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fanesavin · 5 years

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The Inquisitor and newly made King of the Forty Isles discuss a plan that tests the Inquisitor’s mettle and his morals. In the interim, Lord Balcaster has some choice words for one particular member of the Quiver council.

@thisbrutalbelle @ianncardero @faye-andrews @mayaparker @ephrampettaline @bumblingbrujo @rydenbolt

The King of the Forty Isles was dead. Or one could say, the King of the Forty Isles was here, right now, standing at the window of the Quiver Chambers. He was early, but it wasn’t a political statement, it was merely his impatience. The Capitol - really, the mainland - couldn’t concern him right now, not until he was recognized by his own people as a King. And then - only then could Iann start to reforge things he’d already lost, thanks to the machinations of his little brother. Until then, he would be impatient. Politely so, because he was bred to be this way. But all he could look at, was the ocean.

Fane made his way into the council chamber, the space a worrisome reminder of all that had happened in the last week and yet to come. He’d been hoping to see Iann earlier in the week, to speak with him on certain matters. The man was one of his oldest friends and Fane was admittedly concerned for his well-being. “Iann,” formalities hardly mattered anymore in his own concern given present circumstances, he may be King now but he was Fane’s friend first he walked into the chamber his eyes tight with evident concern, “I heard the news about your father… I’m sorry to hear of his passing,” of course he knew Iann was impatient to take the throne for himself but it didn’t change the fact it was still his father that had passed.

“Do you consider me capable of regicide? Based on your evidence,” Iann asked, turning to see Savin. Glad to see Savin here in fact. Grateful for a space of moment for them to talk, possibly for the last time alone. Hopefully it would happen again months or years after today, but right now Iann was not so sure. “I only ask, because it is the only reason that’s keeping me here, my dear Inquisitor.” Iann spoke quietly, giving a nod at Savin’s sympathy but not lingering on it. “I want justice as much as anyone else, but my own people and their justice - their lives in the hands of their rightful King - concerns me more.” He smiled though, despite all of his stress. “I’m glad to see you’ve survived under this ordeal. It couldn’t have been easy.” And Iann did not envy Savin his Inquisitorial job; yet there was indeed no one better here who could accomplish it.

“You’re capable of many things my friend but that isn’t one of them.” Fane answered plainly, but still he sighed rubbing his eye tiredly, “unfortunately, I’m not so sure other people in this castle wish for it to be seen that way…” Despite the evidence that mounted up Fane had known Iann for longer and had a good measure of the man. He was innocent of this crime yet Fane had no evidence to prove it. “I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else’s shoulders, but for our friendship I’ll speak plainly. I’m worried Iann, the evidence that has come to light casts a damning shadow on the Summerset and the Isles… Which leads me to pose a question to you. You may not be guilty of regicide, but do you think your brother or the Grand Lady capable of the act? Do you have any reason to suspect them?” The sands of time were slipping away faster than he cared for and with each moment that passed left him feeling more apprehensive about the future, “we both know well enough your brother envies your position… Casting blame at your feet would open the way for him to try and take the Isles and I am aware Cassandra used my name to play some hand in the murder of Lord Kesley before he could be questioned…”

“Did she…” Iann murmured thoughtfully. Still, due to his affection for the young Princess Adeline - and even to an extent to his brothers formidable Queen-wife - Iann’s assessment was clouded. Particularly when it came to the alternate choice of his brother. “The commonfolk love the Grand Lady. The nobles love Prince Miguel–” He almost mentioned Lovel, but decided for now to hold his tongue. “I’m a pirate and an separatist islander to the commonfolk on the mainland. And other than the Queen of the Dark Woods - the likes of whom we might never see again, after today - you are the only person in this Castle that I know who would see me innocent.” He smiled then, a tight smile. “I’m not well liked, it seems. So it stands to reason that I have little allies here. At this point, the High Raj’s death has become more political than justice…and I know how much you love political.” He turned to look at Fane, first looking around to make sure they were alone. “I have a proposal. And honest one, but perhaps not a moral one, depending on how you feel about morals in the Capital. Perhaps morals are better left in the noble North.”

Unlike Iann Fane held no such clouding of judgement, there were certain dealings and trade contracts he held with Summerset no such bond of family that shackled him to their whims. Perhaps it was fateful, that he had no heirs to tie up in contracts of marriage that left him restricted in his ability to move. Idly he thought of Iann’s boy, an inquisitive mind that one that Fane was fond of. “It’s one thing to act like you care, but how much of it is simply to save face?” Iann’s surmising of the situation only made Fane grimace, “wasn’t it always political? A desperate attempt to snatch power and control.” Though Iann’s mention of morals caused Fane to huff softly, displeased by the notion, “of late I’ve been considering morals to be more hindrance than service.” He made a small gesture indicating Iann should carry on while they were blessedly along for the time being.

“They are, my friend,” Iann said, but his smile was one of sympathy. Iann considered his own father a strict, highly moralistic man - in his heyday. And Stefan Savin reminded Iann strongly of his father. A pity that only moralistic Princely son of the Forty Isles ended up being the weakest - but he was no match for the eldest and the youngest. Iann had a family to worry about, but moral people broke under the pressure of pleasing everyone. “I shall be King - on the Forty Isles, we like to move fast to keep up with the ever-changing currents. Today, I will be a King.” He put a hand on Fane’s shoulder, and leaned in. “We’ve had enough of war, even on the Forty Isles - but for us a war seems inevitable. My brother is…ambitious, and he doesn’t care for the mainland as I do. If he were to wage war here…I fear it could have damning consequences.” Iann said, because that, at least, felt true. “But if the evidence points to me, then let it be so. I cannot be killed for the High Raj’s death - not as King of the Forty Isles. I can be exiled there, however - and I would guarantee that my exile would not lead this realm back into war. I will nobly take my punishment. And if I did, supposedly, kill the High Raj, then I would name my dear brother - so knowledgeable about venom and the like - as my accomplice. Let me confess us both to a crime that I did not commit; and upon my exile, I will take him back to my Isles for Forty Isles brand of justice. The nobles will get what they want, and so will the commonfolk, if the Cloverry chooses for the better of the people.” He raised an eyebrow. “And you have always been autonomous in the North, Inquisitor. You can return to standing outside and apart from the squabbles of the rest of the mainland. And it will be over. The peace we all want.”

Fane lifted his chin his eyes steadfast as he looked at his friend, it was clear that he didn’t like the idea. But then again when had anything that would serve the greater good truly felt satisfactory to everyone? The proposal solved one portion of the issue at hand, but equally left one piece of the puzzle unsolved, he entertained the notion Iann set forth but equally was not completely convinced of the motion. “And what of Cassandra? She has some role to play, what that is I cannot say but let her walk away from this and how long ‘til we find ourselves back in this situation once more?”

Bella entered unaccompanied by her wolf, the man had gone to round up those that had come to help the Kingdom and had inadvertently trashed it, with the hopes that he and his wife could return to the Dead Woods upon meetings end. Bella did not believe it so simple, but she was interested to hear what had been learned of things and entered the Quiver in her usual jewel draped clothed, back exposed and littered with diamonds and emeralds. Her walk was slow and weak but her posture strict. “Inquisitor Savin, Prince Iann,” she said, not having heard any news of his Kingdom. “It looks like I am pleasantly on time to these things.”

Iann looked confused for a moment. “Grand Lady Cassandra? I’m sure she wasn’t involved in the death of the High Raj,” Iann couldn’t help but huff a slight laugh at the very thought. “It was mere coincidence, and a clever ruse on my brother’s part.” Iann looked sharply to the left, but he saw it was the Queen of the Dark Woods in her strange regalia, and he relaxed. She wasn’t involved in the matters of the realm, so Iann just gave her a bow. “Hello Queen Bellamy. I’m just finishing a conversation with the Inquisitor and then we shall join you to wait for the others, if it pleases you.”

Bella nodded her head gently, taking a seat at the table, drawing her legs up onto the seat while only those she felt strangely comfortable with were around.

Fane couldn’t quite bring himself to agree with Iann’s dismissal of the notion. Coincidental indeed. “And why then did she lie in my name to take a strange cloaked figure into the dungeons not that much longer before Lord Kesley was found dead? The Kesleys were the only other major suspects for this case regardless of how dim they might be. Equally, what gain would they ever receive for kidnapping her in broad daylight before yourself and your brother?” The Kesleys were dim that much was well known, but that was plain idiocy. Unfortunately, further discussions concerning the matter were cut short and Fane gave a glance in the Queen’s direction. “Your highness…” he afforded her a small bow but the tension still rippled in his frame.

This was all news to Iann, who had no spies and had taken no part in the gathering of Inquisition evidence. The only information that had concerned him anyway, was about himself and Miguel. He’d filtered out the rest - apparently that was another mistake the Prince had made during his tenure in the Capital. “I…suppose this is where you’ll need to retire those beautiful morals of yours then, my friend. I…I’m afraid I cannot say anything about these matters. I didn’t know about them, until now.” He sighed, and took a slow step back, giving Savin a sad, but resigned look. “Will it be justice, or peace?”

Maya walked into the room, having heard that they were convening for a meeting of the Quiver of Houses. She knew that Lord Savin was close to the truth, but wasn’t certain if he had arrived at an official conclusion. She didn’t know either if a new High Raj had been chosen. She hesitated before taking a seat next to Lord Savin. Her attention turned to Lord Cardero, having heard his final question. She said nothing though, another habit she had yet to break.

Fane studied the Prince as he stepped away and where not a moment prior was feeling a touch more secure in the situation that was fast approaching was once more left feeling entirely adrift. There was no answer given to the question as it was posed, and Fane made a low noise that rumbled deep in his chest. Anger flared momentarily in his eyes, not truly at Iann moreso the situation at hand, the same anger that had been simmering since his discussion with Lady Florent.

As more people arrived, Iann stepped further away from the Inquisitor. Indeed, he was like a ship, leaving Savin’s port and sailing away on its own. Leaving Savin once more on his own. The Inquisitor hadn’t agreed to Iann’s proposal, but neither had he disagreed. For now, it would have to do. All Iann could think of was getting back to his beloved Isles and taking the crown he was born to take. He nodded in greeting to the servant-lady-whatever she was in greeting, then sat next to Bellamy. “Did you enjoy our sail, Bellamy?” Iann asked, all smiles and graciousness once more.

Bella noted the other woman’s presence, still amazed she was seated since no one had informed her the woman was not a servant girl any longer. “I did, I’ve never felt the wind move so fast before,” she immediately grinned. It felt like it’s own sort of magic and she partially wished it had been evening so she could have felt the full potential of herself. “I have the urge to buy a boat,” Bella mused.

“Queen of the Dark Woods with a boat,” Iann laughed, gently. “You kingdom is land-locked, is it not?”

“For now, perhaps if I perform some blessings I’ll be gifted a river right through the middle of the woods,” Bella attempted to joke, aware that even if she had her beliefs they would likely not extend to altering something so set in stone. “Besides, without a boat how will I visit your Isles?”

Maya nodded in return to Iann. To Lord Savin, she said quietly, “There may yet be a way to have both.”

“River boats are extraordinary,” he agreed, although they didn’t hold a candle to ships for an ocean. But of course, Iann was heavily biased. “Perhaps one could use the wood of your Dark forest, and fashion something that could sail over land. Meet me at the coast and I would sail you to the Forty Isles myself.” These were all light-heated words, not actual plans or ideas. Small talk, trivial and entertaining, for now.

Fane remained stood as Iann drifted yet further away. Fane stared out the window the room feeling altogether too small and confining. His mind drifted to something he’d been told a long time ago, you must do, and be good. If that means you suffer defeat today then trust that you’ll find way to claim victory tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that. His brows were furrowed deep in thought that he only made a small noise at Maya’s comment. If there was, he didn’t see how.

The door to the Quiver Chambers opened to let a man of the North pass through. This was a formal occasion he was actually informed about and casual wear was replaced by glossy jacket of leather, knee-deep black boots and a finely knitted woollen cloak hanging off his shoulders by a silver clasp in the shape of a wolf’s head. He’d almost looked like a lord for a change, albeit a dark and austere one. A heavy sword was sheathed in a scabbard at his hip, swaying at his side as he approached to write himself into the attendance book, a heavy tome which kept a record of all who will be attending this council. A tome that is very likely to be a great witness of historical events Ryden had little to no hand in besides having put a Balcaster’s name in it for the very first time. He’d signed it, his writing clumsy as he’d only taken it up a couple of years ago and still learned to dot down big words. At least he got his name right by now. Then he found himself a seat, not too far away from the Queen of the Dead Woods and the Prince of the Forty Isles, barely sparing them a glance. He was here only to see one thing - a new Raj appointed just so he could say that Dyrerow means to remain independent, as it had been for ages now.

Maya said nothing else when Lord Savin didn’t respond properly to her. For one, she didn’t believe in peace. At least not in the long term. She did turn to one of the servants to ask politely for some ale. At the sound of the door opening, she turned her head to see Ryden, the wild man of the North, enter. He stopped briefly to sign his name before taking a seat away from Queen Bellamy and Lord Cardero. She had not heard of his change of station. “I take it you’re eager to return home?” she half asked, half stated to him.

Curiously Iann studied the new arrival at the Quiver of Houses. It seemed the Coronation (or the murder?) of the High Raj had brought so many nobles out of hiding - the Dark Woods Queen, the Lady Faye, the servant-Lady. He considered also how the North - Fane Savin’s North, that is - kept themselves autonomous. He thought about how his own Forty Isles was so powerful it barely required the Bluesprings realm for much more than trade (and the occasional pillage). Iann looked out towards the Sunlit Throne in the Great Hall, visible through the pane windows that separated the Quiver Chamber from the Hall. Iann mildly wondered just how powerful it would be, considering how many lands were really more just…independent states, all of which wished to be left severely alone. The other lands who’d fought in the civil war - most of their lords and nobles were dead, killed by their own strife. So this was what remained - and none wished to be ruled. He smiled, and studied the rings on his fingers.

Ryden looked up when Maya asked her question, big arms crossing over smooth leather on his chest. “Naw, I actually like watchin’ dumb theater plays. There’s a lesson in each an’ they mostly come down to 'don’t be stupid like these pricks’.” He grinned, his smile sharp. “If there’s an encore, I’ll stick around a little while longer for it.”

