Tyne
wouldn't leave it alone. A kind of devil may care craving for
adrenaline, led her to pummel Laurence in conversation, like passing
her finger repeatedly through a candle flame, reveling at the
consternation of others.
“Bitumen
is spoiled, Laurence,” Tyne argued. “She has her daddy wrapped
around her finger, and she can't do anything her daddy can't do for
her.” Tyne concluded this from observation, although it came
perilously close to breaking a personal rule. Tyne didn't like correcting misconceptions, preferred to attribute a kind of schadenfreude to a love of justice.
Laurence
faithfully kept Tyne's confidence, but thought little of the
intelligence. He was more focused on wars, than on the passions that
kindled them. A trouble maker would have tested Tyne's argument, by
setting Bitumen (and by implication, Bitumen's father,) some Pyrrhic
or Herculean task. A provocateur might have sought to employ rumor,
to come between Bitumen and her father, instead. A knight errant
might have gone straight to her patriarch, and asked for Bitumen's
hand in marriage, secure in the knowledge that he would be summarily
refused. Laurence looked for a nursemaid, to minister to his wounded
reputation and ego.
