Irina

Irina tossed under too-hot, clinging sheets, rolling round and round and feeling about as graceful as a manatee while she tried in vain to find a comfortable position.

Sleep would not come. Finally forced to admit it, she kicked the covers away with a stream of muttered oaths as she sat stick-straight, mussed hair bunched uncomfortably warm about her neck.

It was all Phil’s fault. Once a sweet, sensitive man, he had gained an altogether too inflated opinion of himself after being made first of merchants in Stormfront. Indeed, he’d had no qualms dragging his wife across the whole Sixth Octant with nothing but half-hearted lies to string her along.

She was furious with him. Fuming. Incensed. She had that right, didn’t she? He deserved that much, didn’t he? Forcing them to come to this terrible cesspit of a city—not for a quick visit, as she had been told, but to live. She had no idea how a man’s head could be so oversized and so empty at once, but Phil proved that biological anomaly possible with ease.

She was angry. Really angry.

But…

Also lonely. And scared. And even more scared because she was lonely, and even more lonely because she was scared.

Irina could not forgive him. He couldn’t lie to her face and upend her life, and expect a few bouquets of flowers to patch everything up. She was not some pet for him to pull about wherever he liked, or some accessory to hang over his arm.

She couldn’t forgive him.

But she wished she could. She wanted to hear him out. He wasn’t a bad man, was he? If only his excuses were a little better, so she could convince herself to believe them.

Irina listened to the patter of the summer drizzle against the window on her left, flopped back down on her back to give sleeping another try. The heat didn’t help. Neither did the bustle from downstairs. Something like scuffing of furniture, and what was certainly a woman’s eager squeal.

I swear to god, Jonna better not be letting one of those brutes into her bed again.

The Builders were polite enough—it was the new ones, those two Laborers, who were the problem. They thought they could get away with anything, since they were too valuable to be gotten rid of.

The most infuriating part was that they were right. If Phil was going to have them living in a hellhole like Sheerhome, they would need the kind of protection only a Laborer could provide.

Ever since they had been hired shortly before leaving Stormfront, Troy and Scalps had grown increasingly more bold in their violations, and were now close to incorrigible.

She would have to speak to Phil about that. Laborers made better guards than Builders as a rule, but what good was a guard who didn’t follow orders—who treated his master’s home as a playground for his own enjoyment? They would need to be punished, somehow.

Phil should have known to do that already. She shouldn’t have to tell him. Of course, she wasn’t speaking to him at the moment, which was no less than he deserved. But if she didn’t tell him, he might never figure it out for himself.

Irina's dignity lost a decisive battle against her more irrational emotions, and she decided that, yes, the middle of the night was the best time to bring this up. The guards’ whoring was disturbing her sleep, after all. She could still hear them coursing like hounds downstairs, no doubt getting all sorts of fluids on the furniture that they expected her not to notice.

Spurred on by righteous indignation, Irina went to leave the bedroom, then stopped at the door, hesitant, and went back to brush her hair a bit and switch into a nicer nightgown. Why should she suffer the embarrassment of looking disheveled in front of her husband, after all? And, well… maybe if she reminded him what he was missing, he would try a little harder to win back her trust.

She really hoped he would.

Irina padded softly through the hall of the top floor, cursing the floorboards for creaking, then cursing herself for moving about like a furtive mouse inside her own home, while the servants and guards were downstairs living large as cats. It still felt strange, thinking of this empty place as her home.

Carrying a lit candle, she inched the door open to Phil’s room. It was their room, damn it—she had as much right to be there as he did. Why did she feel like a common thief stealing in through someone’s backdoor? Pushing the door shut just as softly, she went close to the large bed, raised her flickering light to study the lumpy shape curled on its side beneath the covers.

Silent, she noted. Not snoring. Meaning…

“I know you’re awake,” Irina said.

Phil was motionless at first, then slowly began to stir, sheepishly sitting with the covers falling to his waist, a full row of AP crystals—and then some—glinting on his forearm in the dark. “Dove?” he said. It was difficult to make out his features in the dark, but he sounded unsure of himself.