Miguel had to make hasty actions. But things were set up to work in his favor. No matter what fate had in store for the Quiver meeting. As long as he had that last hidden cask of Forty-Isles mead, in his room, and a little on his person, in a flask - he would be fine. And he didn’t have to think too hard about anything, his heart still aching and his stomach falling away as he took his seat in the meeting room. A little behind and to the left of Iann - always behind him. The small detail kept his blood hot and resolve strong. He took a sip of the mead and hid the flask back in his shirt. The heat was still there, the honor, the duty - but the desire had dripped out of him sometime last night.

Bella looked to the man who had entered, her person not quite as kind as it had been upon meeting him but Bella giving him a nod. “There are different sorts for rivers?” she asked the Prince of the Forty Isles. “Seems a waste of wood for something to sail on land when we have carriages that could be made but our wood is…very peculiar, perhaps if you picked me up for a visit I could have some brought along, no ship would be more adept in the ferocity of the evening sea.”

Maya almost laughed. She managed to hide her smile as Annabella appeared with her mug of ale, giving Maya a moment to collect herself. She turned back to him. “I’m sure you don’t want my council, but I’d be cautious. Our luck the last few days there may well be an encore and a statement like that might get you blamed for it.” There was no real seriousness to her words. If someone were to be planning to kill another one of the nobles they would’ve done so already. Besides there was nothing to gain for him by committing such an act, at least as far as she knew.

“A ship for the sea, made out of Dark Woods timber?” Iann thought the idea was intriguing, and rather glorious. He looked over when he saw his brother enter, and for some reason all he could think of wasn’t Savin’s words or the evidence piled up, or himself making that proposal. All he could think of was finding Danian Lovel, with Miguel. His brow furrowed, and he looked back at the Queen. “Perhaps once this is all over, we can set up a trade, my Queen.”

“Now that’s what I’d like t'see. Git another poor sod up there and have 'um killed by poisoned royal knickers. I don’t think anyone would blame me for laughing my ass off at that.” Ryden barked out a laugh that echoed across the hall, insulting in its volume.

Bella practically beamed at the idea, smile on her face pulling hard into her cheeks. To have an alliance, of sorts, with someone with a Kingdom as vast as the Prince’s would be equally as helpful in her fight against her family as the High Raj, and both would be even better. “Timber for a trip at sea, how lovely.”

Maya Obviously, discretion was not a value of House Balcaster. It was almost refreshing for Maya after all the intrigue and power playing of the last few days. “That is until it’s your knickers,” she replied with a hint of a smile. Especially in comparison to his, her voice was quiet.

Iann was thinking more timber for his own ships, but he let the Queen believe what she wanted. If he found the timber sea-worthy (and if it was indeed special) then he’d build her a ship as well, especially for her. “Lovely and valuable,” he said with a smile. The mysterious lord who giggled with the gleeful servant-lady didn’t bother him. He was a sailor after all - loudness and crassness were as normal to Iann as bread and fish.

Cassie entered the room where all the houses were gathering for the final verdicts that had been hanging over the castle the past few days. There was a tightness in the Grand Lady’s chest as she walked around the long table and found an empty seat next to Iann. He was speaking with the Deadwoods Queen again, he was clearly interested in something about her, or something she had. “Brother.” She greeted softly, “Condolences for your father.”

Bella had not meant to build her a ship. But the ride on his ship to return but since he didn’t voice as much she just looked with a gentle smirk at the Lord who had joined us, amusing if he was made High Raj. Unsuited as he was it would be humorous. However Queen Cassandra approached Prince Iann and spoke of Death, Bella’s eyes moving between them. “Your father has passed?”

“S'why ya don’t let anyone touch yer shit. I dress meself, I wash meself and I put me own hats on. Y'all southerners are lazy. A servant could spit in yer soup and ya would still eat it.”

Miguel didn’t say anything. He listened to his brother and his jaw tightened. So presumptuous.

Bella snorted at Ryden’s comments, mostly finding it amusing because to her he was still very much indulged by his position, as all were. “He says with his men atop expensive horses, and wearing fur,” Bella scolded of Ryden in defense of whoever he was trying to insist was not so self sufficient as he. Iann’s news was good though, subjectively, and Bella smiled to him. “Long live to King of the Forty Isles, no longer an empty throne.”

Iann inclined his head. “Thank you, Bellamy,” he said graciously, and refused to look over at his brother. Miguel didn’t deserve a second glance.

Maya gave him a crooked smile. “Now you will get yourself in trouble, I’m not a Southerner and I can take care of myself a sight better than you I’d bet.” Her attention turned to the other end of the table, overhearing the Grand Lady’s words to Lord or rather King Cardero. She noted it, although didn’t think it relevant to the investigation before them. “Long live the King,” she echoed raising her mug slightly.

Ryden slowly turned his head around to take a look at the Queen who had rudely interjected. He raised an eyebrow at her. “Well, ya try comin’ from where I came from on foot dressed in linen. Ya’ll feel very accomplished dead in the snow.”

Bella raised her brows that the servant did not acknowledge her defense of them, merely hearing what she said of Cardero. She was a Southerner for someone from so far North as the Balcaster’s were and it seemed silly to Bellamy to not at least be grateful for a betters defense. “It’s still an indulgence, and why is that something shameful, indulging is most of the enjoyment in life.”

Iann lifted his cup towards the servant-Lady’s words, but he didn’t drink just yet. “Longer than the High Raj, one hopes.”

“It’s shameful when ya put on a crown and it kills ya. S'what I think all this shit is.” Ryden waved at the Golden Throne, looking at it in disgust. “Indulgence, all of it. Y'all called it a necessity, to put up one man there. None of ya lot know of necessity and at least this one is admitting it proper.” He said it loud enough for everyone to hear, not that he spoke in a hushed tone before, waving his hand at the Queen of the Dead Woods dismissively.

Maya did not feel she had needed to be defended and certainly not from Ryden, who had already claimed them equals. And she had not seen Queen Bellamy’s words as a defense of her specifically either, merely a pointing out of hypocrisy. She therefore didn’t understand why the Queen seemed put out with her. It was better to be cautious though and so Maya did not say that she’d seen much shameful indulgence from lords and ladies across many lands. Nodding to Iann, she said, “I think we should all hope to live longer than the High Raj.” It seemed she didn’t have to say anything anyway as Ryden quickly declared the whole affair an indulgence.

“Idiot,” Bellamy surmised of him. “You know nothing of any of our purposes for being here, or what we know of necessity. Crass and childish to imagine yourself knowledgeable on anyone here.” His mood had changed so vastly in her direction and she wondered what it had been, the darkness in him, or a falsehood upon meeting because no men were around for him to show off to. “Keep indulging your ego with the necessity of your hard journey, no one else could possible imagine,” sarcasm thick in her words.

Iann sipped his mead then, letting the mysterious Lord bray to his heart’s content. His critique served no purpose and held no solution, it was merely some need to ensure that everyone in the room heard that he had decided he was better than everyone else here, save perhaps for the servant-lady. Iann had heard, he’d heard it all before, from all sorts of men from all types of ranking. He listened, between the Lord and the Queen. He gave a nod of acknowledgement to the servant-lady. “Indeed, child.”

“Oh I don’t care 'bout no one here. They ain’t my concern. You, on the other hand. You I know of. And your wolf king and what you two do in the dark of your woods, scheming and poisoning with yer dark magic. You are here to spread it further, that I am sure of.” Ryden pinned her with his silver gaze, his words dripping with hate.

The loud Lord was in luck at least - since no one here seemed to care about anyone else, so he was in good company in that respect. Iann stood up then, sensing something more could potentially happen that he didn’t want to be a part of. He took his mead, and headed over to stand next to his seated brother.

Faye had arrived later than most, not feeling all that well. But now she was here and found a seat near Maya. “Good day,” she said as she folded herself into the chair. “Have I missed anything?”

Bella stood from her chair, enraged by the lie, but with the weakness of her legs and her sudden movement she near fell, catching herself with her hands on the table. “You know nothing of who and what I am,” she announced. “Whatever vile lies you’ve had whispered in your ears you’ve been pathetic enough to believe.

Maya was perfectly content to let Ryden and Bellamy fight over which noble was more indulgent. But then the conversation took a sharp turn as he accused Bellamy of spending dark and poisonous magic further than their own words. She saw Iann move to sit next to his brother, even as her gaze snapped to Ryden. "I think you should explain yourself fully with an accusation like that,” she said. She nodded to Faye although was too distracted to reply.

Miguel crossed his arms and looked up at his brother. Then he looked away. There was no room left for acting, his mind was running on peanuts and little sleep. The headache from the night before was slowly growing in the back of his head. “Here to enjoy the theater?” he grumbled.

“That Lord proclaimed it a theatrical, and then made himself the starring role,” Iann said, smiling at Miguel’s grumble. Iann did not sit, he remained standing against the wall of the Chamber, where Miguel had taken his backseat. Always in the background, always watching. “Do you have any idea who he is? The wolf pin seems familiar, but so many people lay claim to knowing and being the only one to understand 'the real North’. I’ve lost track.”

Faye looked at the deadwood queen as she stood, and then across at the northern lord. She’d heard the words ‘dark magic’ as she’d entered, or so she thought. But still she said nothing, wishing only to do her duty and be left alone.

Miguel hummed. He didn’t recognize the young loud Lord. He seemed rugged. There were plenty of little rugged Lords in the North though. He sat up straighter and looked him over. “He looks more like mercenary than a Lord.”

Iann replied drily,“ They’re from the North. They all look like mercenaries. I think the Inquisitor is the only one with a sense of style.”

Ephram watched the dramatics go down, a mild look of distaste on his face; surely these other nobles would have the decorum or at the very least, the sense to not pitch fits in the meeting of the Quiver? But then again, half of these people who were present didn’t even seem to want to represent their Houses or lands, reluctant recluses and fake servants and terrified witches and the like. He grunted to himself and shifted closer to the Princes of the Isles. They, at least, had motives that made some sort of sense. “From what I can gather,” Ephram intruded on the Carderos’ conversation, “the less interested in anybody else you are, the truer North that makes you.”

“The wolf pin seems familiar, but so many people lay claim to knowing and being the only one to understand 'the real North’.“

“I’d be even more pathetic if I didn’t believe 'um and they killed me. Like they did, three of Balcaster lords before me, with slow poisons that drove them to madness then death. Strange enough that I come here and find the man to be appointed as High Raj killed the same way, only it didn’t take quite as long.” Ryden rose then, to loudly proclaim. “I have proof. I have been looking to display it to those who would investigate. Commotion of these events, that distract the capitol, had made it close to impossible.”

Ephram’s mouth twisted in aggravation, but he kept it out of his voice. Bloody arrogant Iann Cardero. “Pettaline,” he said tightly. “Lord of the Honeywilds. You know that, but since you’re in mourning perhaps it slipped your mind, Majesty.”

Miguel heart jumped into his throat as the Honeywild Lord sidled up to the island princes. “Good point, Lord Pettaline.” Even if he was caught in his own vortex of a mind, he had a duty to Ephram, to Cassie, to Adeline, and that meant he couldn’t withdraw as he wanted to. Not yet, maybe not ever. He started building his masks again, he needed them.

As the North Lord made his proclamation, Iann raised an eyebrow towards Miguel, then over at Lady Faye. Both of them had investigated the venom that killed the High Raj, after all. They were the experts on that mode of death. “Could this be true?” he asked Lady Faye. He waved aside the minor Lord Pettaline, more curious to hear these new accusations.“ A mild curiousity, since Iann had no involvement in the past week’s investigation.

Ephram shot Miguel a look of appreciation, but then was distracted by the wolf lord, or whatever he was, yowling even louder than before. "Proof of what?” he asked Ryden. “Are you talking about your own House, or the assassination of the High Raj?”

Maya glanced over at the gaggle of nobles seemingly more interested in watching the show than any sort of attempt at either peace or defending the Queen. And for just about the hundreth time she wished that the Red Priestess hadn’t revealed her true identity. If she hasn’t advisor to Lord Savin she probably wouldn’t feel any even crumb of responsibility for attempting to keep peace. “Well you seem to have an audience now, what is this evidence you claim to have?” she asked in an almost completely calm voice.

Faye looked up as the northern lord stood, claiming accusations towards… the deadwood queen? Faye glanced at Maya, wondering if this news was something the Inquisitor was aware of. “Has he spoken to Lord Savin of this?” She asked Maya softly. When she was questioned by the prince (having not heard of his new title yet) Faye swallowed. “Possibly, Your Grace.”

It was a show that the Lord both wanted, and then became himself. And truly, Iann could tell from the way the North Lord’s head was bent close to the servant-Lady while they giggled and mocked, that she was the only one he would listen to. If he listened at all. It made sense therefore, for her to address him. She was the only one the North Lord respected. "Well that is news,” Iann sipped his mead. “I thought the venom came from a snake of the Hathurana lands.”

“Venom can be transported by anyone, Your Grace. Even to the North.”

“I came to ask for justice for my house. If ya find sum connection, feel free to use it to yer advantage.” Ryden pulled a bundle from under his cloak, unpacking them. They contained empty vials of something that only had remnants of the liquid they were once full of. “Lord Godrick of Balcaster, who would be my grandfather if I were not born a bastard, had employed an adviser of supposedly great wisdom and magic, not long b'fore his passing. He’d sat at his brother’s side, who’d died of this same poison a mere year later. And then his son as well, the man who’d fathered me, the last of the line. These poisons were delivered to him by a messenger, who had been traced back to the Dead Woods. How this poison was made, I do not know. But I will leave it to be inspected, if ya have men capable enough to compare it to the one in the dead Raj’s blood.”

“That’s … not proof of anything. You make claims of truth before they’re proven so, Lord Balcaster.”

“The Wolf King’s woods’re cursed. None by his ilk come and go from it.” Ryden claimed, certain of this truth.

Maya could only shake her head and shrug at Lady Lacroy’s question,“ I do not know. But as you said the venom came from a snake of the High Raj’s own lands.” She turned her attention to Ryden as he began to speak again and pulled out some parcel. A few things came into clear focus when he mentioned being born a bastard. “Lord Pettaline is right. Either we must speak to this messenger or someone must verify that that poison could only come from the Dead Woods and that it is what killed your family.”

Faye looked at what Lord Ryden placed on the table. Listened to what he said. “What killed the Raj did so near instantaneously,” she said.

“Who is the alchemist you employed, who could shed light on how the poison works, if administered in certain ways?” Ryden asked, because it made sense to him that same poison could possibly used in many different ways, causing different effects depending on how it’s used.

Maya turned to Lady Lacroy and the younger Cardero as well, “I think that would be up to you if you wish to verify these claims. It appears we have some time before both the High Inquisitor and the Cloverry finish their deliberations.”

