Even under the weakness of Sanctum’s cloud-shrouded sun, my apple sapling seemed to thrive. Whether it was the careful tending I gave it or the sweet nothings I whispered to its leaves as I worked around its roots, ever weeding and tending, I could not say. Shira watched me with it on many occasions over the weeks that followed Melody’s visit, clearly puzzled by the time and attention I gave to the young tree. Any time I asked her why she frowned so much at my arboreal tending, she would only answer, Never have I seen a lady dirty her own hands with soil.
Swiftly, though, she was coming to understand that I was not, in the strictest sense, the regal figure she had once seen attired in silks and painted like a queen for a party. Even aside from my martial inclinations, I let few inside the Winter Palace give me more than the barest amount of bowing and scraping due.
Out in the Streets of Broken Sky, I knew that Melody worked her own, special variety of magic: people were disappearing and mostly reappearing as she followed various lines of inquiry with ruthless, calculated efficiency. As sweet and pleasant as Melody could be, she had another side, one I knew well: smooth as silk, cold as steel. I imagined that those who did not resurface were among the countless lost to Heca’s tender mercies. His Majesty’s flenser took her duties as seriously as His sword did.
I knew it would come to a head one way or another. Even with Hallen as a potential ally, the cult of Erelim’s followers in the city would become desperate. What I failed to anticipate was how quickly, but then again, I was removed from the noose fastening itself around their necks. Training Shira and my apple tree consumed most of my attention, as well as rekindling the morale and spirits of Hallen’s remaining elite troops. Teth kept her spawn as was custom, but the rest had suffered greatly at her hands on half rations and forced marches. I didn’t even have the heart to drill them, not while they were regaining their strength inside their section of the barracks alongside my own Red Sashes.
Why do you dote on a little apple tree? Shira finally signed one morning, still attired in the gambeson and sash of a trainee guard. It was safer for her if people glossed over her, unaware of her clerical inclinations. She watched me from the bench nearby as I carefully judged the amount of water in my bucket before starting to water around its roots.
“The rains have been insufficient,” I said. My little tree knew it was spring somewhere, growing with surprising speed and vigor now that it was out of its confinement and properly planted in the garden. “It needs about five gallons every week, and we have only had sprinklings here or there. These buds require moisture to produce. Surely you spent at least some time in a garden as part of your cloister.”
I heard Shira huff in frustration and looked up again from my work, the faintest hint of a smile on my lips as she scowled. I understand the practical concerns of raising a tree. I do not understand the motivation.
“It was a gift.”
The path to the Beloved’s heart is through an orchard? Perhaps the Gods of Light should use apple-wood spears.
I grinned at that, even knowing part of the joke was probably meant to be a barb. “A fine jest. Perhaps I should confound you more often.”
You are always confounding…and evasive. Why do you not tell me the real reason?
“What difference does it make?” I retorted, carefully allowing the water to absorb on the first pour before I started my second. Only a fool dumped all five gallons at once: I had always learned to halve the measure and go gently around sapling roots.
Before Shira could reply, clearly annoyed, I caught the sound of a falling piece of roof tile just as it collided with the ground beside me.
“Inside. Now.” My tone brooked no argument as I straightened. Shira knew better than to disobey, retreating rapidly. I had left Woe sitting beside the bench where she sat, a good twelve feet away. That wasn’t close enough, so I grabbed the next best thing: a three-pronged pitchfork from the wheelbarrow beside the roses.
A hooded figure attired in leather armor dropped into the garden behind me as I grabbed my makeshift weapon. Farming implements could be every bit as dangerous as any true weapon, if you knew what you were doing.
They moved well, clearly a trained killer, and I felt my vulnerability acutely without armor. Allowing them close would be foolhardy at best.
“I know you,” the man said, drawing a lethal looking shortsword while eyeing my pitchfork with a mixture of amusement and caution. “Aleyr Frostborn, Beloved of the King in Black. To end you would end the reign of darkness in this world.”
I laughed at the absurdity of the claim. “Perhaps it would end the King in Black, but darkness lives in every soul. Even yours, assassin.”
“Where is your captive?”
