INTERLUDE 5B: SOMEONE DIED

“I am the striking shadow. I am the cruelty that causes pain without profit. I am the listener who hears the weeping that follows in the assassin’s wake and smiles. I am Lord Sorrow.”

– from the Yanic Creed

1st Lynara, 995 NE

Perri sat upon the steps of the bank, waiting like a good little girl for Father to return with the loan-statement that would secure their family’s ninth property. Money made money, Father always said, and in two generations the Chavarn name had gone all the way from the Rivertown docks to the glades of Treetown. Perri wasn’t stupid, and she wasn’t actually a particularly good little girl. People always tended to think the best of her, just because she was blind. As though blindness itself just made her innocent… For years she’d known how to play to her strengths and the lack of sight was definitely one of them. She could do a lot with touch and hearing, with common sense, that no one would ever believe possible. She’d stolen dozens of small items, which she hid behind the drawer in her wardrobe, and of course no one would think to blame her; when she’d taken the butler’s pocket-watch she’d gotten one of the maids fired, and she’d not pinched from anyone at home since. Even still, she liked to sit there in the early hours of the morning, cross-legged on the rug before the drawer, playing with her assorted treasures. It wasn’t like the pitch-blackness of the room bothered her, and sometimes she fancied she could almost see; the memory of seeing was still something she could access, but as she grew older it was increasingly dreamlike, surreal. Her world was sounds, now, not light. The watch in particular she’d enjoyed, winding it, listening to its little clickings; her ears were sharp enough to pick them out in the silence of her bedroom even when the watch was hidden, but the cleaning-staff were non the wiser. Unfortunately its mechanism had broken the year before, but she’d kept it, until the day she could get it mended without drawing any attention.

One of the annoying things about being smart was that playing the most effective, long-term game involved taking on those roles, the good little blind girl, sitting demurely on the steps of the biggest bank in the biggest city in the world, just two close-lipped man-servants for company. One of them was close enough to shade her with the parasol he held in his hand, but he still said nothing to her – quite right, too. She very much doubted there was any chance he could hold up his end in a conversation half as well as he could hold up a parasol.

It was into the ninth month today but the sun was still as strong as it had been in Urdara. She could feel it radiating off the marble next to her when she stretched out her hand. She loved the sun but even with her dark complexion it would cause her skin no end of trouble if she sat out in it unprotected, when it was like this. Mund was a dreary place and it got cold in winter, but it was still in a warm part of the world by all accounts, and its summers shocked those who first arrived in the chilly seasons.

She heard the footsteps approaching a little closer than usual behind her –

“Away with yer!” one of her man-servants said brusquely –

Then the man-servant was groaning, collapsing to the steps; the one bearing the parasol aloft swung it aside, and the suddenness with which the sunlight was poured over Perri’s skin made her flinch from the unexpected heat.

Both man-servants were down – she could hear their gasps – what had happened? –

Her hand on the steps felt the warm fluid, and she realised they’d been stabbed. It was blood. On her hands.

“This is the one,” someone grunted. Rough fingers tried to seize her by the back of her neck but she leaned forwards, and they only succeeded in grasping the little sensitive hairs – even still, it was enough to halt her forwards motion –

This is the one.

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It wasn’t the necklace she wore they were after. Not the rings and brooches, the bracelet of healing, the Im Hatal shoes that cost as much as most men earned in a month.

They were after her.

They were going to ransom her, and they would kill her when Father screwed up and went to the Magisterium.

First they would take her to a little dingy room in the cellar beneath a supplies-shop in Anvil Row, where she’d be chained, and a talkative rat would be her only company, and she’d think ‘at least you’re a better conversationalist than the man-servants’, and she’d name him Chatty, and –

And even still, it was enough to halt her forwards motion, and –

And the man-servants were dying. No, only one of them, she corrected herself. The one with the deeper voice, she could never remember their names – (ah, that was it, Oppten) – he would die, his heart had been pierced with the third dagger-stroke, but the parasol-holder – (Fenostor, that was the one) – he would survive if she could –

If she could –

And even still, it was enough to halt her forwards motion, and –

What has happened to me?

She could see – of a sort. It was like she was imagining her surroundings, but the imagination was attached to things she couldn’t know about: the colours of the vines on the walls, the lush red flowers; the yellow-white of the sunlight that until now had been nothing more than a dying memory; the people down there in the square going about their business…

Not that they were actually moving. They had been transformed into statues like everyone around her, the pigeons hanging in the sky as though they’d been painted-on… It was all frozen until she finished processing this monolithic instant of time.

The visions, the wondrous sights, were no less dreamlike for all that her new sixth sense was telling her they were incontrovertible, one hundred percent real.

Faces. She could see people’s faces!

Am I dying? she wondered. Did a knife slip between my shoulder–blades, and now I’m trapped here, in my final moment?

The thought made her shudder, and the shudder made her realise:

I’m not frozen.

And even still, it was enough to halt her forwards motion –

Time reasserted something of its normal flow as she let the thug pull her head back, as she thrust up with her legs to accompany the movement –

There were dozens of witnesses, only beginning to react to this unprovoked attack in broad daylight. She had to restrict herself to the changes of position a blind person could make, motions that could later be attributed to accident, to good fortune, to the gods –

As the thug brought his face down, shifting his weight to hoist her up, her upthrust took him by surprise and the back of her skull connected with his nose. He fell away suddenly.

When the next thug lunged down at the unprotected little blind girl it was an even simpler matter to just skip aside, thrusting out her hands jerkily as if making a nervous attempt to flee, and let his lunge become a painful plunge down the marble steps.

The third had his dripping knife poised to strike but he was beginning to have doubts. This was Mund, after all, and their intelligence on their target was proving to be unreliable…

She knew before he did that he would turn and run, leave his companions in the care of the watch who would soon arrive to apprehend them. She knew his name but it didn’t matter that she had no credible way to give the watchmen this information; one of his former friends was going to sell him out in return for them keeping his neck far from the noose.

The watch would make the deal, then go back on it. Three faces would turn blue for this.

An infinite time later, once the day was done and Father had been quite assured she was feeling fine, she found herself back home in her bedroom. One by one, Perri took out her special objects and she followed the time-lines, glowing as they threaded through the darkness. Some were hidden, occluded by unseen shapes, like stars hidden from view by black clouds – but most of them she could see.

The lives of those she’d stolen from.

It was more than just the maid she’d gotten in trouble.

When she realised her actions had resulted in one poor boy getting his right hand chopped off, she hurled the treasures back into their space behind the drawer and slammed it shut after them, weeping. The servants came, then Father, and it was only as she clung to him and her tears began to dry that she realised what she wanted to do. What she needed to do, with these powers of hers.

She couldn’t give the boy his hand back, but she could do something. Anything, to make up for the way she had lived her life. She’d been a spoilt thief, a pampered, pandered-to idiot, always insisting on thinking of herself as a victim of fate when she was so incredibly lucky…

These things were treasures no longer. They were totems, relics of a Perrinthe who had died. No more. From tonight, she would make her own fate, follow it wherever it led, even if it took her back, back into the darkness.

And she knew even then that it would.

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