“My lord… the venom of this serpent will only harm if it enters into the blood. It could be swallowed whole and the person would likely only suffer stomach upset, if anything. That’s not to say there aren’t other ways to use such substances to achieve a slow death. You say they went mad as well?”

Ephram made an explosive sound of irritated dismissal, kicking away from the wall to fetch himself a tankard of mead. “Nonsense. You burst in making a lot of noise and fury, deriding the existence and purpose of the Quiver, and don’t even know that it was venom that killed the High Raj and not some common poison from the land of a self-proclaimed Queen.” He drank down half of his mead and refilled his tankard, gesturing with it at the bundle that Ryden had displayed. “Go home, Balcaster. Carry out your quarrel with the Dark Woods using your own resources. Surely you have men more capable than we can provide.”

Tuah watched the conversation that transpired, content to simply listen in instead of joining in the conversation. He had no intention to be uninvolved with whatever quarrels the nobles had between them, keeping an impassive mask each time he attended the gatherings. He did, however, want to know who was behind the murder of the High Raj, hence why his interest piqued when Lord Balcaster loudly proclaimed his accusation. Tuah watched as the empty vials were displayed in front of everyone, listening to the conversation around him. “There is no harm in testifying Lord Balcastar’s claim,” Tuah finally spoke up, his quiet voice still carried through the crowd without him needing to raise his voice, “what do we have to lose. As it has been pointed out, we still have time before the deliberation.”

“But also what interest would the Deadwood Queen - Or any of her people - have in killing so many northern lords?” Faye was merely asking impassively, trying to get a sense of why Lord Balcaster would make such accusations, other than the reputation of the deadwood. “But yes, I agree,” she said to Tuah. “We should hear what they both have to say.”

Miguel sat back in his seat, listening to the debacle before him. How would they ever get anything done. Nobles were worse than cats. Herding them was a labor fit for hell.

"The lords of my house were all treated with leeches before their passing. Blood lettin’ was part of the therapy our physicians had attempted.” The young lord sat back, leaving the vials on the table, disgusted to even touch them. “They were ravin’ and not makin’ sense as their condition worsened. It was both a fever and a madness.” His eyes narrowed at one of the lords who had immediately discarded any need to even consider what Ryden was saying. “And what is the purpose of this council and this High Raj that ya wanna appoint? To just sit in his golden chair and wear a crown upon 'is head? Ain’t the purpose of all this shit to keep peace, unite and solve problems we individually can’t solve ourselves?” He looked to the other lord, who had spoken reason and found no harm in investigating what Ryden had brought to this council’s table. He nodded gratefully at Tuah. “I do not know. An interrogation may lead to an answer.”

As terrible as this all sounded, Iann was glad in a way that this new information pulled Grand Lady Cassandra adown the Inquisitor’s suspect list. He doubted the Queen of the Dark Woods and the Queen of Summerset ever confided in each other, never mind met each other before the Coronation. If either of them were guilty of anything, of course. If anything, Iann felt slightly bad for Stefan Savin. Looked like his role as Inquisitor wasn’t over yet. And even moreso, now it was accusations coming directly from his people of his beloved Northlands. So much for staying autonomous and uninvolved. The North Lord had dragged Fane into this. Iann sipped his mead. He would explain the way the Quiver of Houses actually functioned to the North Lord - since the young man’s own impression was ill-informed and naive - but Iann didn’t want to waste his breath. The North Lord clearly had his own agenda and had little interest in much else. He’d already loudly stated exactly that, after all.

Miguel turned away from the dramatics and toward his brother. “That’s not Forty-Island mead, is it?” He asked it lightly, a slight grumble still in his voice.

Ephram met Ryden’s glare levelly. “I’ve been supporting the Quiver and the High Raj and peace in the Bluesprings for years, with whatever small power my position affords me,” he said. “I haven’t swanned in proclaiming it all to be shameful indulgence and claiming that none of my peers understands the meaning of necessity. Or declared that I don’t care about anybody else here. If your intention was to ask for justice for your House, Balcaster, then you could have gone about it like an adult with some upbringing.” Ephram dipped his chin, voice dropping to a low, disgusted glower. “Instead of slinging insults and then attempting to hitch your personal grievances to the assassination of the High Raj in order to give yourself some importance.”

Miguel held the bridge of his nose for a moment. Iann was so frustrating, but so predictable. “I like the Honeywild mead.” He grabbed Iann’s cup and sipped it. There was an interesting variety of flavors, and it was different from the last batch Miguel had tried.

Maya was reminded once again why she had sworn never to return to her birthright. This was not what she was good at. She took a long draft from her ale before turning to Annabella to ask for something stronger. Her gaze went around the room, trying to decide how best to keep a fight from breaking out. “Could we all just take a deep breath?” she asked, certain that by speaking she was painting a target on her own back as well. “Perhaps after a new High Raj has been selected and his killer caught there may be time for keeping peace, uniting and solving problems. At the very least we should allow Queen Bellamy to speak as to these accusations before a brawl breaks out.”

Ephram snorted at Maya’s comments. “A brawl is hardly what this is, and since you’ve no interest in taking responsibility for your own lands, I’ll thank you to stay out of a discussion between actual House representatives.”

“I’m headed back to the Forty Isles tonight,” he stated then, his gaze steely as he looked at Miguel. “Once this Quiver is concluded. My men are all ready and waiting to sail.” Iann glanced up at the Pettaline Lord. “My Lord, my Lord, your coat has no gold sewn into it yet. The Servant-Lady is here as the Inquisitor’s Advisor…is she not?” And since she was the only thing keeping the North Lord calm, Iann saw no reason to force her into her usual silence.

“As current advisor to the Inquisitor, she has as much - if not more - right than any of us to speak, Lord Pettaline.” Faye spoke neutrally, not wishing to stir any discontent.

Iann motioned at Lady Faye’s confirmation, amused that she was able to confirm this information. “There, we have it, Honeywild.”

Ephram’s eyebrows climbed his forehead as he slammed his tankard down on the table behind him. “If not more right to speak?” he repeated incredulously. “Well, then! I didn’t realize that there was a hierarchy to who sits at the Quiver table, and that being an appointed advisor conferred such hallowed status. No gold needed on her coat, eh, Cardero?”

“Did I stutter? Or perhaps I should speak slowly next time.”

Maya was surprised by Lord Pettaline’s vehemence. Her expression didn’t show it, but she turned to him and watched as he slammed his mug on the table. “I have already spoken to you about my duty to my people and whether or not you agree with me, do not think it doesn’t weigh on me every day,” she said in a carefully even tone, “But at least for now, I can only attempt to keep some semblance of peace in this room as is my duty to my lord.” She nodded in gratitude to both King Cardero and Lady Lacroy for their defense of her attempts to keep some measure of calmness amongst the accusations.

“Small power indeed, since yer Raj got killed despite any support ya could provide. Looks t'me that yer the one hitchin’, lookin’ t'strengthen wha'ever measly power ya got. Upbringin’, hah! And look at all the good it did to ya. Ya wouldn’t recognize justice if it slapped ya in the face.” Ryden turned to Maya then, pointing at the proof he had to share. “Then will ya bring this up to the inquisitor and have a demand put in for the Queen of the Dead Wood to be questioned about this?”

Bella was astounded that anything could be laid against her like this, she had done nothing to indicate she wanted the crowd but as no one seemed to defend her, and rather seemed to want to test whether or not this was true Bella felt a wash of discomfort across her. Only one ( ooc: maybe more and I’ve missed it ) man seemed capable of speaking to the possibility of her innocence and she didn’t even know him. “I do not use poisons, I do not use magic, and I have never been as far North as Lord Balcaster’s home is. I was attacked in the city and now rumours run wild about what happened, what I am, and to imagine that any created prior aren’t equally as ridiculous is childish. People out there assume I am death, and you get to accuse me of caring about your Kingdom? And the rest of you sit and consider the statement valid, I don’t want this Kingdom, it’s filled with awful people who offer nothing to the Kingdom but beg and cry for everything. All I wanted was the High Raj to know that these rumours are rumours,” she spoke, shaking her head. “I want to keep my Kingdom, I want to save those in the Kingdom I was cast out of for these same thoughts, and I don’t want men walking to find death in my woods because the wars here have brought them to suffering.” Bella was not strong enough to walk ut but she wished too.

Ephram stared around at the other nobles, colour slowly draining from his face. Finally he drew a deep breath and straightened, saying, “…I apologize, then, for misunderstanding the nature of the Quiver. I’d foolishly thought that as House representatives, we were all on equal standing here and able to parlay openly. Instead, I see that those beloved of the Inquisitor are afforded higher ranking.” He gave a stiff bow. “I’m a minor Lord with no gold sewn on my coat, as has been pointed out. I’ll leave the discussion to my betters.”

“I have no gold in my robes and i came a bastard, representing my house in shame rather than in honor, for they had no one else to send. As much as lord of the Honeywilds irks me, I would rather have us all speak at once then none speaking at all. Since I came 'ere, there’s been nothin’ but whispers and inconclusive statements, all open discussion avoided in favor of some secrecy that didn’t git any of us any closer to the real truth. I want to be listened to and others must be as well. I will even have the Queen of the Dead Woods speak, if she is so assured of her innocence. But can she claim the same of her King?”

“You haven’t misunderstood, Lord Honeywild. I have no gold, no family, nothing to speak of but my name. For what it’s worth. Perhaps it is simply my own misunderstanding, having been away for so long.”

“Fine,” Bella sat back down as he stated she be questioned. “I will happily answer the Inquisitor’s questions, or anyone’s questions.” Her eyes, golden and fulled, glared daggers at the Balcaster male. “It seems only some here have any sense, the rest will need things laid out for them. Like the fact my husband is a wolf, for all intents and purposes, he has the cravings of an animal. He wants to fuck and eat and sleep.”

Maya listened carefully as Queen Bellamy spoke, watching her for any signs of lying. She saw none. And really, there was no proof in Ryden’s claims. Although it would explain why the kingdom so closed off to outsiders for years had decided to come to the Coronation. This justice they claimed to seek must be enough of a draw. She addressed Lord Pettaline first, “I have not asked for any higher ranking, only tried to keep peace, sir.” She then turned to Ryden. “I understand how close this matter is to your heart, but you said earlier that you would stay for an encore. Perhaps once the matter of the High Raj and his assassination is settled we can have it all out as to what you believe Queen Bellamy or his King has done to your family.”

Iann listened to what the Queen had to say. She was a Queen - and as far as Iann was concerned, Queens should handle their own affairs, lest they look weak by being defended by others who had never met her before this Coronation. He couldn’t vouch for her, or vice versa. He pet Pettaline’s shoulder. “Now you’re learning,” he said quietly. He spoke a bit louder, “Well, it looks like the Inquisition has been reopened, in light of all this. Thank you, Lady Faye and to the Servant-lady for their valued contributions. High Inquisitor Savin will have to listen to the claims of both yourself and the Queen Bellamy, and proceed from there, Lord Balcaster.” And at the mention of this husband-King of the Dark Woods, Iann schooled his face first before responding. “That sounds like a life to be envied, then.”

Ephram shook Cardero’s hand off, too raw at the moment to maintain his usual grin-and-bear-it demeanor. “How kind of you to speak more slowly for my benefit, Lady Lacroy,” he said. “Perhaps you should inform the Un-Lost Lady of her own superior position, since she seems unaware of it.” He scowled at Maya. “Don’t call me sir, I already asked you. And there’s no need for you to self-appoint yourself peacekeeper. None of us are interested in causing war. I know you have a very poor view of nobles, but I assure you of that much.”

“Shut up, girl. You heard me tell you there was something dark in him and said to respect whatever he could say, yet you don’t seem to respect anyone who has actually been here, why on Earth are you even seated?” Bella said to Maya, over the validation this man was getting she had done anything to hid kin. “You know what you are and you know very well I didn’t do it, Lord Balcaster, don’t you imagine whatever created you would have far more awful designs on your family than a stranger thousands of kilometres from you would have? Why do you imagine I would care at all about you?”

Ephram nodded at Ryden in acknowledgement of the Lord’s stating his preference that the Quiver speak openly, much preferring that himself. “The Inquisitor has been much occupied of late with his investigations,” he said, less confrontationally now that Ryden had expressed a desire to talk. “It’s an inopportune time for you to present your case for investigation, is all.”

“What created him?” Iann asked. “What is he, exactly, other than the bastard Lord he’s already claimed to be?”

Tuah heaved a sigh when the tension grew once more, wishing that they could carry the conversation without it turning it into some kind of fiasco. He felt a pang of sympathy to the Advisor, though he couldn’t argue that this so-called conversation would lead to a brawl, so to speak. He decided to stay out of the argument once more, quietly listening to everyone saying their piece.

Bella watched as the man left with her own accusation laid against him. “Why would I answer you now?” she responded to Iann, feeling quite betrayed by everyone bar a Lord she didn’t even know. Iann might have felt as though a Queen should defend herself but he believed this as someone who had kin at his side and a Kingdom of power. “Whatever he says clearly holds a ridiculous level of weight for someone who has shown up like this.”

Maya took a deep breath. “No one else seemed particularly interested in the position when Ryden accused Queen Bellamy of his fellows’ murders.” She couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled out of her as Bellamy told her to shut up and learn her place. “Well, with that I think we can all be very well assured that Queen Bellamy cares not for anything outside of her own lands,” she replied, not technically answering the question. But even with everything else going on her true birthright had not gone unnoticed by most anyone else gathered. She smiled, “But I suppose you’re right. I rejected by supposed birthright long ago. I have neither right nor duty to the happenings in this room. I will keep my own council from now on.”

“He holds no weight with me. Whatever history your two factions have, I’m equally ignorant of both.” And just because Iann had known Bellamy for a couple more days than the Lord Balcaster, didn’t mean he would throw any political weight or judgement behind either party.

“I’m glad to hear it, Un-Lost Lady,” Ephram said, his voice falling back into its more natural rate and tone from the tenseness it had held. “I was somewhat bullish about the point, I admit, but you must understand how galling it is to think that diplomacy and treating between titled Houses should be dictated by someone who denies her own lands.”

Bella stood from her seat, weak as she was, dragging it next to the only person she felt had defended her, and replaced herself. A few days to a woman who had not spoken to anyone in years was a great deal and she had rather felt that even if he didn’t consider her a friend he understood her motives as she had shared them with him. Bella’s hand covered in jewels took that of the man who had offered a defense. “Thank you.”

