GLASS 4.1: NOT A SINGLE DROP OF BLOOD
“We exist in a world of words. It is only due to this that my esteemed collaborators and rivals all see fit to say such things as: ‘in addition to providing the necessary service of anonymity, the mask reduces the mage to the symbol’ (rf. PoP pg. 228); ‘the human individuality is removed and replaced with a motionless display devoid of the fear and anger and hate such men and women must surely experience whether they be minions of the darkness or champions of the light’ (rf. EDG 2nd ed pg. 19). Thus, it is claimed, a socially-valuable projection is permitted on behalf of the third party onlooker – and on this the inexorable cult of personality which arises about these mages is to be blamed.”
– from ‘The Modern Mage’
“Well, step out.” Madame Sailor’s prim-and-proper tone brooked no argument. “I need to see you in it. You might well need adjustments, and such takes time, you know!”
I passed through the curtain in the fitting-room, and stopped in front of the full-length mirror on the wall so that we could both inspect the robe.
A dark forest-green made up the majority of the outer cloth, which was thin but tough, with greys and blues for the patches, dark purple for the hood and the triangular shoulder-pieces. Silver threads had been used for the grinning little mouths that covered the green parts of the exterior. The belts were corded black leather, fitted with thongs for the hanging of pouches.
“I’m impressed,” I said, ensuring my mask was settled before trying the hood. It had a slight peak, and looked suitably magician-y.
“A good fit,” the old woman admitted as she looked me over, getting me to turn on the spot with a flick of her blue-nailed fingers. “Stops you looking so scrawny.”
She wasn’t wrong. The belt kept the robe cinched firmly at my narrow waist, but she’d given room for a bigger chest than mine – yet I was tall enough that it pulled tight, and along with the pointed shoulder-pieces it made me look significantly bulkier than I was in actuality.
I studied myself. Intimidating, but too colourful and quirky for a darkmage. I loved it.
“It’s perfect, Madame Sailor.”
“Your old robe…”
I turned away from the mirror and saw her staring at the grey robe I’d left folded in the booth beyond the half-drawn curtain.
“Ah, yes. Damaged.” I went over to recover it, folded it across my arm.
“In the Incursion?”
I just nodded. She didn’t need to know the details.
“And it was you, in Overbrent?”
I nodded again. I’d since learned that Overbrent was the part of Oldtown where me and Em had fought our first thinfinaran.
“Then the day we met you saved the lives of no less than eight people I know, and last Waneday you saved my niece’s life, young man. My sister told me you and that nice magister lady killed the demons, and even left something to lift her spirits afterwards?”
I chuckled. “Is that how she put it?”
“Now what do you think she meant by that, young champion?”
I stepped backwards into the booth, imagining a green seam in the space I vacated; the glamour passed momentarily, leaving Avaelar standing between me and the woman.
“Well I never!” she gasped, backing up and even fanning her face a couple of times with a professionally-manicured hand.
“What do you think of him, Madame Sailor?”
She gave me a nice spot of spluttering in response. I could see the desk-boy gawping as he stared over at us in the corner.
“M- Feychilde,” the seven-foot, nearly-naked sylph said over his shoulder in a reproving tone. “Is this in truth an appropriate use of thy power?”
“Probably not,” I agreed, stepping back into him, masking the rejoining with another brief illusion. “Funny though.”
“I hath in my heart much room for humour, Feychilde, yet this doth not fill it.”
My apologies, noble sylph. I promise I shall summon thee for only the most serious endeavours from now on.
“Would that I might hold thee to it,” he grumbled.
“Well I’m not sure whether I’m glad I asked,” Madame Sailor muttered, “but I know now what she was getting at! Come on.” She bustled me along to the counter, looking down to hide her blush. “I’ll have that grey robe mended for free for you. So long as you tell your high-faluting friends where you got your new robe from, mind! Now will you be wanting a back-up?”
“A back-up?”
