Dei stared across the room as she let the neutral face of her skull rest in the direction of the nobleman seated across from her. She wasn't quite sure what to think of the situation. The man was obviously trying to back himself out of a corner, but he was also trying to extend an olive branch at the same time. Maybe this could be worth her time. She just had to make sure the man could stay quiet first.
“What's your name?” She wrote.
“Julius Brent.”
“Julius. If you ever tell on me, I'll find every member of your family and make sure you’re the last one alive when I come for you.”
The man laughed again. A hearty jovial laugh that hardly fit the mood Dei was trying to build.
“Dear, I don't have family members. I have a nest of vipers that all want dinner.”
“I'll find whatever you care for in this world then.” Dei wrote.
“Yes yes, then you'll torture, flay, and kill it until I curse the day I ever turned my back on you. I've heard it all before girl so let's just skip to the good part.” The man was wearing a wide grin across his face revealing a neat set of white teeth from the other side of the room. Was he playing with her? He certainly didn't seem to fear death even as he watched her kill a man in front of his eyes.
“My name is Dei.” She wrote.
“Dei then. Lady Dei perhaps? I'm open to suggestions on whatever title we want to use for you.”
“You tease me?”
“Sure I do Dei! You're over there looking ready to rip my head off just for threatening you. Someone needs to lighten the mood, you know?” The smile never seemed to leave his face. “Look, I guess you're right. I'm the one who's trying to cut a deal here so how bout this. What do you actually want from this city, Dei?”
She had to think once again. What to tell him? What was safe to tell him?
“I want to take your shard-bearer's power.”
“Oh my.” The man's smile finally dropped. “Now that's a hard one. You want to take his place I guess, or does that mean you physically want to take the shard itself.”
“Take his place. Take his country.”
“That is…quite honestly something a bit beyond me at the moment. But before you get all riled up, maybe I can help you by helping me huh?”
Dei waited for him to continue, though neither of them fidgeted in the silence of the room.
“You help me become the new Prince of house Brent, and suddenly I'm one of the Lord's right hand men at the high table. You help me undermine and replace the Princes of the other families as well with people that are perhaps, just a little bit more favorable for you than say, Lord Jocell? And maybe you'll get enough support to start a coup.”
Dei's mind flashed with recent memories of marble floors and cushioned furniture as the man kept talking.
“It all might just be possible too, if we have of our very own little immortal assassin. Willing to undertake missions and bend the rules in ways that no living man or woman in their right mind would ever do. Sound about right?”
“You sound insane.” She wrote.
“Doll, you're asking me to help you kill a god in exchange for letting me go. Everything about this is insane.” That stupid grin swept across his face again.
His words sounded like what she wanted to hear. Perhaps too much of a good thing, even.
‘COME.’ She called out to the corpse waiting outside, allowing it to shamble up on its shaky legs still held together by the flabs of meat around its body. The oddly squishy sounds the creature made as it lifted its leg up and over the hole in the wall made Dei uncomfortable, suddenly thankful for how often Fei had cleaned up the bodies for her in the past. The man's grin disappeared again as the fallen soldier came to a stop beside Dei in the middle of the room. Armored visor looking out lifelessly over his previous master. Now she would test his true fealty.
“Pledge yourself to my service.”
“No.” The man said it plainly, letting the word hang in the air. “You three, pledge yourself to her service.”
The three armored guards he pointed at hesitated, looking back and forth from their lord to the armored husk of their fallen comrade.
“Oh for gods’ sake, the lord of whispers won't even notice if a couple non-mages go missing. Do it!”
The three dropped to a knee at the command, murmuring under their breath as they pledge to her service. She felt rather than saw as three motes of red fire fed into her void space. She was up to eleven motes at this point, though she was starting to have trouble remembering where they all came from. Julius started speaking again, pulling her attention back before she started doing the math.
“You can have my men's souls, by my own and my mages are better used supplementing yourself with our force magic. And I can't just start pledging my whole house to your service either, unless you want your brother to start killing off my entire family.”
“Brother?” She wrote.
“You know, brothers and sisters of the shard? No?”
Dei tilted her head.
“Wow. Way to know your own theology.” No one laughed, despite the obvious effort the man seemed to be putting on.
“I should go anyways, get back before I get scrutinized too closely by my uncle’s guards.” He stood up to leave, then pulled a velvet red handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to Dei with a light bow.