Faye sat back as the conversation no longer included her answering any questions, and she wasn’t going to continue to argue or banter with anyone when it would do no good. She was reminded quite vividly of one of the reasons why she had stayed away for so long, other than the obvious. Everyone said they wanted peace, but all it took was the wrong word, the right insult, and they would be at each other’s throats. So Faye sat and watched with no small amount of quiet ire as the others quarreled. She wanted to leave. To pack her horse and go back to the marshes. But what would that say? Nothing good. So she stayed for now, hating more than ever the politics and the game in which they all found themselves.

Ephram noticed the Dark Woods Queen relocate herself next to him – he couldn’t miss it – but still he was surprised when she took his hand in hers. “Oh! Errr … not that I don’t want to be deserving of your thanks, Highness, but … why do I warrant them?”

Iann did like Bellamy though, so he added, “When it comes to the matter of a distant Lord, though, I’m sure you can’t possibly feel intimidated by his accusations. He demands attention but has paid little attention to anyone else here, barring of course the Advisor.” Which was certainly strategic to say the least. Getting the Advisor’s favour by disparaging everyone en masse - that oh-so valuable 'us against them’ mentality - would certainly lean this Advisor bias towards him with the Inquisitor. Iann watched Bellamy drag her chair, desperate to make a friend more than anything else. A friend, of all things. This poor little Queen.

Maya turned and only nodded to Lord Pettaline. It was clear to her that he had no respect or interest in listening to her, believing her derelict in her duty to her people with little knowledge of the situation. She was certain though that her people were better off without her. She noted Queen Bellamy dragging her chair to sit beside Lord Pettaline, but made no comment on it. Maya only hoped that Lord Savin would return soon and settle the matter, so that she could leave this place. Although leave for where she wasn’t yet certain.

The argument was growing pointless, and Tuah wanted nothing more than to retire to his chambers. It reminded him of the petty arguments that his own council had back at the High Peninsula, though at least their argument made sense to him since it involved his people. He watched idly as the Queen of the Dead Woods made her way towards Lord Pettaline, a sigh of relief escaped his lips as the petty argument had died down. “When can we expect the Lord Inquisitor, Advisor?” he turned his attention towards the woman in question.

“You were the only one to note that his accusations were without evidence aloud,” Bella smiled, since she assumed other’s must have at least thought as much but would not say so for whatever reason. “And you don’t even know me, which means you spoke for whatever reason was your own,” she smiled to him, jewels on her hands glimmering in the candle light. Iann spoke however and she lifted a jaw to him. “Actions made threatening when no one who knew better was willing to speak, only to sit silently while others decide I am deserving of interrogation. You know why I’m here, King Iann, and yet you sat back.”

Ephram was one of the few nobles who was honoured to be at Bluesprings Castle, even more so to be part of the Quiver. While politicking wasn’t anything he was keen at – King Iann was probably right to mock his efforts so openly – he took his position as the last Lord of his ruined House extremely seriously. And all the responsibility towards his people that came with it, although that seemed to mean very little to the people he found himself surrounded by, who viewed any discussion as being petty and tiresome and only suggested to shunt every new situation onto the Inquisitor. He was glad, however naively, to find that despite what Lady Lacroy and Maya seemed to imply, the Inquisitor himself didn’t actually want to place those close to him above everybody else. Or take on every task from investigating the assassination to the grievances of random Northern lords.

“I saw a Queen deigning to argue with a Lord, not an interrogation,” Iann said with a light shrug. “He’s in no position to threaten you with anything.”

Ephram smiled back automatically at the diminutive, outlands Queen in her ostentatious jewels and dark affectation. “It’s more to do with my not being familiar with proper secretive etiquette suitable for the Capital, I’m afraid,” he laughed lightly. “I’m more plain-spoken than I ought to be in a place like this. I get the feeling other people would rather say nothing and then complain of everybody talking in circles … but I suppose that’s what they enjoy.” He shrugged. “There wasn’t any need for such rampant accusation and claim of proof, especially when Balcaster had none. Only another problem to foist onto our long-suffering Inquisitor to solve.” Ephram shook his head, grimacing. “I don’t envy Lord Savin being the man everybody brings their troubles to.”

Maya wasn’t overly surprised to overhear Queen Bellamy only give credit to Lord Pettaline for pointing out the Ryden had little to back up his claims despite that Maya had said it as well. It seemed Maya herself was below the woman’s notice entirely. When addressed directly she turned to Tuah and replied, “I do not know unfortunately. Hopefully soon though and with the answer to who killed the High Raj. Then perhaps we can get to coronating the new High Raj and allowing them to help settle all these other matters.”

Tuah nodded, satisfied with his question answered. Though at the mention of other matters, Tuah couldn’t help but let his gaze lingered at the Queen of the Dead Woods. “I do not envy the Inquisitor nor the High Raj for having to settle such matters.” He shook his head, refraining himself from grimacing. Instead, he focused on what mattered to him. “What other things have you learnt from the Inquisitor about the killing of the High Raj, if I may ask.”

Bella shook her head at Iann, he could remain as calm as he liked, disinterested in it all but he was still here. “Perhaps you should return to your Kingdom rather than deign to be here in this one,” she suggested of him. “I think we all need to be a little plainer, this could have been finished off the very first night it happened,” she stated. “Or at least not gone on nearly so long. You should keep remaining plain-spoken, King Iann clearly has too much indifference breed or nurtured into him.” Bella did find the Inquisitor a good man, and if hse was questioned she doubt he’d fight it but she was over have more and more lies spread about her.

When she had a point, she had a point - and Iann definitely wanted to return to the Forty Isles. Perhaps he was being indifferent, but this wasn’t his rule as Inquisitor or High Raj. So he conceded to the Queen with a small bow.

Maya shrugged, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what all I’m at liberty to say other than whats already been said. It was venom from a snake of his lands delivered via the crown’s hidden mechanisms.”

Ephram held his tongue as the Dark Woods Queen directed a few barbs at King Iann, getting a vicarious satisfaction at seeing Cardero be diminished the way he jibed at Ephram. “Thank you, Highness. I was a little bit in my cups, to be honest, but it made my statements no less sincere.” On impulse, he raised Bella’s hand and pressed a kiss to her jewels. “It seems there’s to be some small delay before the important events of this day’s meeting, and I need fortification. Would you care to join me for some lunch?”

“In your cups?” Bella asked, leaning forward as she didn’t quite understand what it meant but she was still happy to have company. “Lunch sounds perfectly wonderful,” she agreed, using the grip he still had on her hand to stand and leave with him.

#got scene #got au

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trueloveseyeroll · 7 years

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When The Tide Turns (11/16)

Summary: The plan was to go to England, finish the case and head back home in a matter of days. Of course, nothing in Emma’s life ever goes according to plan. Not only does she end up travelling across Europe, looking for a Liam Jones in order to finish her case, she ends up travelling with Liam’s brother - an annoyingly handsome Killian Jones. And she doesn’t trust him one bit.

Rating: T, for language - and there’s a bit of light violence in this chapter

Beta-reader: writing a multi-chapter for several months without feedback can get pretty lonely, but thankfully I had an amazing beta by my side - thank you so much @forget-me-not-s !!

Artists: these artists are seriously such talented and amazing people, and they deserve so much praise!!! @theblacksiren - check out her beautiful artwork for chapter 1 here and chapter 7 here! @optomisticgirl created the awesome banner - and soon you’ll get to see the amazing masterpiece created by @fairytalesandtimetravel

Word count: ~4181 (68k+ in total)

AO3

Emma barely slept. Scratch that, she didn’t sleep at all. Not knowing Killian was so close, not with her head spinning as it was. But she had made the right decision; going home was the right thing to do. At least that’s what she kept telling herself as she lay awake throughout the night and as she left in the morning with the first bus towards the airport. She didn’t bother to call Regina or Mary Margaret or anyone. She was just done with talking for the moment.

The sun rose while Emma leaned against the window of the bus, staring out at the passing landscape. She might as well enjoy the view while she could. The mountains, the endless rows of pine trees. There was no snow yet, not this far south in Norway. She almost felt sad for not getting to see the small villages and vast forests decked in a blanket of white. But New York was beautiful too with its skyscrapers and never-ending activity.

Yes, coming back home was going to be wonderful. No more uncertainty about a hopeless case. No more internal battles on whether to trust her ‘partner’ or not. No more crazy talks of Neverland and magic.

No more stupidly blue eyes and too-handsome-for-anyone’s-good faces.

She could sleep in her own bed again and throw herself into new cases. Sit back on her couch and enjoy a glass of wine with some Netflix. Emma had all kinds of things to look forward to back at home.

Yet telling herself she’d made the right decision became harder and harder the closer she got to the airport.

Emma ran her finger over the cut on her palm which Killian had tended to that night in the cave. She never did return his scarf.

When the bus finally came to a stop, Emma felt weird stepping out alone. Dragging her suitcase without listening to cheeky comments that she could ignore or counter left Emma feeling bitter.

Where would the cheeky bastard be now anyway? Probably on his way to Denmark to look for that stupid spyglass. Emma shook her head, telling herself she was glad not to be with him on such a fool’s errand. She wondered how long it would take before he gave up on finding his brother, ignoring the part of her that was angry at herself for giving up first.

Emma tightened her grip on her suitcase. She had to stop her thoughts from spiralling. The case was done. Liam was most likely dead, Killian would learn to deal with it, and if he didn’t, it wasn’t her problem. She needed to get back to her real life, to New York, to new cases that actually made sense. Not some crazy feud over Neverland.

Besides, if it really mattered so much to Killian that she stayed, he wouldn’t have let her leave so easily.

The airport in Kristiansand was rather tiny. In the early morning there wasn’t much of a crowd, only a few people in line for check-in. Emma had bought the cheapest ticket from Kristiansand to Oslo to New York on her phone and could look forward to being back home in about thirteen hours. Hopefully, the airport in Oslo was interesting enough to spend three hours in while waiting.

Emma knelt on the floor, looking for her passport in the front pocket of her suitcase when something caught her eye.

Someone.

A dash of bright red in the corner of her sight made Emma look up. And she could’ve sworn she’d seen it before. A red woollen hat. A red woollen hat on an also familiar, short, round man with a beard. She’d seen him in Barcelona, she was sure of it. And maybe sometime before that too?

That unnerving prickle at the back of her neck returned.

This guy was following her.

Emma tried not to stare at him for too long in case he realized that she’d noticed him. She pretended to change her mind about standing in line for check-in, slipping her passport back in its pocket. Proving that the red-hatted guy was following her was the only thing that mattered now.

She walked down a narrow hall to her right. She wasn’t sure where to it led but she didn’t intend to find out. Once she’d rounded the corner, out of everyone’s sight - including the red-hatted guy’s - she stopped and pressed her suitcase and herself against the wall.

She waited silently, her heart beating just a bit faster. Emma was a lawyer, not some secret agent, but she’d been in this kind of situation before. If only she could confront the guy somewhere a bit more private.

Emma considered the door a few feet to her left. It was probably locked, but she checked anyways, hoping to find some small storage room or something.

For once, she was lucky enough to get what she wanted.

A few minutes more passed in silence. No one followed her down the hall. Emma was beginning to feel restless, all this pent-up frustration and adrenaline with no one to take it out on. Yet.

About two minutes later, her target rounded the corner. To say he was surprised when Emma grabbed him by his jacket and shoved him inside the unlocked storage room was an understatement. A mop was knocked over as Emma shoved him against the wall. The door shut and lights flickered on and Emma hoped to god that no one had heard his yelp.

“Who the hell are you?”

Emma held her arm at his throat while pinning him against the wall. Sure, he was bigger than her but Emma had been in this kind of situation before. She knew how to stand her ground. Knew how to throw a punch if she needed to, too. Foster kids were always easy targets in the schoolyard after all, but Emma had made sure she wasn’t one of them. And she couldn’t deny, letting out her frustrations on a punching bag from time to time was pretty satisfactory.

Besides, this guy was hardly struggling. He all but accepted her arm pressing against his throat.

He didn’t answer her question, so she asked a bit more forcefully. “You’ve been following me and I want to know the hell why.”

“I... Smee. My name’s William Smee and I swear I haven’t been following you,” he stuttered.

Emma’s blood ran cold. She’d heard that name before.

“You’re the guy who told Gold about Neverland,” she said, strengthening her hold on him.

Smee lowered his head. “Yes, yes, okay? I told Gold about Neverland, and I may have been following you, but I swear, it’s not as bad as it looks.”

“Not as bad as it looks?” Emma repeated, unable to believe the nerve this guy had to say that. “You’ve been following us since - I don’t know - England?”

“Yes, well-”

“How the hell is following someone across countries not as bad as it looks?”

“Hey, there’s been no harm done, has there?”

Emma scoffed. “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that and tell me why the hell you’ve been following me.”

Smee squirmed, not wanting to answer. But it suddenly seemed pretty clear to Emma. Gold had paid Smee for information about Neverland. He had tried threatening Killian - by threatening his own wife - into telling him about Neverland. She would never be able to understand how a successful millionaire could believe in fairy tales, but if the guy was crazy enough to threaten his wife...

“Gold put you up to this, didn’t he?”

Smee’s silence was answer enough.

“I can’t fucking believe this,” she muttered. Her momentary lack of questions and accusations gave Smee the idea that maybe it was his turn to ask something.

“I just don’t understand; why aren’t you and Mr. Jones going to Denmark together?”

What?

“I’m not going to Denmark.” She stared at Smee, confused and frustrated. “But how do you even know to guess that’s where we’d be going? Exactly how closely have you been spying on us?”

Smee began stammering out an answer again, some awful cover-up.

Emma remembered the first time she’d felt the prickling at the back of her neck. It was in her hotel room in Barcelona - she couldn’t exactly place her finger on it then, but it felt like someone had been in her room. Knowing now that that could very well have been true, made her feel sick.

She glared at Smee and it didn’t take much more for him to break.

“I’m sorry, okay? I never meant to get so involved. I just wanted to earn a bit of coin, I never knew Mr. Gold would end up taking it this far. The- the picture of the mermaid was a false clue. It wasn’t my idea though, it was hers. All of the ideas have been hers or Mr. Gold’s, I’ve just been doing what I’ve been told, I swear.”

The arm pressed against his throat slackened a bit as his words sunk in. The drawing was a fake. They must have broken into her room, found Liam’s drawings and discovered the Santa Maria del Mar before them, planting a fake clue for them to find. Killian was going to go to Denmark on the grounds of a lie... But something else bothered her as well.

“Her?” she repeated.

