The sun was just peering over the horizon as Jade dropped from the back window of the manor and onto the dew-soaked lawn. The morning was crisp, and her breath misted in the cool air, but she knew that in a matter of hours the day would be blazing hot and humid. In the 2 years since she had been sold into the Carayn household she had become used to the strange weather in eastern Esrasea. That was why she always made sure to do her run early in the morning. Jade began to jog, her feet pounding the hard earth and her breath creating shimmering clouds in the air in front of her. The sun painted the sky the rosy colours of dawn as she traced her usual route around the spacious country estate. There were several types of terrain to cover; open fields lead to a bridge which spanned a deep lake, over the bridge was a dense forested area through which a small stream ran, and around the other edge of the property there was a large expanse of hilly, rocky terrain that eventually petered out into fields again. Jade ran the perimeter of the property every day; it gave her time to think, and it helped her to memorize as much of the land as she could. As she moved, she let her mind wander and eventually, her thoughts turned, as always, to her dream.
The recurring dream had plagued her ever since she had arrived at the house. It was always the same: in her mind, she could see a field filled with flames; the sky was stained orange and red. It was raining, but the heat from the fire was so intense that the droplets evaporated before they hit her face. The crackle of the flames was deafening. As she looked out over the landscape, she could see a person standing on a precipice, overlooking the fire. They turned to her and fixed her with a searching gaze, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t make out their face. Still, something in their expression wrenched at her soul. Then the voices came, they filled her mind, drowning out even the fire. But she couldn’t understand what they were saying. Only that they were urgent, desperate. She knew that they were pleading with her, begging for something, but she couldn’t understand, they were too indistinct, all mumbles and mutters. Faces would then fill her field of view, out of focus, but so familiar. If they were just a bit clearer, just a tiny bit more detailed, then she would know who they were, and then all of this would make sense. The faces continued to beg and plead with her, their desperation so overwhelming that she eventually collapsed to the ground, her hands over her ears. She always awoke screaming, covered in sweat, her heart racing. It was terrifying and frustrating, to feel that there was something just beyond her grasp, so close, but still too far for her to reach. The urgency seemed to grow worse with each passing day and it was becoming harder and harder for Jade to shake off the feeling in the morning. There were times she feared she was going mad. She was sure of one thing; she needed to get out of here, soon. Once she was free, maybe she could find out what was haunting her.
Before she knew it, Jade had arrived back at her window, drenched in sweat, her mind swirling. The sun had risen higher in the sky and now it was beginning to burn with some of the fierce intensity that characterized the afternoons. Jade heaved herself back into the living quarters.
“Where have you been?” the voice greeted her.
“What business is that of yours, C’arren?” Jade replied curtly, not even turning to look at the guard.
“Everything that happens in this house is my business,” C’arren snapped back.
Jade snorted derisively; she didn’t have much patience for the man today. He had dogged her every action since the day she had arrived; clearly, he held a grudge long past the point of reason. Jade mostly just ignored him, and for some reason, no matter how much this angered C’arren, Avrinly never intervened, and he never laid a finger on her, despite that she had seen him do to others. It was as if some sort of uneasy truce existed between the three of them. So, Jade used it to her advantage, even if she didn’t understand it.
“What’s the difference? It’s not as if I could leave the property, even if I wanted to,” Jade frowned, reaching back and grazing the small, well-healed scar on her left shoulder with her fingertips.
“That really isn’t the point,” C’arren grumbled angrily, but didn’t press the matter.
Jade moved to leave, but before she could go, C’arren called after her,
“I don’t know why the Lady indulges you, but even you can’t keep this up forever, Jade. Mark my words.”
“That much, we can agree on,” Jade muttered quietly.
C’arren was a problem she hadn’t figured out how to solve. Mostly, it was that he was in the way. Always watching, always poking his nose into Jade’s business. He made things more difficult, delayed her progress. Even now, he was shadowing her, making sure that she was going to work. Why anyone cared was beyond her. Jade often wondered why the Carayn household had purchased her at all; they had too many people on staff already. Which, presumably, was why no one but C’arren cared that she occupied her days as the librarian in a library no one ever used. Or even seemed to remember existed. Not that she was complaining, it gave her plenty of time to work with J’arrin, and she had gotten a lot of reading done. Like J’arrin had told her early on, greed and disinterest were excellent qualities in a Master. Walking briskly down the hall, she pushed open the library doors and stepped inside. Spacious and bright, with every shelf lined with rare and expensive tomes, the library was an oasis in the house. It had taken over a year to make the place useable, but it had been worth it. It was a strange source of pride for her. Jade turned back at the door, but C’arren wasn’t behind her anymore. She breathed a long sigh of relief. Slipping out the back way, she hastened down the stairs toward J’arrin’s room, wondering what new task he would have for her today.
