[Presentation is as important to Gabranth as much as any among their number, but perhaps more important than that is the code of honor that continually dictates his every planned move down to the very last foreordained letter.

What that translates to in actuality, of course, is the strangeness of having one overbearingly tall knight (helmet still obscuring his face as it has for the whole of their journey thus far) positioned uselessly for a inordinate amount of time outside the baths themselves, as if counting the number of people making their way in— and then subsequently out again.

If needs must, he’ll concede his loss, but...

Well, perhaps a few minutes more will see the place emptied out.]

[No fancy dress, no masks bought or brought for the occasion. He stands for most of the affair itself at the fringe edge of a cliff, mapping out the lay of the land: arms crossed, posture combatively squared off, unwilling to bother with either drink or offered food.

If nothing else, at least everyone else in attendance also has their face covered, though that does prove to make his own foreboding silhouette less of a deterrent for the more curious nobility.]

I'm afraid I must decline. [Said again, and again, and again. A mixture of— it is not my place, no thank you, I cannot and so on and so forth ad nauseum— offered conversation turned away as keenly as the fete’s own offerings, which in turn might equate to either further intrigue...or increased dismay for the Orlesians themselves, as there is a noticeable chill to Gabranth's own stiffened bearing.

He trusts one of the more diplomatic members of their party to smooth any ruffled feathers in the aftermath. A little more work hardly hurt anyone, after all.]

[Fools.

Drace would call them that, were she here to watch gathered Orlesians throw slaughtered stock down as enticement for a creature that would like nothing more than to swallow the lot of them.

Gabranth, on the other hand, was always too rigid— too locked into the concepts of rank and respect— to so much as offer up a sneer when in the presence of those higher up in caste, as it were. So instead he satisfies himself with the memory of her voice as yet another corpse lands listlessly on the ground below with a heavy thud, long-dead bone cushioned mostly by limp muscle and sinew.

He dislikes this. The game it seems to be.

But his work is to rend, not reign, and the anger simmering in his blood (the sting of an eye still faintly scuffed thanks to an indignant noble who shall remain unnamed), ought work in his favor when the time comes.

And it does draw near, based on the not-so distant sounds of throaty rumbling in the distance.

He'd been delayed at the party's end, which means that by the time he finally sets foot at the base of the cliff (his irritation carried in the hunch of his shoulders, the way his helm juts forward by way of an outstretched neck, akin to the posing of a hunting animal), most of the preparations have likely been made already.]

How fare your arrangements? [It doesn't sound friendly, or pleasant, that question— but very little is before a fight.]