Slade watched as shadows, chased by the sun, slowly stretched forth from the Clash-Mounts. They crept over fields of shattered stone that laid between Heldair and the mountains. A warm wind washed over the expansive moraine, tickling the sinew of her wings. The sensation sent a soft shudder down her back. Her legs dangled over a drop that would kill anybody who didn’t know how to glide. While the cleft-strider was still being loaded, she climbed the beast and now sat on the edge of the crenellation that lined its top. She doubted the Walaki would have approved, but the lore that enshrouded her kept her hidden from their eyes.
Slade liked high places. To be up high was to see further, to assess escape routes, points of attack, and incoming threats. It was how one survived an upbringing like hers. Verticality was your friend when the streets wanted you dead. Stay up high, remain unseen. Find an abandoned watch tower or zerok nest to hole up in. There had been many of those in Tahlkin. She remembered all of her hiding places. She could form a mental map of the streets and plot where they were. If she stepped into a room and closed her eyes, she could describe from memory alone, everything that was in it. Her mind, sharper than most, did not allow her to miss anything. She forgot nothing.
She watched as the Walaki ran about the decks below her. Through observation, she learned what each of their names and titles were. Zaki was responsible for tying down all loose items on this deck. Faylosh, along with Yakto, Weron, and Belian, was responsible for welcoming the passengers. Quan and Meryl were “stridesingers”. Slade didn’t know what exactly a stridesinger did because that lore was a tightly guarded secret among the Walaki. She only knew it had something to do with getting the cleft strider to move. In a short time, she familiarized herself with a third of the crew just from watching and listening. It is what she did: watch and listen. Stick to the shadows, remain unseen.
After Zaki finished tying down a barrel, he ran off. Slade gazed back toward the Clash-Mounts and felt a knot in her stomach. It was a trill of both excitement and dread. It had been a long time since she felt the latter. She wasn’t accustomed to it. Few things phased her anymore. Not even the encounter with the stormspawn made her feel this way. Somewhere beyond the mountain range laid The Stillwater. It waited for her like an old friend.
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Memories flashed before her eyes. She was a little girl again, standing waist-deep in the marsh’s water. Her feet touched nothing, yet she stood in the bottomless pond nonetheless. The water itself held her up. Crying. Somebody was crying. Wisps of blue curled around her feet, blood mixed with the water. Her younger brother was with her. Lepin wailed as two corpses floated face-down in front of them. It was from these bodies that the blood came. It radiated from them like the rays coming from the sun’s corona. Lepin’s shrieks filled the marsh’s silence as he rocked back and forth, kneeling over one of the bodies, their mother.
Lepin sobbed. He shook their mother and begged her to wake up, but she didn’t answer. She kept floating alongside their father in silence. Without warning, their father’s body plunged into The Stillwater’s depths. Their mother’s body followed suit. Something plucked them both from the surface and dragged them down in the blink of an eye. All that was left, were two orphaned children.
How many times have I visited? Slade thought, after returning to the present. The question was rhetorical of course, she already knew the answer. Her memory was near perfect. She could recall every event in her life with unprecedented amounts of detail, everything except her life prior to her parents' deaths. For all intents and purposes, The Stillwater was her birthplace. Neither she nor Lepin remembered what their lives had been like before then. It was just her now. It had been for many years. Lepin was gone, taken by the Bane decades ago.
She looked down at the docks and saw that the last of the cargo was being carried up the ramp. Sighing, she stood up and made her way back to the deck. After a few leaps, she swung herself around several posts, spread her wings and glided onto a deck. Out of habit, she made a quick note of all possible escape routes, as well as all possible ambush points. Then she let her veil drop, startling one of the Walaki crew, whose beads clacked against his face as he jumped back. Instead of answering his stammering, she continued to pace along the deck. The Stillwater awaited. She was coming home.