“Jade!” the voice interrupted her reverie, she spun around.
Had C’arren circled around to wait for her at the back entrance? She wasn’t sure if that made him paranoid or clever.
“Where are you going?” the guard asked, falling into step alongside her.
“Getting cleaning supplies, obviously,” Jade gritted her teeth and tried to move past him.
“Bullshit. Why sneak out the back way, then?” the guard stepped closer; he was right in her face now.
She knew that he was daring her to start something, to give him an excuse. She clenched her fists and turned away. C’arren, aside from being an ass, was also one of Avrinly’s favourites; it just wasn’t worth starting anything with him. Not again. She tried to walk away, but C’arren grabbed her wrist and pulled her back,
“Don’t you turn your back on me,” he snarled.
“Leave me alone, C’arren,” Jade twisted free.
“You don’t decide where I go, slave.”
“Fine, you can help me carry the polish and rags back to the library, then,” she opened a nearby storage closet and offered him a rag. C’arren snorted in disgust and finally turned and walked away, unwilling to dignify that with a response. As soon as his footsteps faded, Jade dropped the supplies and hurried down the hall, before she could be interrupted again. She was relieved when she finally reached J’arrin’s doorway. C’arren was right about one thing, this couldn’t continue. She had tried to keep her head down, and for a time, it had even worked, but she was losing her patience by the day. She had only two choices, to give in or to get out, and she wasn’t willing to give in. J’arrin opened his door, interrupting her thoughts.
“Good afternoon, Jade,” her master greeted her. He settled himself in a chair by the fire, laying the smooth, knob-handled cane on his lap. Jade couldn’t help but smile. It had taken her almost 3 months to smooth and shape the raw wood with pilfered tools, but it had been worth it, J’arrin loved that cane. But her smile was tinged with sadness too. When she saw him these days, Jade was shocked to see how much the previous years had aged him, he looked so much frailer now then he had when she had first arrived. Jade was sure that training her was taking too much out of him and she had often insisted that he stop, but the old man flatly refused. Even last year, when the lung infection had almost killed him, he had continued her instruction from his sick bed. At least the illness had gotten him moved out of the damp basement and into a private room with a window.
“Hello, master. How are you feeling today?” Jade asked, sitting down on the floor.
“Oh, would you lay off of that! I am not an invalid, you know,” J’arrin huffed.
“I know, I’m sorry.”
“Good, you’d better be,” J’arrin crossed his arms over his chest. “What shall we do today then, hmm? There is so much we need to accomplish.”
“Isn’t there always?” Jade laughed.
She retrieved the straw dummy they had constructed from its place under his tiny cot. He obviously couldn’t spar with her himself, but he was always watching, correcting her form as she delivered a series of blows. It would be nice to have a flesh and blood sparring partner, but there was no one else she could trust. J’arrin demonstrated a punching and blocking sequence for her. He moved more slowly than he had in his youth, but that was better for demonstration purposes, anyway. He then stepped aside,
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“Try it.”
Jade mimicked his motions, as he corrected her mistakes. She repeated it over and over, nothing less than perfection was ever good enough for J’arrin. When he was finally satisfied with her technique, he stopped her and demonstrated another. Time slipped away quickly this way and before she knew it, it was getting dark.
“You should be going, Jade,” J’arrin said, motioning to the darkening window.
“You’re right,” Jade panted, returning the dummy to its hiding place. “C’arren will be looking in on me soon.”
“Excellent work today. You have been improving quite dramatically, lately.”
Jade grinned broadly,
“Thank you, master.”
“But it is your 2-year anniversary today, and I can see that you are getting impatient.”
Jade blushed,
“You can’t rush this. If you wait, your opportunity will come.”
“I hope so,” she replied softly.
Privately, she wondered how much longer she could keep following that advice. Bowing, she left the room and ran down the hall. If she was late, C’arren wouldn’t let her out of his sight for a week.