“Perhaps our partnership might actually be beneficial to us both after all? Show the guards at House Brent my initials,” he tapped at the letters BJB sewn into the fabric, “and they should take you to come meet me. Give me a few days first as I think about what to do with the situation.”
He looked her up and down for a second then added, “And do try to dress a little bit nicer for the occasion. Perhaps they'll mistake you for one of my new servants, if we're lucky.”
Dei started writing before he could leave, and he politely stayed by her side with the extended article of clothing still hanging in the air.
“Fix the broken wall. And have someone bring a set of servant's clothes to drop off here.” She said.
“...Why? This hovel probably hasn't been in use for years.”
“Do I need to explain everything I ask you to do Julius? That would be annoying.”
The man chuckled as he dipped into a strange cross between a bow and a curtsey, one leg held out to the rear even as he bent deeply at his waist.
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“Your wish is my command. Lady Dei.”
She swiped the handkerchief from his hand.
—
Charity sat with her back to a tree, head resting behind her as she looked up into the starry sky. It was a nice clean night with hardly a single cloud above them as the stars and moon sparkled down through the thick orange canopy overhead. She let her eyes follow the trail of a single leaf falling down to the forest floor, waving back and forth in the air like it was riding invisible currents on the way down.
A man with bright green eyes walked up in front of her, returning from wherever he had walked off to for the last hour. She ignored the thin green flames that came from his unbound turban, instead focusing on the sky beyond as she bit her tongue. He of course said nothing, instead reaching down to grasp the edge of her blanket.
‘Just what is he-?’ The man dragged the edge of the blanket away from her as though to wrap it around the tree, but she quickly grabbed onto the edge of it holding it in place around her body. He let go rather quickly and bent down to pat smooth a small area of the blanket next to her by the edge of the tree. A couple more adjustments were made as he pulled the blanket out slightly, laying it flat on the ground, all while Charity held on tightly to the other end.
Tai then turned in place and lightly sat down on the edge of the blanket, back to the birch tree behind them and shoulder pressing up next to her’s.
“So now you want to join me?” She said.
He took out his logbook, and carefully uncorked a vial of ink before holding it and the book in a single hand. The other hand pulled out his white feathered quill and started writing.
“What was that?” he wrote. Charity had to look over at his hands after the scribbling stopped to make out his words in the quiet moonlight.
“You know what you did. You left me there.”
“Did I? Or did I give you an escape route?”
“Escape route?” She nearly yelled at him now. “You really think that what you did was noble? Acting like you could handle the situation?”
“And you think that you were handling the situation?” He wrote.
She did scream this time. Screamed a sharp piece of her pain into the orange sea floating above them before she brought her head down to rest in her hands. Her bun must have come undone since her hair fell down around her face, hiding her wet eyes behind a soft curtain. She cried then, deep heaving sobs that made her lurch with every breath and hurt so much more because she knew a pair of snooty green eyes were watching her from the other side of her blanket.
She felt a hand fall on her back, rubbing back and forth in a comforting motion. She looked to her right, surprised that someone had snuck up on them like that, but she was met with nothing but leaves and starlight in the direction away from Tai. When she looked back at him she finally realized he was the one rubbing her back. This stubborn, imbecilic, wretch of a-
She stood up, letting the blanket fall to her feet as she left him sitting behind at the tree. Waiting with his quill laying across his knee, and a single hand outstretched towards her as burning eyes watched her walk away.
—
It was a cloudy day out the next morning as Charity looked back at the turbaned man sitting on the edge of a fountain in the town square. He held his parasol up by himself as he watched her work in the sunless sky that threatened to rain on the two of them. A constant ripple of running water ran in the background as shoeless children splashed about behind him.
She had found herself looking back at him every once in a while that day just to find a new spark of resolve. She would prove to him, had to prove to him, that she could do this with or without his help. The small bags under her eyes from a sleepless night turned around once again to take in the denizens walking past her like the wind buffeting her hair.
“Please, good people. Listen to me now. I bring the words of a new goddess into this world. Listen to me and rejoice, for she comes now to bring a new era to this land, and rejuvenate its people.”
A single worker stopped to listen to her preach in the middle of the square.
“Hear me now. Hear me so you might understand that the times are changing, and require your service to a new Herald for both the living and the lifeless. A Herald of both prosperity and penance in equal measure as she holds life and death in the palms of her hands.”