“Aye, uh, Miss Zelena West.” The name meant nothing to Emma. But from the look in Smee’s eyes, she guessed Zelena wasn’t the most pleasant of people. “She’s keeping an eye on Mr. Jones right now - ordered me to follow you in the meantime.”

Emma couldn’t believe it. How could all these people be so crazy to believe that Neverland existed and some old objects would help them get there? Obsessed enough to threaten and follow people, create false trails and-

“Wait. If the drawing was fake, what was really behind that brick in Barcelona?”

“Uh,” Smee hesitated again. Emma caught the way his eyes flickered towards his satchel. She hoped for his sake he would never end up in a real interrogation, because he really sucked at this.

“Listen, I can tell you don’t want to be a part of this,” Emma said, “so why don’t you give me what you found, stop following me and disappear for a little while. If you’re afraid of Gold or this Zelena you can contact my firm and see if they’ll help you.”

Smee seemed to consider her offer very carefully. To be honest, she was proud of herself for handling it so rationally when the frustration inside her rather longed to knock him over the head with the fire extinguisher in the corner, take his satchel and get the hell out of there.

“They’ll find me anyways,” he finally answered, shaking his head.

Emma sighed. As much as that fire extinguisher called to her, she knew blunt strikes to the head were a lot more damaging than the movies let on. She’d rather not end up committing a murder because of this damned case.

“Then why don’t you just show me what you found, and we’ll each go our separate ways and no one will have to know.”

That idea got through to him at least. Emma slackened her grip, enough to let him open his satchel while she kept a wary eye on him.

“We found the spyglass,” he said, pulling out the object. A part of Emma ridiculed her for being so excited to see the spyglass. She wasn’t supposed to care about any of this; it was all a load of bullshit. Why don’t you just go home anyway?

She ignored that part of her though, grabbing the spyglass from Smee’s hand and taking a closer look at it.

I’m sorry, buddy...

Emma pulled back and swung her fist at Smee’s face, tripping him over with her legs. It was a rash decision - probably one that would get her fired - but with the adrenaline pumping through her, she really didn’t care. This was the best way to do it anyways. Her knuckles hurt and his face most likely did too, but there would be no lasting damage.

As he yelped and scuffled on the floor, Emma pulled the door open with the spyglass tucked under her arm. She clicked the mechanism in place which would ensure the door would lock behind her when she left. Her head buzzed with excitement, every nerve telling her how terrible this decision was. But she did it anyway.

The door closed behind her before Smee could get out. He pounded on the surface, crying out, but the sounds were only faint. Emma couldn’t help but smile. Her luck had stretched far enough for a somewhat soundproof door.

Someone would find him sooner or later, but in the meantime, Emma grabbed her suitcase (thankful no one had walked by and noticed it) and walked away with the spyglass in her other hand.

She wouldn’t be going home after all. She had a certain Jones to find first.

Two Joneses actually.

Emma’s new-found determination lasted for about five minutes. Stepping out of the airport marked the end of her confident spree. She couldn’t be sure if Killian was in Arendal anymore. She couldn’t be sure if Smee hadn’t contacted Zelena - damn, she should have taken his phone - and for all she knew Killian could be knocked out and lying in his own little storage room. Of course, she’d never thought to get his phone number...

So Emma went from feeling pumped and proud about making a decision that would probably get her fired, to sitting on a bench near the airport, searching hopelessly for a way to find Killian’s phone number.

In the end, Anna was her salvation. She couldn’t remember the name of the bar, only that it was something with Sven. (Reinsdyret Sven was the name - apparently, they’d named their bar after a reindeer). A phone number on their site led to an awkward conversation with Anna, who was actually surprisingly understanding of Emma’s situation. That phone call led to an even more awkward conversation with Elsa, who was a bit more skeptical. Not that Emma could blame her.

Though hesitant at first, Elsa gave Emma the details she asked for. Such as the fact that Killian had just left for the airport after eating breakfast at her place. And his phone number.

Emma wouldn’t have minded talking to Elsa a bit more. Maybe asked what she thought of the whole Neverland-business, what with her sounding like a normal, sane person. Emma could use the perspective of another sane person.

If she told Mary Margaret what was really going on, the woman would either hug her for taking a chance on someone or slap her to try and wake her up from whatever madness she had spiralled into.

She couldn’t decide which was worse.

But after having thanked Elsa for her help, it seemed weird to stick around and ask further questions.

Finally, she was left with the chance to call Killian and tell him she had changed her mind. Oh, and that she’d found the spyglass.

What the hell am I doing? She could be finding her seat on the plane soon, on her way back home. But no, she was on a bench near the airport, trying to get herself to call Jones and hoping like hell Smee hadn’t gotten out yet and that neither he nor Zelena would find her sitting there.

Before she could chicken out, Emma dialled the number Elsa had given her. A moment passed in silence, no beeping indicating the call had gone through. Emma checked if she had pressed call. Which she had. As soon as she held her phone to her ear again, it went straight to voicemail though.

Emma frowned. Was he ditching her call? That wouldn’t make sense though - how would he know she was the one calling?

She tried again, and once more the call went straight to voicemail and she hung up. Maybe his phone was dead.

Emma all but growled in frustration. Of course his stupid flip phone would be dead right when she needed to call him and tell him-

She paused at that. What exactly was she going to tell him? Of course, the gist of it would be her admitting to believing him to some extent, and that she was willing to travel with him to “Neverland”. But how could she say that without his ego inflating to the size of Manhattan?

And how was she going to say it when his phone was dead?

The answer to that question was simple enough though. The bus route from Arendal to the airport included a change at a station about twenty minutes from the airport. She’d just have to catch him there and tell him everything face-to-face. Which didn’t sound awkward at all.

A coffee-to-go in hand, Emma waited at the bus station for about fifteen minutes before the bus from Arendal rolled in. Her leg bounced as she sat on a bench and dammit, she couldn’t deny she was nervous. But why should she be nervous? It was just Jones. Insufferable, cocky Killian Jones. There was no reason to be nervous about this.

But when the door opened and people started stepping out of the bus, Emma’s stomach coiled. She stood up, waiting to see that familiar face stepping out.

Why was she so nervous?

Granted, last she’d seen him she had turned her back on him after he had told her some pretty personal stuff - but she hadn’t been wrong to do so. She didn’t owe him anything. And he didn’t owe her anything. If he wanted, he could take the spyglass and leave her to go to New York: which should have sounded like the ideal option for Emma as well, but it just didn’t.

None of the people spilling out of the bus were Killian. Not yet at least. As one stranger after another stepped out, Emma realized something almost even more frightening. She wasn’t just nervous. She was excited. Excited at the idea of seeing him grin at her when he found out she hadn’t left, and she’d know that she had made the right choice... But what if he didn’t grin at her?

Emma realized she was biting her lip and mentally berated herself, straightened her posture and looked up-

And that’s when Killian walked out. For a second, some traitorous part of her imagined kissing that stupidly handsome face like in some cliché movie, and that’s when Emma knew she had made a huge mistake.

“Swan?”

Of course, he noticed her right then. He seemed to have trouble with believing his own eyes, and Emma took some small pride in that at least.

“Hi.”

They just stood there for a moment, several paces between them. Him with his surprised look, scratching that spot behind his ear; her with her coffee-cup in one hand and suitcase by her side, trying to forget the unbidden image that had flashed through her head.

“I thought you’d left for New York.”

“Yeah... I guess I changed my mind.”

“So you’re... not going to New York?”

“No. Well, I am at some point, but not today.”

A small grin started to spread on his face. Something genuine, something Emma hadn’t seen on his face before (or refused to notice before), and she couldn’t account for the things it was doing to her stomach. Before he could open his mouth and say something that - who knows - might turn her legs to jelly or something equally embarrassing, she rushed to explain herself.

“I’m not saying I don’t think all this Neverland-talk is crazy, because it is, but well... I guess that doesn’t mean it can’t be true.” Okay, she had to say something to make that grin go away. “I’m still pissed at you for not being honest with me from the beginning though, and don’t think I’ll let you off the hook that easily.”

“I wouldn’t dare, Swan.” Dammit, the grin only became cockier. Only for a second though, and then it turned back to that shy, hesitant smile and Emma couldn’t tell which was worst. “But you truly believe me now?”

(The shy one. Definitely the shy one.)

“Yeah.”

Neither said anything, as if both of them needed a moment to realize what she’d just admitted.

She didn’t need to say much more. Didn’t need to explain that though it hurt, she understood why he hadn’t told her everything from the beginning. And though she found everything pretty insane, she was willing to go through with the case.

And Emma didn’t need Killian to say anything to know that he understood.

He gave a small nod in gratitude. “I hope I’m not too presumptuous in thinking you’ll be joining me on a trip to Denmark then?”

It was Emma’s turn to smile now.

“Actually...” she drew it out, looking at her suitcase wherein she’d stashed the spyglass. “I don’t think we’ll need to go that far.”

Killian followed her line of sight towards her suitcase. He cocked his head in question and Emma could almost hear his ‘what are you on about, Swan?’ in her head.

“I ran into someone at the airport about an hour ago.” Killian’s eyes darkened and Emma guessed he’d jumped to the worst conclusion with Gold being the one she’d run into. “William Smee.”

“Smee?”

“Yeah. Looks like you were wrong about me being Gold’s spy but right about him having spies. Apparently Smee’s been following us since England along with some woman named Zelena West.”

“Bloody hell.”

Emma shot him a look of agreement. “Smee said Zelena was keeping an eye on you while he followed me to the airport, and I’m not sure where she is now, but last I saw Smee I’d punched him and locked him in a storage closet at the airport.”

Killian broke into a chuckle, eyes swimming with someone akin to pride. “I knew there was a little pirate in you, Swan.”

Why did that sound like one of the best compliments she’d ever gotten?

“I guess I’m only proving that by saying I took the spyglass from him before locking him in.”

“Smee had the spyglass?”

“Had being the keyword. Apparently he and Zelena found out about the Santa Maria del Mar painting before us and after breaking into my room and finding Liam’s drawings, they discovered the church first too. And the spyglass. The drawing you found was a diversion. Doesn’t matter now though, because I’ve got the spyglass.” Emma nodded towards her suitcase again.

The pride in Killian’s eyes turned to honest wonder. “You’re a bloody marvel, Swan.”

Okay, that was the best compliment she’d ever gotten. And how she was still standing was almost a marvel in itself.

“Yeah, well...” she shrugged, a blush creeping up on her face along with a smile. Fuck she hated herself like this. “Anyways, we don’t know where Zelena is - or if she’s heard this entire conversation - so I suggest we get a move-on. Please tell me you know where to go next.”

“Well, we’ve got all three objects now, so all we have to do is set sail.”

Somehow he made it sound natural. Like they were off to some fun relaxing sail-trip and not on a hopeless journey without a real course. And hell, other than during boat tours or ferries, Emma had never actually been sailing before.

Didn’t they usually fly to Neverland anyways?

“Right. Sailing. And uh, do you have a boat for that?” Emma asked.

“I’ve got a ship docked in Westport harbour in Ireland - taking a few tourists on board every now and then served as my livelihood for a while, alongside my attempts at writing. Alas, Westport’s too far away. Elsa told me Liam sailed to Neverland from a harbour in the northwest of Norway; my intention was to begin our journey the same.”

“So we’re going further north?”

“Aye. It seems a warmer coat doesn’t sound so foolish now, does it, love?”

Emma glared at him. He was right though. And what the hell - she’d already spent way more than should be allowed on a simple ‘overseeing of a business transaction’, travelled to four different countries in one week, straight-up punched a guy and locked him in a storage closet in an airport, disobeyed Regina’s orders by travelling further with this case and had all but started to believe in Neverland. How much harm could a new, warm coat do? She was going to get fired anyway, Emma was sure of that by now.

But the look in Killian’s eyes when he realized she wasn’t leaving him after all... and the way it just felt right to not give up on this case quite yet -

Well, getting fired was about the least of Emma’s worries now.

#csbb #when the tide turns #cs ff #my writings #cs fanfic #chapter 11 #enjoy!#cs au

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directionr · 6 years

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if you're going to constantly rant about jacob why don't YOU make your own fan fiction about jacob? why don't YOU post your own pictures and gifs about jacob? why drag the tom holland fandom into this? I've never seen anyone in the tom holland fandom call jacob fat or hate him because he's asian. YOU'RE the one being toxic as fuck to this tom holland fandom. if you're so salty about tom then get the fuck outta the fandom and YOU make ur own content on jacob.

B r o pls calm down, did my post really make you that angry? Anyways, I do have a bunch of poc/Jacob related stuff lined up and since you so kindly asked, I’ll list them:1) I’m writing some Christmas hcs with Jacob, and hopefully I get around to Ned hcs too2) @spideyfloof and I (and anyone else who wants to join!) are doing a Jacob night! So stay tuned for that!3) I want to do some poc moodboards as soon as i have free timeI’m not really sure what you were trying to prove w this but I hope that’s a satisfactory answer.

#le sigh #isabel's mail

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fiorashreehan · 4 years

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frenchkisst · 4 years

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Diet Doctor podcast #47 — Adele Hite, PhD

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This week on the Diet Doctor podcast: a conversation with one of Diet Doctor’s own

This week’s podcast was a rare treat for me. This was the first time I had the pleasure of interviewing one of our own Diet Doctor teammates for the Diet Doctor Podcast.

And what a treat it was.

If you aren’t familiar with Adele Hite, RD, PhD, you are in luck. She’s Diet Doctor’s senior writer, who, in addition to educating us all on the science behind low carb and keto, also happens to have her own impressive low-carb success story.

You can read Adele’s success story and you can also listen to our latest podcast episode. But, even then, you may only be scratching the surface in terms of what Adele brings to the conversation surrounding low carb and to the Diet Doctor team.

Because of Adele’s personable (but still science-backed) approach to low carb, you are bound to learn a lot during this week’s episode. Few people have the knowledge, experience, and intellectual integrity that Adele has. She truly is the whole package.

In our joint podcast segment, Adele and I discuss the dietary guidelines from an angle that many people likely have not previously heard. We also discuss a number of low-carb myths that are prevalent in our community — and we also touch upon the importance of always asking why we believe what we believe.

If you are at all interested in furthering your knowledge about nutrition, low carb, and intellectual integrity, then you owe it to yourself to tune into this week’s episode with Adele Hite, PhD.

Thanks for reading, Bret Scher, MD FACC

As a member you have access to the podcasts as soon as they are published. Start your free trial now! Check all of our podcast episodes here.