“You wish a priestess of Ishal? If you can walk over my body and those of my guards, you may claim her.” I lunged with the pitchfork, driving him backwards in a frantic evasion married with a difficult parry.
I twisted deftly, using the curved prongs of the pitchfork to bind up his weapon. He released it and seized the haft of the pitchfork, trying to pull it from my hands. Again I twisted, forcing his blade into his face before it could fall to the earth. He recoiled, but pulled my weapon with him.
I moved forward with elegant steps on the neat brickwork path of the garden. Every movement, I tried to push him further back. Soon he would be against the wall with nowhere to run.
He knew it too. The assassin jumped, landing with his feet on the pitchfork haft, and tried to sprint down the length of the weapon at me. I hurled it away and drew the seax worn horizontally across the back of my belt. He stumbled and fell awkwardly, but landed with his feet under him. I retreated towards where I’d left Woe, the shorter blade held out in front of me. I could always switch to a reverse grip if I needed it. That was unlikely, though, given he had no heavy armor on.
He moved faster than he should have been able to: not undead, but likely alchemically enhanced somehow. The distance between us vanished as a blade seemed to appear in his hand, no doubt from his sleeve. “You have no armor or sword to save you here, Frostborn.”
I sneered at him. If he thought I needed either, he was a fool. His blade made a wicked arc, but I recoiled back in time, the barest graze of a blow across my cheek slicing skin. Crimson splashed down my shirt, down onto the stones, and I saw his eyes widen. I grabbed his wrist as it passed, keeping my own blade close to my body, and then wrenched savagely on his joint.
His blade hit the floor and I pulled him in close, twisting harder on his wrist until bone snapped in a sickening symphony, all the way up his arm and into his shoulder. We were face to face, his expression white with fear and confusion. “You…bleed…” he gasped. “How is this…”
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“Oh, sweet thing, did you mistake me for undead?” I crooned. I struck low with my seax, hamstringing one leg. “That explains the hallowed blade.” The markings on the blade were unmistakable, a gleaming holy symbol worked into the steel that would have sent any vampire reeling. Wights were more resilient to such things, but a proper hallow could burn even them. “You should have stuck with vaendal.”
I turned him in almost a pirouette, cutting his throat as he faced away. A shove sent him staggering and then collapsing to the ground.
It wasn’t really a surprise that they’d assumed. A singular figure enduring over centuries without the blood of an elf made undeath the natural conclusion. I clearly wasn’t a wight, but vampires could hide their fangs. It made sense for the Beloved of the Lich-King himself to have taken to undeath as well to escape her mortal frailties.
I turned, finding myself face to face with Shira. She had picked up Woe and drawn the blade, though her eyes were more focused on the crumpled body of the man than me. I held out my empty hand and she placed my sword’s hilt on my palm, surrendering it. He was seeking…me?
“It seems your presence here has not gone unremarked upon.” It irritated me, like sand ground into my flesh. I pointed Woe’s tip at the fallen dagger. “And with a rather unconventional weapon for one of Sanctum’s own.”
The god Erelim wished to end you.
I glanced up at the blue sky. “He would be better served sending a thunderbolt than some two-bit cutthroat. But, then again, I suppose we all make do with what we have.”
Shira’s brow furrowed. He is a god of justice. To send an assassin seems…
“Distasteful? It is far more expedient to kill me than drag me to some foreign court to face the penalty for my many crimes,” I said dryly. “Besides, what punishment would be meted out except a gruesome death? Consider the dead man a holy avenger if it helps you sleep at night.”
He seemed surprised that a hallowed blade did not harm you. Truthfully, I am as well.
I returned Woe to its scabbard, then cleaned off the seax with a discarded outer shirt from when I’d grown too hot earlier. Once the blood was wiped away, that blade went back to its sheath and I held a hand out to Shira. “Prick me and I bleed, the same as you.”
But how have you survived these many centuries?
