the sharpened tip looming over the latters' right eye, inches from perforating her iris.
"Some interesting things actually, at the start of your career in the silk industry you were so detailed, so filling out every single page with information over information, making sure nothing and no one could ever lay a finger over your goods. In these last few years however you've been buying a lot of stocks, these last few times you did not even specify which goods you acquired." Mary Clark however seemed to finally have something to say, twisting in the chair before trying to break free from the cords.
"That's a false accusation, how dare you insinuate I've been to deceive the Crown. Yes, I've been neglecting work a bit by not filling out some paperwork because I've been having terrible migraines, but that doesn't mean I've been hiding something from your masters in the last months!" Neither Steel or Grey said anything after that, they simply exchanged a knowing look before Rosalynde ceded her post for Grey.
Clark had fallen into the improvised trap that Rosalynde had come up with without her even realizing it.
"Interesting, my friend here said that the timeline of your former transactions are approximately set a few years back, yet you just complained about the timelogs not matching with your version, meaning that you perfectly know when you started altering your papers," Rosalynde hadn't even realized it before he'd said it out loud, yes there were some abnormalities but she didn't expect to really pull it off.
That'd been a detail she'd paid attention to with another set of eyes - yes she'd seen missing words on the logs, but she would have never been able to use the words Grey had used to corner Clark.
Was this one of the reasons why Lord Regulus had wanted Grey? For his ability in talking to others? Communication was something he surely did not lack, unlike her, who'd never found pleasure in talking with people just to exchange trivial information.
"So Mrs. Clark, pray tell what are the goods you decided not to declare?" Rosalynde had started moving around the house while Grey continued asking questions, the knife in her hand bumping against her hips as she searched around the room.
"If I were a stack of papers holding illegal information, where would I be?" She mused out loud, looking behind an expensive painting figuring a dog walking beside two sows.
"Have you checked under the bed? Who knows maybe the monster that lives there will handle it to you," Rosalynde gave him a honey smile, raising a vase full of pink roses, weighing it with one hand before throwing it towards Grey.
He ducked just in time, the vase containing all those fresh flowers shuttering against the wall, water staining the pricey carpet close to the painting with the dog and sows.
"The next time you want to attempt arranging rooms that aren't yours give me a shout, that will be much appreciated I assure you."
"Tragic, and here I thought that throwing extravagant sets of ceramics was the latest trend. I'll have to report it to the monster under the bed, it was him that gave me this brilliant idea," He smiled before a low chuckle escaped him, shoulders tensing as he kept on laughing silently.
She gave him a dead stare, huffing in annoyance before her eyes landed on where the vase had shattered.
The wooden panels on the wall looked like they'd been disconnected in some parts, as if they had been moved and then put back in the same way, but the effect had been impossible to remove fully.
Crouching down on one knee Rosalynde went to feel the wall, gloves gliding up and down until her hidden fingers caught on a small perturbation, gripping the displaced wood tight before pulling with what she'd thought was adequate force.
Nearly falling on the floor with what looked like a panel of expensive wood in her hand she looked where the wood had fallen off.
"Well well, what do we have here Mary?" She hollered out loud, taking out two stacks of compressed paper, dropping them on the floor in the middle of the room before turning to look at Grey.
"All yours" She gestured towards the paper before Grey left Clark alone, kneeling on the floor as he started analyzing the contents, ruffling his hair to release a bizarre form of stress.
Rosalynde tucked away the knife once more, the palms of her hands meeting the bloody cheeks of Mary Clark, making her gloves gently stroke the smooth skin of the young widow, pressing lightly on the torn skin to make the wounded shiver under her touch.
Mary Clark had stopped speaking after she'd found those papers, her lips sealed while she kept on averting her gaze, eyes roaming around as she made sure that their gazes would not meet.
Her silence being the indisputable proof of guilt, the final piece to complete the small puzzle that the widow had laid down for them.
"Steel," Rosalyde heard Grey calling out for her, her eyes traveling to where his index finger was pointing.
She was looking at the shattered vase from another angle, the pink roses standing out from the white potsherds creating a magnificent contrast between life and destruction, but there had been something that'd escaped Steel's vigilant gaze the first time - something that this time had thankfully not gone unnoticed by her pale eyes.
The splendid newly picked roses weren't the only flowers that'd been resting inside the vase.
Inside the vase had been placed a windflower.
A windflower.
Steel turned first to look at Clark, only to then force her gaze to meet Grey's marble eyes, the look he gave her full of a knowing reality that the Left Hand of the Crown could not deny any further.
Mary Clark too was a member of Verity, occupying the same rank of Madame Hellenia perhaps? Who knows what information she'd kept
"A windflower, I wonder how this got here –" Mary Clark pushed her body forward, tripping on herself as her face met with the floor, but before Rosalynde could utter another word, the door that gave to the entrance slammed open - the cardinals unhinging from their position as the elegantly carved door that gave to the apartments entrance came down.
"What a lovely chit-chat that's happening here, thankfully I arrived before the fun ended."
Katherine waltzing over the fallen door, with both arms wrapped up in bandages that had just been changed, with the pearly white color of the gauzes framing the her wavy lengths that this time had been braided into a single one behind her face she stared at the scene with an amused smile playing on her lips.
