Chapter 14 Page 17
December 7th, 2016Revelation is on the agenda. What sort of revelation? Cienan is a show-don’t-tell kinda guy. Vote for Snow by Night on Top Web Comics to see where this is coming.
Thank you all for the kind words and encouragement. I’ve been meeting with doctors this week. Surgery to remove the cancer will be following in short order. Likely later this month. I’m usually take a two-week hiatus at the end of the year. I’ll be doing that again. I want to get to the end of this scene which is four pages away. So the last update this year is Dec. 21. I’ll pick back up Jan. 9, after the 12 Days of Christmas are over.
Well not the entire conversation, but pretty close lol.
I’m not a sorcerer, I’m Astute…
And a Sorcerer
Does he have a different paper in each desk drawer for all the ways he guessed the meeting could go, and just pulled out the one which best described what happened? That’s how I’d do it. :-)
That should hardly necessary, since those 3 tactics in this order is really a very likely course of action in exactly this order, coming from a girl like her. Since she is stunningly beautiful and well known to use that regularly to pursue her goals, you don’t have to be a genius to guess that she will try seduction first to manipulte a man. If this doesn’t work, it is very likely that both threats and pleading for pity will come up, since it is pretty much the only thing she can do when cornered and not yet knowing what he really could want from her. Only question is what she would try first. Since she already knows Cienan put quite a bit of effort into procuring the incriminating info on herself and is not exactly known as a big Softie, pleading for pity is the most desperate and the most unlikely to succeed, so again it is very probable that she would try threats before pity. Really the only way where this conversation could have gone another way is if she skipped threats and pity and told him right away: “Tell me what you want from me, I’ll do aanything.” In this case he would not have needed the “schedule” to impress her by implying “I have foreseen each and every of your tactics and reactions and I already know you will do what I want in the end.” If she offered anything less than total Submission when first asking what he really wants, he would just have to delay and avoid a clear answer on the question what he wants for a little while to let her fall back to threats and pleading for pity, before presenting the schedule. The psychological tactic behind it is really good: If he stated what he wants from her right at the beginning, she would have wondered how badly he wants it and if that gives her some kind of leverage over him. By withholding his demands and making her follow his anticipated schedule, he suggests that he knows exactly how this negotiation will play out and that she really has no other option than revealing what he wants to know.
Ngl, the first panel made me laugh out loud.
“What are you?”
“I’m Batma—I mean, Cienan yr Tuathal!”
I am most intrigued, but I think I know what he needs her for Penelope. A wonderful cover for the woman just a guess, and with now having her under his thumb it just makes it easier.
Cienan: “I’m astute”.
Mathilde: “What, you mean like a big weasel?”
Cienan: That is a stoat. Be glad you are only dealing with me, and not with a vicious creature.
All he wanted from M. ‘LeBlanc’ was his real name. Seemed innocuous at the time, but giving what we now know about Cienan and the power that knowing someone’s name can give, it looks a lot more scary.
well Mathilde, don’t worry, you’re going to understand. It’s on the schedule, you see.
Since Cienan deals in information, I think he wants Mathilde tell him everything she knows about Snow by Night. He probably would be interested in what she knows about Jassart and Jacqueline de Tilly as well.