“The guest bed is uncomfortable,” Irina explained, mustering all her dignity as she clutched her nightgown shut with her free hand. “And I believe our guards are enjoying intimate relations with the hired help, against your express instructions.”

“Shit,” Phil muttered, and rubbed at his head. “I’ll speak with them in the morning. And if the bed’s no good, we can…” He hesitated. “We could swap. I don’t mind. Or…”

“Or?”

He returned an indistinct mumbling that trailed off into nothing. Then, clearing his throat, he said: “Dove, if you would just let me explain, I—”

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“You’ve explained a hundred times.”

“I know you’re unhappy about the move. I’m sorry.”

“Of course I’m unhappy!” Irina went and set down the candleholder on a small sitting table, a little harder than intended, and threw herself into a padded armchair beside it, arms crossed petulantly. Wasn’t she entitled to be a little petulant? “Who would ever want to live in a place like this? It’s dangerous. They keep slaves here. They’re barbarians.”

“It’s a coastal city. They’re all like that.”

“How does that make it any better?”

“I… I don’t know. Look, I couldn’t refuse, all right?”

“You’re the first of merchants! You’re a powerful man! Don’t pretend like you don’t have any kind of say in your life.”

“Irina, when the grandmaster of the merchant’s guild and Lady Winter ask you to do a thing, you do it.”

“Then you should have told me about it. We should have discussed it together. You tricked me, Phil.”

“I know.” He sounded so sad. She repressed the sudden urge to embrace him. “I’m sorry. I should have told you. It was wrong of me.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“Because… Because I worried that if you knew I had to come here to stay, you’d never come with me.”

Irina uncrossed her legs, then crossed them again, idly kicking one slippered foot in the air. “You never told me that part.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I can see why you wouldn’t. I’m your wife, Phil! Do you really think so little of me?”

“Well, I… Of course not, but I… I…”

“You, you, you what?”

“I was scared. It’s not like I wanted to come here either—I couldn’t handle the idea of losing you, too. So I lied. I acted selfishly, and immaturely, and I’m sorry. There’s nothing more I can say beyond that. Tell me what I can do to make it up to you, and I'll do it.”

“Phil,” Irina said, trying to keep her voice from breaking. “Don’t ever worry about a silly thing like that ever again. I might have the maids put chili powder in your morning tea for a few weeks next time you pull something like this, but I’m not going anywhere. Because I—”

The door to the bedroom came open. Irina turned her head, ready to yell at whatever idiot member of the household staff had decided to disturb them at this ungodly hour. The anger died in her throat when she saw the silhouette of an altogether unfamiliar man standing in the doorway. The sleeves of his coat ran down to his gloved hands, sheet concealed.

“Sorry for intruding,” the man said in a cold, almost emotionless voice. “Mistress Irina, you might want to leave the room for a minute. I have some business with your husband.”

Irina was unable to reply. Frozen from eyebrows to toe tips, she gaped as the stranger entered the room, invading the space meant only for her and her husband. He carried a sword—a long, curved blade that glinted like fire-veined silver in the candlelight. Dark splotches covered his clothing—blood, she realized numbly.

“Suit yourself,” the man muttered, and strode past her. Rounding the bed, the curved sword went high, threatening to fall like the long fang of a serpent.

“Wait,” Phil spoke, more confused than afraid.

Then the sword plunged into his guts, and he looked even more confused as he stared at the length of bright steel.

Irina screamed.

But Phil screamed louder. A moment after the blade entered him, it was like something took him over—something unnatural. His body twisted as though he were a sodden towel being wrung out by a pair of giant hands. The muscles of his naked torso spasmed violently, squirming and quivering beneath skin. His cry was abruptly cut off as his mouth slammed shut, jaws clenched tighter, tighter, tighter until she could hear his teeth begin to crack.

His eyes were terrible to look at, full of panic and agony.