“In case you get –” she indicated the grey robe “– you know –“
In the end I paid for the mending-service and then some with my tip (on top of the already agreed-upon twenty percent for early completion). Still, there was no harm in rewarding fine work, and I had more money to spend than I knew what to do with. At first I’d saved, sequestering the platinum away, but the Incursion had meant another windfall of forty-five plat – an incredible sum. A portion of this was, as I promised in Upper Tivertain, earmarked for Neverwish and Starsight when I saw them again – and supposing Starsight was back up on his feet. The invisible magister who’d come knocking with my reward hadn’t had any information on his status, and Em had heard nothing either. I could always save his share, or put it towards his healing-bills if that was what he needed…
“You’re all settled up, Master Feychilde,” the desk-boy said, smiling brightly as he handed me a receipt. “I hope your have a good afternoon!” He eyed me, my mask and robe. “What does a champion get up to with his afternoon?” he added wistfully.
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“Hopefully nothing too interesting.” I grinned. “Good means boring. I’m actually spending the day with my girlfriend’s family.”
“Oh-h-h.” He rolled his eyes. “Good choice, then. I wish you the boringest afternoon ever!”
“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” I said dreamily.
He grinned.
I nodded to him before stepping out, closing the door behind me, and spreading my wings.
When I arrived I double-checked that I had my attire all in place. Linn merely grunted when he saw what I was wearing, and left the door open behind him when he exited the hallway – his implied permission for me to follow him. I stayed another minute to give an appropriately-dramatic twirl on the spot for Atar and Em. Both looked impressed with the robe, and Em took me to a corner and checked Zel wasn’t hanging around before kissing me rather passionately. I took the opportunity to hang a new heart-shaped healing potion about her neck.
While the ladies prepared the meal I carved a lightning-bolt for Em, standing up straight from its point embedded in the base – the shape I remembered from our dreadful trip into the infernal tower. I managed to hold off on carving ‘Stormchilde’ into it. That would’ve been pushing it, wouldn’t it? This would be reminder enough as it was.
The night you were a champion.
The result wasn’t exactly amazing-looking, but Linn held off on criticising me, and I could tell that Em liked it more than the random tree I’d carved last time.
The food was almost enjoyable – I was getting more used to it – and the music was even better now I could listen to it properly. I’d had more sleep lately, and the forecast was a hundred percent certain it was going to be an Incursion-less day.
What was more, no one questioned my ability to protect Em despite her dying a few days back: the benefit of applying only a judicious amount of truth to the problem of her parents.
The drawback was far worse – the way I had to endure Atar’s constant and delighted-looking smile, Linn’s infrequent (but nonetheless approving) stares. Knowing I didn’t live up to them, already. Feeling like everything might already be ruined.
I could get used to the food’s heat, but would I always have this coldness in my traitorous soul? I’d let them down. I’d failed them once already.
And why did I want to keep it secret? Em didn’t want them to know, but that only played into Henthae’s hands. Being an arch-magister who was going to be ordered to the front-lines over and over again was hardly any safer than being a champion. Why wasn’t Henthae out there fighting?
Or perhaps she had been. Perhaps I was being too hasty in my judgements. And in any case, I could hardly betray Em’s confidences. It just grated on me, and I didn’t want to bring it up with her, reopen the horrible memories. I had to bottle it down. It was just one tiny lie. I could swallow feeling this cold.
But no colder.
As evening fell the two of us sat under a blanket in the garden, watching the clouded sky, the looming, empty parapets of the wall of Mund.
“So you’re vorking tonight?” she asked, her head on my chest, my arm around her shoulder.
“Uh huh.” I sipped my beer – it would be impolite to throw it away, but there was no way to stop Atar putting one in my hand, and leaving it half-finished might’ve been almost as impolite as tipping it out. “Ciraya’s going to help out, if you can spare her. I won’t need her for long, hopefully.”
“Zis is one of Zel’s plans again?”
“Well, it was her intelligence that informed the plan. The tricks are all mine, though.”
“You champions…” There was a trace of bitterness in her voice that I hadn’t heard there before when she was joking around like this. “Oh, very vell – I vill let you have my sorceress.” She smiled. “So long as you promise to return her before three, and in one piece.”
“Cross my heart.”
“You have ze explosive daggers?”
I patted one of the innumerable pocket-pouches sewn into the robe’s folds. “All sheathed. Hopefully it won’t come to that, though.”