Table of contents

2:35 Welcome, Adele Hite 3:20 ‘Questioning everything’ is her true personality 4:15 Adele’s PhD thesis on the US dietary guidelines 5:40 The dietary guidelines are more political than scientific 7:40 The changes in the US dietary guidelines 9:38 The truth behind ‘Healthy America’ headlines 11:20 How Adele responds to “The US guidelines makes us fatter” 14:10 Food industries on dietary guidelines 18:08 In 1960s, dietary guidelines were made for clinical populations 19:00 How low-carb diets were not included in the guidelines 24:50 Dietary guidelines: it’s your choice! 31:55 The guidelines vs low carb, which one do we need? 41:20 Weight gain and metabolic health issue 44:05 Metabolic health, obesity and diabetes correlations 49:05 Is a guideline with low-carb diets necessary? 54:10 Vegetable oils and food fear, according to Adele 58:50 High-protein issue 01:03:57 Where to find Adele Hite

Dr. Bret Scher: Welcome back to the Diet Doctor podcast. So you might notice something a little bit different. Now, with the stay-at-home orders, with coronavirus, it’s you know, pampered my ability to get out and travel and go to conferences and meet people in person, which is how all our other podcasts have been done. So we’re venturing out into the virtual podcast, so please forgive us if there are any technical difficulties in sound and in the video quality.

Continue reading the full transcript

We do our best to make the best viewing and listening experience for our audiences and hopefully we’ve succeeded and we’ll continue to refine it. But today’s guest is Diet Doctor’s very own Adele Hite. So, Adele has an MPH and an RD degree from the University of North Carolina, where she also started a PhD program in nutritional epidemiology. But interestingly, as you’ll learn, she questions authority, she questions everything.

And her thesis raised a lot of questions about the dietary guidelines and she then found it difficult to find someone to work with to help her continue getting her PhD. So she actually switched gears and instead went to NC State where she got a PhD in communication rhetoric and digital media, still with her thesis about the dietary guidelines. So what it comes down to, though, is she probably has spent more time researching the dietary guidelines and knows more about the dietary guidelines than just about anybody.

But this podcast isn’t just about the dietary guidelines, because what I really love about Adele is she questions everything. And as you’ll learn, it’s not just what she does now, she’s done this her whole life. She questions authority, she wants to know why we believe what we believe and what the implications of our beliefs are. And that goes to so much of the mythology that is present in nutrition in general, including low-carb mythology.

So we talk a lot about sort of the different aspects of mythology that we all need to be a little bit more aware of. You know, if you want flashy sound bites, this isn’t for you. If you want a deeper, more thoughtful investigation of all the things we believe and talk about, then this is for you, that’s Adele’s specialty. So whether you see her on DietDoctor.com, on her own website, or on her Twitter feed, you’re going to get an in-depth and very cerebral and thorough evaluation.

So be ready to see things from a new perspective and maybe open your eyes a bit more with this podcast with Adele Hite. Adele Hite, thank you so much for joining me on our Diet Doctor podcast today.

Adele Hite, PhD: Thanks, I’m delighted to be here.

Bret: This is a first, because we are both Diet Doctor team members, so a first for me actually interviewing a Diet Doctor team member, but you are so much more than that. And in Diet Doctor I have to say you sort of serve the purpose, and I mean this with all respect, as the “bulldog”. Which I love. You are the one who doesn’t take any nonsense.

You don’t take anything on face value, you question every statement, in your core you know things need to be defensible and we need to be able to back up what we say and I love that about you and I think you make so many wonderful contributions to Diet Doctor from that standpoint. So I have to ask you, have you always been like this? Is this part of your personality? That you always question what people tell you and need to prove it?

Adele: Actually it is. I got in a fair amount of trouble as a child, because this was my personality. I got tossed out of Sunday school when I was about 10 because I kept asking questions that I think made the Sunday school teacher uncomfortable, because she didn’t have answers for them or she kept giving the same answer which wasn’t satisfying to me.

And I didn’t mean to be obnoxious. I actually wanted to know how they knew so that I could know too. And she couldn’t give me a satisfactory answer and she told my mother that I probably shouldn’t come back.

Bret: That’s a great story. So, this clearly is ingrained into who you are. And now this led you through many paths, to an MPH, an RD and then a PhD. And tell us what your PhD thesis was on.

Adele: My PhD thesis was on the dietary guidelines for Americans and how we define healthy diet.

Bret: You know, chances are you spent more time than just about anybody diving into the guidelines to see exactly what’s in them and all the specific details and permutations of the guidelines throughout time. Would you say that’s pretty accurate?

Adele: I would say that’s pretty accurate. Gary Taubes and Nina Teicholz know a great deal about the science aspects of the guidelines like what science was available and the science that wasn’t really represented as much in the guidelines as other science, but I don’t think that they know as much about the actual guidelines policy as I do. And those are different things, because the guidelines aren’t just about the science.

If they were just about the science we would have different guidelines. But they are not; they are about politics. It’s in the word – policy involves politics and these guidelines certainly involve a lot of politics.

Bret: So that’s interesting. So it’s more than science, it’s definitely with politics and that can change sort of how we interpret them or what we think they’re supposed to be doing I guess is one way to say it.

Adele: Right, and especially those of us in the low-carb community really have this, I think this idea, and it’s a good idea, that if we pile up enough science if we just keep piling it up and piling it up, eventually the guidelines will have to change because they will have to recognize that science. But my research says that the biggest influence on any edition of the guidelines is… surprise, the previous edition of the guidelines. And that started with the second edition of the guidelines. I mean, this is not something new.

When the first edition was created in 1980, the second edition– there were still a lot of pushback from a lot of scientists and a lot of industry players about the guidelines at that point in time, but even by then, in 1985, the folks who wrote that set of guidelines said, we have to acknowledge the fact that people are already using these guidelines in public health and in, you know, to create menus in public schools.

They are using these guidelines, these are out there and if we change them dramatically, it’s going to confuse the public. So already the guidelines were saying we are too conservative to really follow science. That was in 1985.

Bret: So they sort of admitted that they couldn’t follow the science in a way.

Adele: Yeah, from the beginning, they did.

Bret: But it sounds that now they don’t admit that. Now it sounds like they’re trying to claim they’re following the science, but they are sort of picking their own science that they want to follow.

Adele: Well, yes because something happened between 1980 and say about 1990. And I bet you know what it is. We discovered that Americans were not getting healthier, that they were actually becoming more obese and we were seeing these rapid rises in metabolic diseases and that began to dawn on us as a nation. The public health community knew about it first and probably the biggest paper on it got published in 1994.

But there were hints of it before then and so there was already some warning in the early 1990s that there was instead of a healthy America, an obesity crisis. And this really changed things. And I think that we have to recognize that the guidelines, as they are enacted from about 1990 on, are different guidelines from the first two editions, 1980 and 1985.

So one of the things that people don’t know about the history of the dietary guidelines is that the first couple of editions of the dietary guidelines should be considered very differently from later editions. And there’s a couple of reasons for that. One is there wasn’t even a mandate for the guidelines to exist until the third– I’ll correct that, the fourth edition of the guidelines.

So the first three editions of the guidelines were written sort of out of organizational or institutional inertia. They created some in 1980, they’ll create some again in 85 and they created some again in 1990. The ones that were created in 1995 were the ones that were fully created under an actual mandate or an actual law.

Bret: But by that point it was already kind of clear that the guidelines had not achieved what they were set out to achieve.

Adele: This is true and we started to discover that in the early 1990s. It was sort of interesting because– So my PhD is in communication rhetoric and digital media. And that means that I look at how these guidelines are portrayed across different mediums.

So when the newspapers are talking about America and diets and helpfulness and people taking up healthy habits, from about 1975 till the 1990s all of the headlines and stories talk about Americans getting healthy and eating healthy and exercising and it really sounds as if Americans have taken up this diet, and they’ve taken up the idea of managing your health through eating right and exercising right and then our national health surveys for eating start to go through the populations and actually measure people and they are finding… the National Institutes of Health, I think the survey– I’m sorry, Center for Disease Control…

The big survey came out in 1994, Catherine Fliegel was there along with some other folks whose names I can’t remember right now, but it showed that Americans were not getting healthier. They were getting fatter and sicker.

Bret: Which brings us to a big point– I need to interrupt you there, because that’s such an important point, because that brings us to the point that so many people make that the dietary guidelines made us fat and made us sick. We hear that time and time again. Now how do you respond to that type of statement?

Adele: I’ll tell you the typical response that you would get from a dietitian is they can’t have made us fat and sick; nobody followed them. So however what you really need to know is that both statements are ecological fallacies.

Bret: Okay. Explain.

Adele: And that’s a big fancy word that means you’re looking at a population level exposure, which is a policy and then you’re trying to fallaciously tie it to individual behaviors. So it would be hard to say that the level of rainfall that a country gets makes people more sedentary, although it might because you don’t want to go outside. But that’s not– that’s trying to take a population level exposure and tie it to whether or not an individual is willing to go outside in the rain. Do you see the problems with that?

Bret: I do.

Adele: So, whenever somebody either blames the guidelines or lets the guidelines off the hook for this, they’re not looking at the right thing. They’re trying to tie this to an individual behavior. You either followed the guidelines and you got fat or you didn’t follow the guidelines and you got fat and both statements are probably not true. Now for any– go ahead.

Bret: Yes, so I guess the first question is, did the country as a whole follow the guidelines? And depending on who you listen to, the answer is yes, they clearly did, because the percents of fat that Americans ate went down or they clearly didn’t because the total calories went up and the total calories of fat did not go down even though the percent went down. So is there a right answer or are they both sort of right?

Adele: It’s a numbers game. It depends on what you want to say. If you want to say, well Americans were eating a low-fat diet, and you point to the percentages, sure that’s going to look like a low-fat diet because it’s lower in fat percentagewise than what we were eating before. But if you want to say the words, Americans were eating less fat, you can’t say that.

Bret: So that’s a very interesting differentiation. That most people don’t care to think sort of in that degree. And then I guess the other part though, to say whether it was the guidelines that worked or didn’t work, was the guidelines also did ask for reduced sugar intake, which of course the country did not do. So the other part is, did the guidelines create an atmosphere that promoted obesity and diabetes and weight gain?

Because they created an atmosphere of promoting a diet that didn’t work for most people, simply because they couldn’t stick to it and because it opened the door for industry to rush in and promote so-called healthy foods that were full of carbohydrates and full of calories. So that’s the other take on these guidelines.

Adele: Okay, so that was a whole lot in there. Let me see if I can pull that apart. So yeah the dietary guidelines definitely gave some sectors of the food industry a leg up. Absolutely, and this is why you see when the dietary goals were created by the McGovern committee. The meat people and the egg people had special hearings to push back against these goals.

Because they knew that though corn people and the wheat people and the vegetable oil people were going to have a marketplace advantage that they were not going to have. And they realized that they were not going to be able to advertise their foods that were healthy in the same way as these other sectors of the marketplace.

Now, by the time 1985 and 1990 rolled around, many of those other sectors of the marketplace realized that they actually could market food as “healthy” that they couldn’t market that way, in the previous years. The beef people started creating leaner cattle and ground beef was made in the lean varieties and fattier varieties and the lean varieties were more expensive. Do you remember that big uproar about pink slime a few years back?

Pink slime was actually– at the time it was invented a benefit to the consumer because it made meat leaner. It was a way of taking the trimmings of beef and using them to make leaner meat and that’s what consumers wanted. They wanted lean beef, they wanted lean poultry, they wanted lean pigs and we were able to breed those pigs so that you got pork chops that had no fat on them.

Bret: So, this is really an important point because it shows how the guidelines have affected much more than just what an individual puts in their mouth. It affects how we grow our foods, how we raise our cattle, how we raise our animals. It affects– sorry?

Adele: How we breed them.

Bret: How we breed them, right. And what our kids eat in school and what grandma eats in her retirement home and what the military eat. So, it filtered down and it filtered to nutritionists and physicians. I mean at no point you could say, does it say physicians and nutritionists have to recommend a low-fat diet, but at the same time it seemed like there’s been a lot of pushback for those who don’t in certain situations and the major governing bodies of cardiology and endocrinology that have said this is the right diet to follow.

So in a way, if the dietary guidelines were not– How to say this? The dietary guidelines were meant for the healthy population, right? That’s one point that frequently is made but it got extrapolated to everybody, to all nutritionists and all physicians, by this top-down effect and every aspect of our society. But yet, they didn’t work and so how do we phrase–?

Adele: Hold on. You have to acknowledge a step before then, which is that the dietary guidelines as we see them now were initially meant for a clinical population. So the American Heart Association had some views about what type of diet was best for people who were at high risk for heart disease or had already been diagnosed with heart disease and that was—

Bret: You’re talking about like back in the 60s.

Adele: In the 60s, right. That was a high carbohydrate, low-fat, low-cholesterol diet. At the same time other physicians were using low carb higher fat diets to treat obesity and diabetes. Those were already in circulation and being used. At the time you know Ancel Keys had already distanced himself from the idea that dietary cholesterol had anything to do with heart disease. So the fact that we blame low-cholesterol diets on Ancel Keys is sort of silly because he was not supporting that theory at all, but there were a number of people, Mark Hegsted and William Connor, who were.

Bret: How did I get so misunderstood, because what Ancel Keys clearly did is the Seven Countries study and at that point he was promoting the connection between dietary fat dietary cholesterol and heart disease.

Adele: No, dietary fat, particularly saturated fat. But he did not think that obesity had anything to do with chronic disease. He did not think that dietary cholesterol had anything to do with it. And of course he didn’t think that dietary sugar levels had anything to do with heart disease.

Bret: But saturated fat he did.

Adele: Saturated fat was the bad guy. But what McGovern’s committee did was that they listened to all of these experts with all of these competing theories and they sort of mashed them together in a big pile and the biggest reason that the low-carb diet sort of didn’t get represented in this has to do with politics not with science. It wasn’t that the science– And everybody in the low-carb world knows this.

It wasn’t that Ancel Keys’ science was stronger than, say, the science by Pennington. It had to do with the fact that at that time America was going to an energy crisis. We had also been warned about global famine and there were all of these other political things going on. Meat was extremely expensive.

The first Meatless Monday boycotts were about the price of meat, not to save the animals or for health or anything like that. It was about meat being expensive. So this is apart from the government work on the guidelines in popular America, in the in the populace people were already beginning to eat less fat in terms of animal products. Because one, they were expensive, and two, it was just sort of– it was– what could I say? It gave you a kind of popular mystique to eat like the Beatles and go vegetarian.