A couple more workers stopped nearby the first one to hear her out.
“All she asks of you in return is for faith in her ability. A willingness to commit yourself to something greater than the drudgery of common toil and work. A willingness to learn the ways of our goddess, and worship her unending embrace in the face of mortality. For she is both the mother of death and the daughter of life. Pray to her, so that you too might be saved from the one fear of all men and women. Pray to her so that you need not fear the end itself.”
She stopped to take in the eyes of the people around her, gauging their reactions to her words as she thought of where to bring her sermon next. The man who had stopped for her first started clapping, snapping the rest of the group out of their quiet stupor as they joined him in a polite round of applause in the middle of the square. Charity started to smile then. She had done it. They were listening.
But then the group started walking away. The only person who remained in place was the first man who stopped for her as he rooted for something in his pouch.
“No, stop! Don't you want to hear more of her great works? Perhaps a story of her accomplishments so far, or the ways we can better serve her plans?” Charity called out to the distant workers as the sudden rush of bodies faded away to an even thinner stream of men and women.
The man finally found what he was looking for and pulled a coin out of his pouch with a smile. He flicked the coin over to her, letting it bounce allong the ground to land by her feet. The man said some sort of thank you that Charity didn't listen to as she stared down at the small bronze coin resting on the ground. It was the smallest denomination of money in the country, hardly even worth anything more than being used as a counting tool or a paperweight. It was worthless.
A thick hand reached out from beside her and pushed her back a couple steps. The motion jarred her as she nearly tripped over the uneven cobblestones set into the square, and she looked up to find two armored men with surprisingly hard eyes.
“I said I'm talking to you bitch! Listen up!” The man who pushed her yelled at her in the middle of the street, though no one seemed to actually look in his direction as he berated her.
“There's no begging allowed in this town so you'd best either find yourself a real job, or i'll find you a nice jail cell to rethink your actions.”
“But I'm not-” Charity started.
“I don't care what you're not doing. What you should be doing is fucking off to anywhere else with your fake, money pandering, godess of nothing special.”
The other guard finally started speaking as he called out to someone behind her.
“Sir, she wasn't bothering you on your day of rest, was she?
Charity looked back to lock eyes with the only man sitting behind her with a thickly wound turban and impossibly thin legs sat crisscrossed next to a nice black wooden cane. The man hesitated for only a second before he shook his head back and forth at the guards.
“Then considering you haven't caught this fine gentlemen's ire, we'll let you off with a warning today. If we ever catch you begging round here again, there'll be problems. You got it?”
Charity nodded her head at the man, and he reached out to give her one last push before they left. She all but fell back into the fountain that time until Tai reached out to grab her, letting her sit next to him instead of toppling back over the knee high stone. One of the guards reached down to pick up the small coin, a smile on his face as he flipped it into the air to catch with his other hand.
“Heads or tails?” She heard him asking the other guard as they walked away. Their words trailed off into the crowd as she saw the man slap the coin onto his other hand.
Charity just sat there, contemplating the fact that she had even lost the little sliver of worthlessness that she had earned as a result of the morning's effort. Her vision blurred in the whipping wind and she dropped her eyes to stare at her hands.
“Why isn't this working?” She asked.
She kept staring down at her ha as water droplets started to fall onto her gloves. A thin book was pushed into her line of sight, and she had to wipe her eyes before she could make out the flowing script written at the bottom of the page.
“You fail because you are too kind.” It said.
“You would think that wouldn't you? I bet everything I do just looks so pointless to you.” She replied.
“What I do creates an image. Something for the people to latch onto and distract them.”
“So what would you have me do?”
“Only strength will convince these people, not empathy.”
“Easy for you to say.”
The man stood from beside her, replacing his writing gear neatly along his belt. A firm hand took the walking cane in his grip, holding it by the shaft instead of the head, changing his entire look within a single movement.
He turned and extended a hand out to Charity, black leather fingers beckoning her to come with him as small drops of rain began to fall on her shoulders. She sighed and shook her head, eyes still tracing the thin outline of the riding glove extended out towards her.
With a torturous movement that felt like she was betraying some old part of her soul, she reached out and took the hand. Their gloves met as his small hand seemed to meld with hers, and he started to lead her away from the town square.