Irina rose up. She had to help him, to do something, to—

She had not made it three steps when the stranger, without looking, held out his free hand toward her and said: “Repel.” She was promptly sent flying right back into the armchair, the thing tipping onto its back legs from the force of it before thumping back down again.

“Stay there,” the man instructed tersely. “You don’t want to touch him right now. What he’s got is contagious.”

For some mad reason, Irina did as she was told. Maybe she loved Phil less than she thought she did—maybe she would have done anything at that moment, to keep the terrible torture that was happening to him from being visited upon her, too.

She watched in mute horror as her husband was unmade. The spasms became so violent that his bones threatened to jump out of their sockets, joints bending the wrong way around, and his muscles began to tear away from their fastenings with terrible, sickening sounds.

When he finally went still after what felt like an eternity, he was almost unrecognizable; body contorted, wearing such a terrible visage of horror as she had not known a human could make.

The stranger extracted his blade in a calm, businesslike fashion, wiped its bloody end on the bedsheets, and turned to face Irina. “I’m sorry about that,” he said.

Irina felt like she was floating in a humid fog, hardly able to breathe. “You… murdered him,” she worked out, hardly believing it to be true even though she was staring at his corpse, the pungent stench of his perforated bowels thick in the air.

“Yes,” the stranger replied, sounding mildly apologetic.

“Are you going to kill me, too?”

“I’d rather not. Are you going to make me?”

“You killed my husband.”

“I did.”

“I should… I should…”

“Avenge him? Kill me?” One second, the man stood ten feet away, sword at his side. Then she blinked, and suddenly he loomed over her, the point of his weapon hanging a fraction of an inch from her throat. “Let me save you from that deliberation. I don’t want to kill you, but if you insist on joining your husband, I will oblige you. Do you want to die, Irina?”

Irina stayed very still, unable to look away from the blade threatening to give her life a very abrupt, very painful end. “No,” she croaked.

The stranger nodded, taking a step back and sheathing his long blade with a serpentine metal hiss. “Good.” He flashed a strangely friendly smile in the dark. He studied her for a moment, then said: “You’re a Scholar. Do you happen to have the Message skill?”

“I do.” She had done most of Phil’s correspondences for him.

“Excellent. Just excellent. You have contacts in Stormfront, I trust?”

“Y-Yes.”

“How high?”

“What?”

“Who is the most powerful person you can reach?”

Irina grappled with the question for a moment. “Probably… the grandmaster of the merchant’s guild.”

“That will do fine. In that case, I will write out a letter for you to send the grandmaster, and he, in turn, will pass that letter on to Lady Winter.”

She did everything he asked, waiting for him to scribble a quick note on a scrap of paper retrieved from the office down the hall. Folded into a waterproofed envelope and sealed, she opened a window and sent it out into the late night to zip off northeast, seeking its destination in faraway Stormfront.

She had no idea what the letter said. She didn’t want to know.

Irina was sure that the stranger would kill her once she had served her use, but he didn’t. He just… walked out, as inauspiciously as he had entered. It was as though he vanished from existence the moment she lost sight of him, with no footsteps to mark his exit down the hall.

Irina did not stay in her armchair long. She couldn’t stand to look at the twisted thing Phil had been turned into. Shuffling out of the master bedroom, she began aimlessly wandering the house without any conscious thought in mind. Maybe she was looking for help. Maybe she was just following some primal instinct to get as far away from this terrible place as possible.

She began finding corpses when she made it to the first floor. Men butchered, cold faces frozen in horrific screams, most still in their underclothes. Body parts scattered like lost toys. The Laborers had died as quick as the rest, she noted with a bout of hysterical laughter. What had been the point of putting up with them all this time?

She found the servant girls huddled in their room. The door was not locked, but none of them had attempted to leave—evidently, the murderer had instructed them to stay put, and they had not dared risk his wrath.

Irina knelt down with them, and together they wept.

She'd been lonely earlier. Now she was truly alone.