It’d been a pain, tracking down the core of the sheaths’ magic in the library. Most of the time was wasted, not realising that what I needed to look for was armour ensorcellment. With Xan’s help I’d carefully stitched fabrics into sleeves for my daggers, the interiors covered in carefully-traced symbols – runes that were imbued with essentially miniature shielding.
Holding the daggers’ forces in.
She grunted. “Hopefully! Ve could do viz another arrest. Zere’s so much more paperwork if you vaporise zem.”
I hadn’t even been thinking about using the weapons on a non-eldritch.
I shuddered, and she felt it.
“Hours of it,” she said, still smiling.
I shook my head, made myself smile back.
“Are you nervous?” she asked suddenly, turning her head on its side.
I laughed – and it sounded nervous to my own ear.
“Yes,” I admitted. “But I’m prepared, at least. That’s more than can be said… well, I hope that’s more than can be said for my enemy.”
She settled her head back down. “I’m glad you’re nervous. Zat vay you’ll be safer.” She drew shapeless shapes on my chest with her fingernail.
“Don’t you trust me?”
“Should I trust you, Kas?”
I frowned. “Where’s this coming from?”
“You vouldn’t keep a secret from me, vould you?”
“A secret? What do you mean, a –”
“Forget about it.”
“No, Em! I mean, I can’t even think…”
Had I kept any secrets from her? Other than the names of my eldritches, I was drawing a blank. I’d explained my thoughts about the Srol, and what happened with Duskdown, and Tanra –
Em raised her face, looked into my eyes. “It’s okay. She said – said you didn’t really vont me to go…“
‘She’?
“Henthae,” I growled.
Em just nodded sombrely.
“She said, if you really vonted me to be a champion – you vould have told me about zis – zis ‘Gazzering of Champions’? And,” she continued on, her voice a little shaky, “I suppose zat is vot all of ze shenagin-… shenaginan-”
I supplied the word quietly: “Shenanigans.”
“– shenanigans vere about, viz Dustbringer in Henthae’s room, viz Killstop –“
“The Gathering,” I said softly, “wasn’t my secret to keep. For keeping you in the dark, I’m sorry. It wasn’t something I felt secure telling you about… not until I knew for sure they weren’t going to, you know, come after you or something just for knowing about it.”
“Once you found out zey veren’t going to execute me –“
“I have no idea what they’re going to do! Was Henthae supposed to tell you this? Em…”
“But how voz I supposed to become a champion vizzout zis Gazzering?“
“I only found out after we met! From Nighteye… You declare yourself a champion first, and then someone tells you – not the other way around! And, well, I doubt everyone who calls themselves champion actually attends… I don’t think it’s compulsory.”
“I…” Em faltered. “She made it sound like you vere…” Her eyes refocused on me. “So you’d never been to one before?”
“No! I still haven’t! It’s on the full moon, under the Tower of Mourning. That’s literally all I know.”
“Vhile everyone’s at ze cleansing… clever,” she murmured, lowering her head in thought. “Ze magisters already out in force…”
If Henthae was so worried about Em becoming a champion she’d broken the rules to feed her information, try to turn her against me… that probably meant there was a serious chance of her changing her allegiance…
“I didn’t want to pressure you, or keep harping on about the same subject all the time,” I said, running my hand up her back, “but it has been on my thoughts a lot – I was seriously tempted to carve ‘Stormchilde’ into the base of the lightning-bolt… I know you’ve only known me five minutes –“
“Zat voz ze case vhen you first said it.” She raised her face to mine again. “Not anymore.”
Now it was my turn to falter: “– and – and Henthae brought you into Mund, showed you your place here, taught you how to exist in this crazy place – but if you’ll think about it – not just ‘take it under advisement’ –“
“My place is viz you,” she spoke huskily, cutting through my jabbering.
She kissed me and I held her tight, imprinting upon my mind the memory of her body against mine.
Yes, I was nervous. But if this was going to be one of the last things I’d experience before I died, it would make a better last thought than the twins’ faces, lost in grief.
That fear was fading now. I’d put plenty of money aside, even invested a little. Their futures were secure. Even Xastur’s future.
And mine was my own to make.
* * *