The lumpy, misshapen gold ring on my left hand burned cold at the reminder. “By being difficult to kill.” It was true, but it was not the entire truth. What could I tell her? That I had been the focus of the King in Black’s power in the ritual that granted him immortality? That I was frozen, just as the Laws of Magic were when he shattered the old god who had written them? That Death had to be guaranteed his due some way, somehow? The irony of the twist of Fate making my mortality into the catalyst for another’s freedom from it was not lost on me.
“How much do you know about liches?” I asked bluntly. The King in Black was not the first to walk that forbidden path, but he had certainly risen the highest, gone the furthest.
Almost nothing.
I smiled tightly, humorlessly. “Consider yourself fortunate. Necromancy concerns itself in many ways with the body, but at its highest levels, it is consumed by matters of the soul. Better to have no part in it if you have the option.”
Shira frowned at me. Strange advice from one who has given their soul to it.
“Quite the opposite,” I muttered under my breath. I drew in a sharp inhale as La’an and several other guards advanced into the garden, their blades drawn. “Perhaps a more immediate response would have been better?”
“Apologies, my lady,” La’an said. “There was a diversion elsewhere in the Winter Palace. By the time we realized what it was, this one had slipped the net.”
“A certain someone would have boxed your ears for such foolishness,” I said sharply, reminded acutely that I needed a proper replacement for Melody. With that spot vacant, I would be relying on the wights I held closest and La’an, all of whom had their blindspots. “Where is Vex?”
“Interrogating the captive.”
“I suppose I can forgive the delay if you managed to take one alive.” I shouldered Woe and motioned for Shira to follow. “Bring me everything the dead man carried and a full report. I will liberate our captive from Vex before she eats him.”
La’an bowed his head respectfully. “It will be done, my lady. Last I saw them, Vex was dragging the man to the lower levels.”
Shira followed me down the hall. Where would Vex have taken him?
I belted Woe back on as I walked, knotting the leather belt in my customary fashion once it was cinched closed. “There are holding cells here. These are not the first assassins to breach the Winter Palace, nor will they likely be the last. What I’d like to know is how his accomplices entered. There are wards.”
Why am I not in a cell?
I sighed and reached out, catching her hand in its motion and turning it over so she could see the angry scar across her palm. “You chose a different path, Shira. You are my student, not my prisoner.”
Her luminous eyes looked conflicted, but she didn’t pull her hand away from mine, using the other to sign. So if I wanted to leave?
“I would order a horse and provisions, give you a writ of passage, and send you on your way back to Rusa. You would be not even half trained, but you would be free of this place and my odious company.”
Your company is not odious. Conflicting, yes. Sometimes harsh, certainly, but you are surprisingly patient most of the time.
“So are certain varieties of plague.” I released her hand and turned away, only to feel her fingers at my sleeve.
Is that truly what you think of yourself?
“There is a reason Vex and Haven are my closest company, Shira. They can tolerate my darker moods and rough custom,” I said bluntly. “You will find my manners are valued by few, and I am beloved only by one.”
Shira’s brow furrowed again. La’an and the other Red Sashes speak of you with great respect and admiration.
“Perhaps,” I acknowledged. “Yet even they fear my hateful temper, or at least being on the receiving end of it. You will find that my legend, my shadow, drowns out most of the good will even my kindness sows. I know what woman I am at the end of the day, Shira. We must all keep accounting of our acts, and mine have fashioned me into a monstrous villain. Wouldn’t you agree, priestess of Ishal?”
You throw that title in my face because you want me to bite back and confirm your perception of yourself, Shira observed. Yet if you find yourself so monstrous in your evil acts, why do you not atone?
“There is no atonement for a woman like me. Even if I wanted it, no god or man would offer it.”
Because you embrace hellfire. Do you not fear the final accounting?
I smiled, but there was no humor to the expression. “Why should I? The hells know their own.”
I think you’re wrong. There is always a chance for redemption. Shira studied me as we walked. I can see it, even if you can’t.
Shira’s vision of me dying played through my thoughts. I remembered the touch of her warm hand against my face as the world grew cold and distant. “You see shadows, Shira,” I said quietly. “I understand it is common enough in seers. They lose touch with reality, mired in visions of possibility.”
It is real, she insisted. Perhaps one day, you’ll understand that.
“Perhaps.”