After Jade left, J’arrin warmed himself by the fire. Thinking about how far she had come in only 2 years. Moreover, trying to determine when he had started training her in earnest, instead of just as a distraction. He had started out just going through the motions, to keep her from running, but she had a talent that had truly surprised him. She was strong-willed and driven; always pushing to learn more. But what made her truly exceptional was the fierce intelligence that she applied to everything she did. He hadn’t been able to resist challenging her, seeing how far he could push her. And despite himself, he had enjoyed it, too. She was right; marking time, getting through the day, it wasn’t enough. He’d had a purpose once, and it was refreshing to have one again. But her restlessness had not abated. If anything, it had only gotten worse. A certain cold pragmatism that threaded its way through her personality was all that held her here. And its grip was loosening. J’arrin could tell she was already halfway out the door, and he wasn’t going to be able to hold her back forever. Jade was just waiting for an opportunity to present itself, and she would be gone. Part of him hoped she would succeed. In their time together, he had grown to care for her and truly wanted her to be free, if that was what she needed. But part of him hoped that opportunity never came. Not because he feared punishment. She had ceased to be his official responsibility long ago, but rather because he enjoyed having her here, and he wasn’t ready to be alone again. J’arrin tried to ignore that feeling. It was selfish, and besides, there was probably no need for him to worry anyway. She couldn’t leave, not with the disc in her shoulder binding her here. It was specifically positioned so she could not remove it herself, his hands and his eyesight were too bad to help her, and no one else could be trusted to do it. Until that changed, she was stuck here. Probably for the best, they still had a lot of work to do on her form. She left herself too open on the left side when she countered. They would have to work on that tomorrow.
**
The bar was crowded, even though it was well past 2 in the morning. The Mare’s Hooves was popular with the seedier crowd in the city of Ayveness and tonight the place was packed to its mouldering rafters with a heaving mass of the humanity, mostly a motley crowd of assassins, grifters, and thieves. Av’ry March did not technically fit into any of those groups, anymore, but this was still where he felt most at home. He sat in a dark corner, smoking a long, curved pipe. Inhaling deeply, he closed his eyes as the smoke filled his lungs; he held it for a moment, then let it flow slowly through his nose. Leaving his eyes shut, he breathed in the smoky air and motioned to the waitress for another drink. She already knew what he wanted. Benefits of being a regular. This was the best place to be when you had something that you needed to forget. And these days, forgetting was pretty much all he had the energy for. No one here asked too many questions, no one cared who you were. And that anonymity was valuable to him; using his name or even showing his face in some areas of town, would mean his death. So, instead Av’ry spent his days hiding from the past, both the memories and the complications that they entailed. He could see no way out of this situation, not that he was looking very hard, so he simply worked on not caring. Alcohol usually facilitated that nicely, as long as he didn’t stop drinking. It was the sobering up that was the problem, so he typically didn’t.
That was going very well today, the only wrinkle being that the waitress seemed to have forgotten about him entirely. It wasn’t surprising, really, the place was so crowded that Av’ry was amazed she was able to push through the jam and serve anyone at all. After careful consideration, he decided that his odds would be better up at the bar itself, so he rose unsteadily to his feet and began to push his way through the throng. Miraculously, he was able to find a recently vacated seat; catching the bartender’s eye, he reordered his drink, but he wasn’t holding his breath for speedy service. Leaning against the bar, Av’ry was just beginning to wonder if it might finally be time to call it a night and try again tomorrow when a snatch of the conversation going on next to him caught his attention.
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” the man next to him shouted over the din, “This is going to be our ticket. And we ain’t gonna need to wait much longer for it, either.”
“What good is a war?” his companion slurred, clearly less enthusiastic than his friend.
“Well, when we win, we’ll get new land, new opportunities, there will be easy riches! War is a treasure trove for the daring my friend. Mark my words.”
“What makes you so certain we’ll win?” the second man pressed.
“What, you think a bunch of pacifists can win a war with Esrasea?” the first man laughed, “Maaskalans can’t fight, everyone knows that. It will be a bloodbath. And even if we don’t win immediately, there will be plenty of desperate people out there who need things. They’ll be so eager to be exploited we won’t even need to try. We start stockpiling now and we’ll be able to…”
The two men received their drinks and drifted off into the crowd, still conversing animatedly, but Av’ry could no longer hear them. War with Maaskal? Av’ry frowned at their backs as they disappeared, trying to discern from their retreating forms how reliable a source of information they were. If they could be believed, then this was big news. Moreover, something about it bothered him. Like he should have been expecting this, somehow. He shook his head, no, that was ridiculous. There hadn’t been a war in this part of the world in decades. The peace treaties had held for as long as he had been alive and there was no real reason to doubt that they would hold for the rest of his life, too. However long or short that may be. It was probably nothing but idle, drunken gossip. And as for his own feeling of unease? That was probably just déjà vu. What else could it be? He didn’t involve himself in politics these days, so it wasn’t like he had any inside information. He was seeing things that weren’t there. Wasn’t he? At that moment, his drink finally arrived, and Av’ry managed to put that line of thought out of his mind.