We had Frances Moore Lappé’s Diet for Small Planet and there was this sort of cachet to eating in this way that ended up as the dietary goals and then as the dietary guidelines. And let me just make this very, very clear this was very much a white, well-educated upper middle class population that was taking up these habits. And it was a white professional upper-middle-class population that created both the goals and the guidelines.

The poor people in America, low income populations, minority populations, were considered targets for these goals and guidelines. Because the white educated professional folks already “knew” how to eat. So, you have to recognize that something else happened in 1980 besides the dietary guidelines. Something very important happened in 1980 and it was called the election of Ronald Reagan.

And the institution of global economics that focused on marketplace solutions. So what we had in America, we called it the trickle-down economics and in America we also have trickle-down nutrition, which is a diet that wealthy white people can manage to stay healthier on and I use that term in a relative way. It’s not a diet that you can give or expect people who don’t have as much money to spend on food, don’t have as much resources to challenge the way of thinking that’s coming from doctors or dietitians, who don’t have access to free time to exercise off all those extra calories that you get from eating a high carb diet.

Do you see what I’m saying? It wasn’t this switch and how we thought about what was healthy. It was also a switch in the economics in the US. And there’s still a health divide. All of the repercussions that we see as coming out of the guidelines and there are plenty of negative ones, I am not going to deny that at all, but a lot of them have to do with economic circumstances.

If you are wealthier, if you are better educated in America, you can almost pick your own diet. But if you’re not, if you’re one of those people who has to rely on government to programs or you’re in the military or your kids get their lunches and their breakfast at school, you are imprisoned by those choices.

And because you already have less resources for joining a gym, for having extra time to cook farm fresh meals and whatnot, you are already on a worse diet than a lot of other Americans. Whether you are following the guidelines or not. So it’s a lot more complicated.

Bret: So, this is so interesting. I don’t think many people– I don’t think anybody really understands it at the level that you understand this. But is it important that people understand it at that level? Because people want an answer. People want to know, what should I eat? So I guess one question is, one, should we even look into the government for that? And two, if we are, how do we summarize what the guidelines have and haven’t done and what they should be doing?

Adele: So what the guidelines did, I think that the most insidious thing that the guidelines did, was that they shifted our attention away from population health being the responsibility of institutions, organizations and corporations. And they made your health your responsibility. And that ideology fits with both low-fat diets, vegan diets, vegetarian diets, carnivore diets, low-carb diets, keto diets, any of these kinds of named diets that you can think of.

Who is responsible for your health outcomes? You are. And that’s what the dietary guidelines did that has been the most insidious and problematic aspect of the whole thing. It has nothing to do with the amount of fat that they recommended. It has to do with the fact that they said if you do this thing you can avoid ever getting half a dozen chronic diseases that we can name. And that made that your responsibility.

Bret: But isn’t that the way it also make it now the government’s responsibility? Because they’re saying, we’re going to tell you how to eat to be healthy, so it’s our responsibility to tell you and it’s your responsibility to do it.

Adele: Right, right but you notice that that gives them that out. Well, if you didn’t, then you must– if I look at you and you have a chronic disease, well, you must not have followed the guidelines. If I look at you and you’re obese, you must not have followed the guidelines. And if you say, well I did follow the guidelines and I still got diabetes, you know what you’ll get back in response? You are an unreliable narrator of your experience. So there’s always an out because they’ve made it the individual’s responsibility.

Now what that means is that for those of us who are white, who are educated, who are upper-middle-class, who have some resources we can take our efforts into our own hands and find the diet that works best for us. And that’s what we can and we should do, but in terms of the government telling the rest of the folks who are sort of handcuffed to those guidelines– the guidelines need to be eliminated, they need to be completely removed.

There needs to be a law written that says, here’s what you should do in terms of eating. Go see a nutritionist, go see a doctor, go see someone who can help you find the way to eat that’s right for you. And there should be money that pays for that in Medicare and Medicaid and in private health insurance.

But we will never get rid of that gap between poor people, between the health outcomes of poor people and wealthier people through diet. It has to do with so much more. So we do need to start with getting rid of the guidelines and letting everyone find the path that works best for them.

Bret: Yeah, I think that’s a great conclusion. That’s the one thing we can hopefully all agree on about these guidelines is that they’re not doing anybody any good, whether we fall them, whether we didn’t, whether the low-fat was the culprit or the guidelines were the culprit. Whatever the details.

The conclusion sort of always leads to the same road; that they didn’t work and it’s probably best to get rid of them and leave it to individual practitioners without other bodies like the American Heart Association trying to dictate what they’re supposed to say too.

Because there are programs out there that won’t promote low-carb, because they’re afraid of losing funding or they’re afraid of losing a certain certification. And even if they may personally believe in it. So that type of thing has to go away and I think the guidelines as long as they exist promote that type of thinking unfortunately.

Adele: Right, and they also promote thinking that individuals are responsible for their own health outcomes. Which means that the people in Flint, Michigan, got lousy water because our government didn’t take it upon themselves to ensure that those people have what they need. Our government is still not taking it upon itself to make sure that everybody gets adequate essential nutrition, which is my bandwagon.

You know, before we worry about whether or not somebody is going to develop heart disease or diabetes in 30 years, we should first be making sure that they get adequate protein and adequate essential vitamins and minerals every single day. But we don’t do that because we’re so focused on these other things.

And it really gets in the way of feeding our population adequately in terms of essential nutrition, because we don’t let WIC families, that’s women, infants and children, so we won’t let them spend that money on eggs for instance at the farmer’s market, which would be a great thing for a pregnant mommy or a little child to have that protein in their diet. Instead we worry about the fat or the cholesterol that’s in the eggs and instead we insist that they spend their WIC dollars on produce.

Now I don’t have anything against produce, but if you’re trying to raise small children or if you’re a pregnant mommy, those eggs are going to be better for you. There’s just no way around it.

So that is a problem and we’ve just taken our focus so much over to this idea that fruits and vegetables are magical and we’re going to prevent every disease known to mankind by just stuffing America full of fruits and vegetables, that we forget that we need these other things as well, especially adequate protein and probably more than what the guidance says right now.

Bret: And don’t forget the healthy whole grains, of course too with the fruits and vegetables. So to me that speaks for, we need to promote more that you are in charge of your health. We’re not going to tell you what to do that you are in charge. But I can see your point that for those who need assistance from the government, they need to be assisted in the correct way, I guess.

Whereas it’s sort of an upper class benefit to be able to say I’m in charge and I don’t need anybody else’s assistance. And I should be in charge, everybody should be in charge, except if you need help, you need to be able to find the right help and that’s what the government is not providing.

Adele: That’s exactly right.

Bret: By the way, I have like 10 things on my list to talk about that were not guidelines related, but it’s rare to talk to somebody who knows so much about the guidelines in this type of depth. Now one of the things that came out recently that was this fact fiction documentary, which I was in, in full disclosure, and I think was wonderful, but you had– and you wrote a great review of it talking about all the wonderful things about it.

So I mean there are a lot of amazing things in this documentary. But one of the issues you had was the way the dietary guidelines was portrayed. And personally I don’t think it was anything specifically in this documentary, because it’s just how everybody believes about the dietary guidelines.

And I don’t want to rehash it all here; people can go read the post and I’m going to interview Jen Eisenhardt, who was the creator of the film as well, to talk about her research and what she came up with, but the point being when something gets passed down so often, that it just becomes believed and it becomes mythology… It seems like that you feel like that really starts to hurt our message and our cause or anybody’s message and anybody’s cause in terms of what they’re trying to promote. And the dietary guidelines kind of play in the central role in that, doesn’t it?

Adele: Well, we become incredibly hypocritical when we do that, because what we complain about is the fact that this low-fat diet has been accepted and ideas about it, like Ancel Keys promoting a low-cholesterol diet. They’ve been passed along and passed along, in fact we’ve accepted that I think. And so these ideas get passed along and nobody takes time to go back and actually look at what happened or what was said or what the data says.

And it does hurt our message because there are people who do know and they will use that opportunity of us being wrong about what we say about the dietary guidelines- You know, the low-fat diet made us fat. Or that implies that we actually lowered our fat. Well, we didn’t. So people will say that. It’s just like when we say the dietary guidelines made us fat, dietitians and others will come back and say no it didn’t, because nobody followed them.

And there is evidence that there were many things that were in the dietary guidelines that we didn’t actually do. So, we have to be accurate. So if we want to accomplish what we really want to accomplish, which is for those people who are handcuffed to the dietary guidelines to have better options.

So my dream is when anybody walks into a doctor’s office with one of the chronic diseases that we know it can be addressed through dietary change as an option, that they are given dietary change. A food first opportunity as an option. But in order to do that, we can’t replicate the mistakes that they made in 1977 and 1980. Does that make sense?

Bret: That does yes, that does. So part of that though it is thinking that there’s any one right diet for somebody, that there’s one way for everybody to eat, and that’s sort of the number one mistake. So if you say in the low-carb sphere that everybody should be eating low-carb, you’re sort of making the same mistake.

And instead need to focus more on the individualization, which unfortunately means it’s so important who that person is consulting with you, who that person is advising you and you have to get the right person or someone who is at least willing to work with you, with different experiments and different versions of nutrition to find the right one for you. And I think that’s what’s really lacking out there because right now people are too busy following a cookbook style of what to tell people. But I think we–

Adele: Right, but it goes beyond that even in the low-carb world we have a default to the idea that what you eat today– we know if you eat “right” today, you can prevent certain health outcomes 20 or 30 years down the road. And we are very good at criticizing the fact that the low-fat proponents don’t have that evidence. You don’t have any evidence that eating a low-fat diet is going to prevent heart disease or prevent obesity or prevent diabetes.

Well, guess what, neither do we have that evidence for low-carb. We don’t have evidence for either of those diets, acting as long-term preventative health ways of eating. We do have evidence for low-carb as a really, really strong and a really, really important intervention for pre-diabetes and a bunch of other metabolic conditions that we know can be reversed or improved with carbohydrate reduction.

But if we walk around saying that we know that low-carb can prevent somebody who doesn’t even have any family history of diabetes, we don’t know that.

Bret: Right.

Adele: And the reason we don’t know that is the intervention is not always the same thing as the cause. So when somebody has an infection, you give them in antibiotics, but it wasn’t the lack of antibiotics that caused the infection. So there are lots and lots of situations like that, we can’t just jump to those conclusions and say– I mean I think it looks really good for future research that maybe one day we can prove this and I think that we might be able to, but we can’t right now say that if you eat a low-carb diet today, that 20 years from now you won’t get heart disease or diabetes or any other chronic disease.

Bret: Which is that the words we use, the language we use matters and our recommendation has to be in line, the strength of our recommendation has to be in line with the strength of the evidence.

So like you said, we can say we don’t have that evidence for low-fat and we can say it makes sense that low-carb may provide us that evidence because of sort of the shorter-term evidence, so it should be something that people recommend and talk about and explore, but we cannot say with certainty that it has been proven for long-term outcomes as an intervention. So that makes a lot of sense. It’s not that we can’t recommend it, is that we have to recommend it with the appropriate strength of recommendation I guess to back what is known.

Adele: Right, and I would say that there are diets that are more likely to give you your adequate essential nutrition and I think a low-carb diet or a lower-carb diet is more likely to do that because carbohydrates are simply not essential. And we are filling people’s plates with calories that don’t provide other kinds of nutrition. Then they’re getting a lot of calories which we know people probably don’t need and they’re not getting the nutrition, especially protein that they really do need. And I think that there’s one other factor in there, which actually goes back to the early history of the guidelines.

So we have this mistaken belief that there was the dietary goals and then three years later, boom, boom, boom, the dietary guidelines came out and that was it. But we forget that in 1980 there was another powerful document written by the most prestigious nutrition group in our country, the Food Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine and they came out with a document called Toward Healthful Diets. And it was in competition with the dietary guidelines and those two kind of went head-to-head in a cage match for which was going to be our national dietary policy.

And Toward Healthful Diets basically said two things: eat a variety of foods, so that’s the adequate essential nutrition part, and the other thing that they said was, you know, eat a diet that doesn’t make you gain weight. Now for some people that might be a low-fat, low-calorie diet, for other people that might be a low-carb diet. They didn’t say which was better. They just said eat a diet that doesn’t make you gain weight.

So the dietary guidelines actually ended up winning that contest for a number of reasons, none of which had to do with science. But I think those two factors and Toward Healthful Diets are still important. You need adequate essential nutrition and you need a diet that doesn’t make you gain weight.

And if you find that you’re gaining weight eating a low-fat, low-calorie, high-carb diet like I did, like many other people who visit the Diet Doctor site did, who did experience that and we know that we’re not crazy, it did happen to us, then that diet is just simply not the right one for us.

So there are two things that we have to pay attention to in terms of a diet. One, adequate essential nutrition, two, metabolic health. That’s the don’t gain weight part. And your diet, whatever your diet is, should give you both of those things. I think that’s all we need to say.

Bret: Yeah, that’s a great summary. Now, you mentioned weight gain and metabolic health in sort of the same statement. So this is another issue that comes up time and time again that is the problem the weight gain or is the problem the metabolic health? Are they always related and does it help us or hurt us to focus on one or the other? So what’s your take on that?

Adele: Yeah, this is a very, very tangled web. And we like to focus on obesity and I would say that we like to focus on obesity for some reasons that are very superficial; it’s easy to measure. But also we can look at people and we can tell that they have not been eating right by looking at them. So it allows people– So this goes back to that idea of you are responsible for your own health.

I can tell by looking at someone who has a high body mass and I can think with my superior brain, you didn’t eat the way you were supposed to and noticed that both low-fat folks and low-carb folks who do that, you’ll hear the low-fat folks going… See? Look, eating your low-carb diet and look at you. You are BMI is over 40. But you’ll also hear people who are low-carbers go, well, if you just cut out those carbs, you would lose all that weight.

Neither of those statements is true. You cannot look at people and tell how they eat, how much they exercise or what their metabolic health is. Although if somebody is carrying a lot of excess adipose tissue, it’s a pretty safe bet, simply because there’s a lot of correlation that they have poor metabolic health. It doesn’t necessarily mean they do.

But it’s a good bet. But then the question is did the obesity cause the metabolic health or did the poor metabolic health cause the obesity? Well I think we actually do know the answer to that and that’s poor metabolic health causes obesity. It precedes obesity, it precedes sedentary behavior. People don’t get fat and then develop metabolic disease. And we know this from the Virta trials, I think are one of the best experience.