She tilted her head, clasping her hands behind her back to better observe what she knew Rosalynde had mainly done.
"Let me guess, the room needed some styling and Rose here decided to throw that damned piece of vase that for sure is worth at least the sporadic amount of eighty golden dimes over your head," Katherine guessed correctly, making Grey's face fall into a stare shifting between surprise and the sheer face of someone that been doing everything in his power to keep the mood light and amicable.
He was doing truly everything to not laugh out loud, knowing that the object of the discussion was very well eager to listening
"Don't. Call. Me. Rose," Rosalynde treated once more, exponentially narrowing her eyes while her smile thinned to something close to a perfect combination between hatred and mockery.
Katherine raised her hands in reply, surrendering to the predatory gaze of her comrade.
"Looks like you were able to save your hands from being damaged," Rosalydne pointed out to the bandage-free healthy hands of the latest entry.
"All thanks to you actually, when I saw you stand up to shied Pharah I stopped playing and down under the seat I was in, you saved me from being labeled as damaged goods we could say," a musician without her hands was as good as dead, with absolutely no way to come.
"So, what exactly do we have here? Empress Amalia sent me to check on both of you, even if we all can agree on the fact that my presence wasn't needed in the slightest," Katherine stated, stretching her back with her hands still firmly clasped behind her back, making Rosalynde shoot a look of imposed silence to Grey.
If her majesty's trust could only be obtained by her sending not one, but two to overlook her on the job, then the situation had drastically started falling out of hand.
"We still don't know, we found the documents regarding Clark's transactions in the past few months that her majesty wanted, but what she acquired still fails us," Rosalynde replied with false certainty, making her heel stomp over the windflower to cover it from Katherine's curious gaze.
Fewer people knew about Verity, the easier it would have been for her to investigate this group of condensed iniquitous human minds.
That also counted for the rest of the Apostles, Katherine and Pharah included.
She had an oath to fulfill before her time on that land came to an end, and to make sure that both women remained safe from being caught up in whatever the threat of Verity really posed she would have continued playing card over card to make sure that the two of them would have remained as ignorant as possible.
The bliss that came in the form of ignorance was the true gateway to live a life without care, without the boulder of the past rolling down a mountain made up of nothing but obvious misery.
That was what she'd secretly promised Pharah years ago ,when the latter had been carefully stitching her up with a four thumb long needle her scarred back, while Rosalynde's teeth had kept their grip on the strip of leather she'd used to not make a living soul hear her screaming drenched in agony.
The scars on her back had always been easy to hide, a dress fully covering her back until it came to the start of the neckline had always done the trick in hiding those pale white lines from prying eyes.
With time she'd decided to apply the same method for her hands, covering them up with thick gloves designed to not make her lose sensibility even after wearing them for an indescribable amount of hours.
She never took them off except before going to sleep, and before getting into the soaking bathtub to physically wash away the blood.
She didn't even take them off while drowning in carnal pleasure when she had time to mentally escape the bounds of her mortal mind.
"Well then, seems like you got it all under control," Katherine said after a while, making her way towards the defeated woman who'd once had held the title of Queen of Silks.
Rosalynde made her way towards Grey, who'd kept on rummaging between the papers, didn't stop when he felt Steel crouch down beside him, her lips dangerously close to his ear as she whispered something to him.
He didn't halt his actions as she finally brought her lips away, making sure to take the windflower away from Katherine's eyesight, shoving the partially destroyed proof of Verity's existence in a hidden pocket of her vestiary.
Katherine hopefully hadn't seen her hiding the proof, she'd made her hand move the second after her eyes had shifted attention, waiting for the perfect instant before snatching the windflower from under her boot.
But that wasn't enough to assure her that Carter hadn't seen.
"I believe my work is done here," Grey exclaimed all of a sudden, getting back on his legs before going to step over the door, both stacks of papers under his arms.
"Goodnight then, I'm going to study the paper before ret-" Right before he could finish his sentence, a death-shattering scream slicing the closed-off air in two, all three sets of eyes turning to look towards the sound.
Mary Clark had cut her ropes, fingers burying deep against the rug over where she'd been immobilized, the rasping of her throat impossible unhear as she raised her right hand close to her mouth, a silvery gleam appearing under her nails.
Agrigentum - otherly known as the white touch of death.
"Don't let her bite her nails!" Rosalynde bounced forward, making Katherine fall to the side as the scene started to unfold in front of them.
Rosalynde was too late in grabbing Clark's nails, the sight of blood pouring out from the broken nails all she could focus on as Clark was overwhelmed by uncontrollable spasm alternated with what looked like the beginning of a seizure, her chestnut eyes slowly losing every vibrant emotion they'd displayed up until half-an-hour ago.
She'd preferred facing the wrath of death instead of rattling out a single word, and she'd decided to end it with style, by taking all her goddamn secrets with her to the grave.
The living room of Mary Clark's room spiraled into a daunting silence, with failure being the only thing left in their wake.
Verity had won this round, leaving Rosalynde and Grey to clean up after the crumbs they hadn't been able to avoid.
One step forward, but at the same time two steps backwards, that was all they'd gain tonight. The awareness of an imminent danger, and tugging along that chain of cynicism there was the sense of insecurity playing charades with that growing and looming sense of ignorance.