It was still dark when Av’ry eventually stumbled out into the alley behind the tavern, but the horizon was just beginning to fade to a deep blue that forecasted the dawn. Despite the fact that it was well into fall, the night air felt warm on his face and a light breeze brought the smell of the sea. Walking slowly, Av’ry crossed the street to the river that ran perpendicular to the alleyway. The city of Ayveness had sprung up around that river, and now it wound through a maze of streets and buildings, dividing the city in two like it had been sliced by a blade. Leaning heavily on the rail, he followed the path towards the center of the district, on his way home. It was early enough that the square was still deserted when he arrived, the respectable element having yet to awaken and begin their day. This square was as old as the city, and it had been built in keeping with the grandiose vision of a beautiful, nobleman’s refuge, full of the rich and the powerful. The centerpiece was a large marble fountain, water spilling down the figure of a beautiful woman, naked but for the carved likeness of foaming crests of water rising up around her. Av’ry vaguely remembered that she was modeled after one of the gods, but he couldn’t remember which one, exactly. Arrayed around her, the four corners of the square housed a government office, a hall of records, and a bank. The fourth building was empty, consigned to a purpose that was never fulfilled and remained a mystery to the descendants of those who had commissioned it. Each structure was old, ornate and at some time they had probably even been beautiful. But, like everything else in the city of Ayveness, reality had fallen short of their creators’ grand dreams. The buildings were old and weathered, and cracks wreathed the stone like spider webbing. Large chunks of marble had fallen away, leaving unsightly holes in the walls and, often, pedestrians diving for cover. No one had bothered with upkeep. They had simply built something newer in another section of the city, and the wealthy had migrated there. Av’ry paused at the edge of the fountain and reached down to splash some water on his face. As he glanced down idly at the water, he noticed the reflection of the bank, wavering in the pool across from him. He paused, staring at it, and a carefully buried memory suddenly asserted itself.
Promise me.
He shook his head and tried to will the voice away.
Promise me, Ave.
It insisted stubbornly. Av’ry didn’t want to hear it. Went to great lengths to avoid hearing it. He turned to leave, maybe a change of scenery would put the ghosts to rest.
I don’t want you involved in this. But if I’m right and she starts a war with Maaskal, then I need you to make sure this information gets to the right people. You are the only one I can trust with this.
Don’t do this, Fox, he remembered his response so clearly, even though it had been years ago. She hadn’t listened. She never listened.
Just promise me, Ave. Please.
Alright, I promise. But…
Remember, you can find it in the safe deposit box. But only if we go to war. I don’t need you getting yourself killed over this.
Shaking his head to clear it, Av’ry looked up at the bank again. A war. The safe deposit box. That was what his brain had been trying to tell him earlier. Av’ry shook his head. He wouldn’t do it. He couldn’t. He couldn’t go back to that time, that life. But even as he turned to leave, he knew he would. It had been the last thing she had asked of him. The last promise he had made her. He couldn’t let her down, not again. Heaving a deep sigh, he turned towards the bank and took a few tentative steps towards the building. The desire to get it over with before he changed his mind pushed him to cross the square, but as he reached the entrance, the dark glass doors reminded him how foolish he was being. Even if they were open, which seemed unlikely, he couldn’t go in there like this. Not with three days growth of patchy beard, reeking of liquor, and without a key or any documentation to support the identity he would need to claim. He’d be lucky if they just threw him out. More likely they would call the guards. Av’ry rubbed his face with his hands. He wasn’t thinking clearly, obviously. It was time to go home and get his shit together. Sober up. Shave. Maybe take a bath. Then he would dig through the attic and find Taevyn Fox’s old papers. He would deliver whatever she had left behind there to the proper authorities and be done with it. He would keep this one last promise, and then he could return to the perpetual haze he’d surrendered himself to. This time for good.