But any low-carb nutritionist or doctor knows that they can put their patient on a reduced carb diet, get the carbs out of their system and start taking them off of medications and the patient will report feeling better before they’ve lost any significant amount of weight.

Bret: Yeah, the was… There was an intervention trial with Dr. Krause and Dr. Phinney and Volek that showed without any weight loss low-carb still improve metabolic health. Part of the problem though is when we look at older studies about this is how you define metabolic health.

Because usually it’s the presence or absence of diabetes which is far too superficial and not even close to how we should be defining metabolic health, which makes it much harder I think to say we know for sure which one precedes the other.

But I think we can say it makes sense which one we should target first as an intervention, that weight loss without metabolic health improvement is not winning any goals. But metabolic health improvement without weight loss is still likely improving your overall outlook. It seems like a fair statement that most people shouldn’t be able to argue with… would you agree?

Adele: Yes and obesity was problematic before it became associated with metabolic health, but it was problematic for orthopedic reasons. And I remember seeing these folks in clinic too. In terms of their metabolism they usually had fairly normal blood pressure, normal blood sugars etc. but they had hip problems, knee problems, joint problems in their feet and they needed to lose weight for orthopedic reasons.

So obesity has always been problematic for that reason, but it wasn’t until, you know, since the, I think, mid-century of the previous century that we started associating obesity with poor health. And that had a lot to do with those insurance actuarial studies, but again there’s no causal arrow.

And this is another thing, I think, that isn’t well understood that predictive risk factors and causal risk factors aren’t the same thing. So just because a risk factor predicts that a person has a certain condition does not mean that that risk factor is causal.

Bret: Right, association is not causation for sure. That’s something that we need to hammer home again and again and again.

Adele: Well, the word risk factor, because it has the word risk in it, I think that we think, oh, you are taking a risk if you’re obese. I mean maybe, but not necessarily. It’s like with pellagra, poverty was a risk factor for getting pellagra. But some people thought that was because of the poor sanitation conditions and other people thought it was because of the poor diet.

But poor sanitation was also predictive of getting pellagra. But you could wash your hands all you wanted and you’d still get pellagra if you had a bad diet. So just because poor sanitation was a risk factor, doesn’t mean it was a causal risk factor and we need to keep that in mind.

Bret: And so now though during the coronavirus and the Covid 19 pandemic this has become a very important topic because obesity has been linked to worsening outcomes, type 2 diabetes and hyperglycemia linked to worsening outcomes. Does it cause the worsening outcomes? Is there something else? We don’t know, but when is all the information you have, you sort of feel obligated to act upon it to say, let’s try and control these things as much as possible.

But we don’t have evidence saying if you control your blood sugar, if you lower your weight you’re going to reduce your risk of complications of Covid 19. But could you fault anybody for saying you should try to reduce your risk?

Adele: Well, I like the way you said it, Bret. You should try and reduce your risk for overall good health, not because of Covid. It just makes sense to, but the idea of insisting that somebody should go on a strict diet whether it’s a low-calorie or a low-carb one in the middle of what might be the most stressful event of their lives, I think it’s a very privileged and very narrow perspective.

Bret: But to say that this time in our country’s history shows the importance of metabolic health over the long run and hopefully will help us focus on that maybe the next set of infections or the next even influenza or the next pandemic or whatever the case may be, that we as a country can be in better shape to withstand it, if our metabolic health is better. And that’s just one example of how metabolic health can help you.

Adele: Exactly.

Bret: But it shows how sometimes the line is blurred between association and causation. It’s important to differentiate between them, but sometimes if it’s all you have, you have to act upon it. Which is a slippery slope, because that’s also what sort of got a lot of the low-fat message propagated, which we now have evidence to show is not the case.

Adele: Absolutely and this is I think my worst nightmare. Is that, you know, 50 years from now people will look at our era and go, you know, these low-carb folks, they just re-capitulated the mistakes of the low-fat people and they made things worse instead of better. And I really do have a fear of that. I mean do I want low-carb guidelines? I do not.

Because I don’t want them to be misused the same way that the low-fat guidelines were misused. And they were misused. So I want low-carb to belong to clinicians, I want it to belong to Diet Doctor, I want it to belong to the people. I don’t want it to be defined by or administered by the government and I certainly don’t want it to be defined by and administered by food corporations.

Which is, you know, extremely problematic because who knows– Our food system works like this – anytime you tug on one part of the food system, you get reactions throughout it. One of my favorite stories about the low-fat diet is the– you’ve heard of Buffalo wings, right? Everybody heard of buffalo wings, low-carb folks love them; you know, you got lots of fat and stuff and dip them in blue cheese and they’re great.

Well, the folks who invented buffalo wings tried to create like a national snack fad back in the early 70s, but they couldn’t get wings off of chickens, the producers wouldn’t give them to them, because when you sold the chicken, you would either sell the whole, with the wings attached, or you sold it in quarters with a leg and a thigh and a breast and a wing attached.

When the low-fat craze came through we started selling boneless, skinless chicken breast, because those were enclosed in fat. And all of a sudden what happened? There was the excess of wings. So all of a sudden these folks who wanted to have these fatty wing outlets, these buffalo wing joints, could do them.

So when you look at the food system you go, there didn’t use to be these fried wings on every corner. Well, those were created, literally created by boneless skinless chicken breasts by the low-fat craze. So the low-fat diet created a bunch of high-fat products. Premium ice cream, extra cheesy, cheesy pizza… that’s the fat that gets skimmed off of milk and then sold through another production line.

So what’s going happen, I wonder sometimes, if that happens with low-carb, if it becomes part of mass-produced foods and it tugs on those strings in the food system? I really like the fact that when I see low-carb products being sold, I look for those tiny producers people like I think it’s Tro’s wife… she has a little baked goods line that you can, you know–

And it’s very small, it’s very family centered, you know what’s going into those packages and it’s not a great big corporate monster just, you know, moving the parts of the food around. And I would like to see more of that. And I don’t want it to be part of what the government is telling us how to eat.

Bret: Yeah, that’s another big lesson I think of the whole Covid 19 pandemic, is the importance of local food supply rather than a few big national producers, because once they weaken, then the chain and the whole system can fall apart and our system, our food system cannot be reliant on that, but if we could be reliant more on the mom-and-pop, on the local butcher and local farmer, that makes a huge difference. And hopefully they’ll be more of a push for that, a decentralization of the whole food atmosphere, I guess.

Adele: And you know, believe it or not McGovern’s committee was pushing for that too. Right along with the dietary goals, yeah. I happen to have this because I was looking something up, but it’s guidelines for food purchasing in the United States. This was the sister volume that was supposed to be released after the dietary goals.

Was written by Nick Mottern, who is always just, you know, badmouth because he created the dietary goals. And it’s about the smaller circles and buying locally and buying from a food co-op and buying from local farms. So a lot of what was politically in the dietary goals was really pushing for that kind of food system. But it got co-opted, there’s just no doubt about it. And that report never got released, unfortunately.

Bret: I loved that story about the buffalo wings. And what was Super Bowl Sunday like before there were buffalo wings? I don’t know what it possibly could have been.

Adele: Had roast chicken, I guess.

Bret: So there are other myths that you have been vocal about saying that we have to stand up against, and I wanted to just touch on a couple of those if we can and one is vegetable oils. Vegetable oils, studies clearly show mechanistically that vegetable oils under extreme heat can become oxidative and rancid and cause mutations in cell cultures from a mechanistic standpoint.

So because of that, there is a big push to avoid all vegetable oils. But when you look at the clinical data on humans, whether it’s epidemiological or randomized controlled trials, it doesn’t seem to replicate what the mechanistic studies are. So Diet Doctor had a little bit of pushback by basically saying the evidence of vegetable oils kind of isn’t there for being harmful. So how do you help people understand that message when the mechanism say one thing but other evidence maybe doesn’t back that up?

Adele: Well, you know, I’m a biochem fan and I love mechanistic studies and I actually think that they are far more informative than a lot of epidemiological studies, because those just tell us what people think it’s healthy. They don’t really tell us– and we don’t know what people are actually eating since it’s a food survey anyway. So I think mechanistic studies are actually really important, but it doesn’t help us put things in perspective in terms of our physiology.

And what you end up doing I think– so I think about this from a dietitian’s point of view; are you creating unnecessary food fears and are you making things difficult for people by telling them completely avoid vegetable oils because they are very scary? I know that when I went on a low-carb diet this wasn’t something that was talked about.

And I also know that when I went on a low-carb diet I had three young children and if somebody had told me that I had to make my salad dressing at home and I couldn’t use the stuff in the grocery store because it had corn oil or soybean oil in it, I wouldn’t have bothered going on low-carb diet to begin with. I would’ve just said, this is not the diet for me, I won’t do it, I’ll have to find some other ways to lose weight.

So I think we have to really be careful with generating food fear. In fact I think this is another one of the really pernicious outcomes of the dietary guidelines. It’s made us afraid of the things in our food, whether it’s fats or whether it’s carbs. We’ve learned to just be afraid of things.

We see it on a label… the gluten of thing a couple years back was so informative, because people stopped buying things that said… I mean started buying things that said gluten-free.

Bret: Right.

Adele: Before they even knew what gluten was. We did the same thing with cholesterol. People started buying food that said cholesterol free before they even knew what cholesterol was. We could make a food and say asbestos free and people would buy it without even wondering what asbestos is.

Of course is not in there, it’s never been in there. And we do this with sugar, we do this with carbs, we do this with everything because we taught people to be afraid of food. And what we need to do is to teach people how to think critically about what they’re being told about food. Is the 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil in your salad dressing going to cause you long-term harm? We have no idea. Is it going to cause you temporary harm?

To have to make your salad and make your salad dressing from scratch every time you eat it? Does that mean you’ll eat less vegetables if you have to make your own homemade salad dressing? Yeah, maybe. So to me that’s a real concern. You know, am I going to get in the way of somebody eating a healthy food, because in order for them to eat a healthy food like–?

If you pour some vegetable oil salad dressing on your salad, does it suck all the rest of the healthy ingredients out? You know, it doesn’t. So, let it be. I think we really have to help people not be afraid of food.

Bret: Yeah, it’s one thing to say, eat whole foods, eat natural foods, make it as minimally processed as simple as possible. That’s a great policy that everybody should follow as much as they can follow it and then you get into the specifics of what works in your life and what doesn’t and what the logistics work.

Adele: Exactly.

Bret: So one last thing then for mechanisms versus clinical practice and clinical experience… too much protein is going to kick you out of ketosis. We hear that not infrequently, that people have this personal experience, but the science doesn’t seem to back up that that is a true phenomenon that happens for most people. Is that right?

Adele: Yeah and first of all you have to say, well, why are you tracking your ketone levels that closely. Do you have a specific reason for doing that? Like if you’re trying to prevent seizures, yeah, that’s probably really important for you and maybe you need to follow a classic ketogenic diet that’s used for epilepsy. And absolutely you want to watch the amount of protein because you have to balance that off with a certain amount of fat.

But I think in most cases we’re talking about people who want to lose weight and who think that they are eating too much protein and I think it’s a very complicated scenario when you get into those details, because we know, in fact we were talking about this just recently, that women often prefer diets that have more fat and more carbs in them.

They’re not big protein eaters to begin with. And also women have trouble losing weight. And women who are postmenopausal especially have trouble losing weight. So we’re talking about a bunch of things sort of piling up there. But if you tell a postmenopausal woman, guess what, you can eat all the fat you want.

Just add artificial sweetener to it, but “natural” artificial sweetener, you know monk fruit or erythritol, or one of the approved keto sweeteners to it. You can have all the fat you want and make it as sweet as you need with one of these natural sweeteners and just eat all of that and don’t worry about eating a yucky pork chop. And then the woman wonders why she’s not losing weight. Well, you know, she’s not going to lose weight.

One, her body is going to be starved for protein, it’s going to be scavenging muscle, she’s going to, eventually over time, begin to lose muscle mass. If she keeps it up, she will lose bone mass because muscles tugging on bone is what keeps bone healthy. Protein also is a matrix for bone. And if she’s eating a low-protein diet because she thinks that all she needs to eat to lose weight is fat, fat, fat, fat, fat, fat, fat, it’s going to be counterproductive in the long run, but it’ll taste better maybe, I don’t know, it’ll be more fun. But it won’t be good for her health.

Bret: Yeah, another good example, how an experimental study clearly shows that a lot of protein, excess of protein, can raise insulin and raise glucose. But then the harder part is translating that to clinical science, translating that to the person you’re working with in front of you, we’re not eating enough protein, especially as we age, is likely a much bigger issue for most people.

Adele: Right. And we do know that people who are overweight or obese, who are in poor metabolic health benefit from larger amounts of protein rather than smaller amounts. There are studies that show that, there are RCTs that show that. So it’s not like that’s really a question.

But if somebody eats a steak for dinner and then measures their ketone levels an hour later and it goes, no, I am not in ketosis anymore, you can’t deny that experience either. But the question is, is that experience meaningful in terms of their overall health? And I think it depends on the how low that protein gets and how much they’re avoiding it.

Bret: Another great example of how you analyze things so well and so critically to make sure we’re understanding what it means and not to accept things at face value. And I appreciate that you have been the voice for that, which is not always a popular voice, like you’ve gotten some pushback because of it.

And you’re a very important part of the low-carb message in the low-carb world, but yet sometimes you’re seen critically because you’re that voice. And it doesn’t faze you, brushes right off your shoulders, because what’s more important is getting the message right to you and I really appreciate that. Your integrity of your message is so clear and that speaks a lot to who you are. So thank you for making your voice heard.

Adele: Well, thanks for giving me this opportunity, because it is my dream that everyone is offered the option of low-carb diet when they need it. And I do think that if we want to be accepted into the mainstream, which is the only path through which people who are disenfranchised, people who don’t have the resources that other folks do, it’s the only way that they are going to get this option; is to have low-carb accepted as a therapy in mainstream.

And if we want that to happen, we need to have all of our ducks in a row. And if I have to be unpopular to do that, so be it, it’s not for me, it’s for them.

Bret: Very good. Where can people hear more about you and learn more about what you’ve read and learn more about you?

Adele: Well you can find my much neglected blog site eathropology.com or you can just look me up on Diet Doctor, I’m pretty busy there too.

Bret: Very good, thank you Adele.

Adele: Thanks so much for having me, Bret, this was fun.

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About the video

Virtual podcast recorded in May and published in June 2020. Podcast host: Dr. Bret Scher Managing producer: Hari Dewang Editing: Hard Day Production

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