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rainbowfic2016-04-20 12:05 pm
crossfortune) wrote in rainbowfic2016-04-20 12:05 pm
Entry tags:
not that final meeting
Name: Mischa
Story: hope on fire
Colors: bistre (That is the secret that none dares tell who fights for a cause. Dying, we are all alike), spark (Even the sun's got a price on it), Side B (He coughed and shook his crumpled wings Closed his eyes and moved his lips → Look Back in Anger (Lodger))
Supplies and Styles: charcoal, fingerpainting
Word Count: 4302
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: skip
discussion of rape during wartime: one character - Sene- is an implied victim.
.
Summary: Lady Guinevere. Take up your sword.
A teacher and her former student meet in battle, for one last duel.
Notes: needs a story tag.
On the last night of your life, it rains, a steady drumming beat against the weathered roof of this old fort, rattling through the deep green leaves of the surrounding forest. It’s been years since you’ve been here in Ayyan, in this Meridian kingdom, but you remember every step like it was yesterday. Mahin had been good to you and Vasilis: the queen had been so generous to you both, when all you had brought had been pursuers through her lands. And now here you are again, bringing pursuers through her lands.
(your former student is among them, leads them. You’d know her anywhere, even known her from a single glimpse when she’d strode onto the battlefield, face and body obscured by heavy black armor, known her from the way she held and swung her blade. Elaine, who you had taught when you were young and blind and arrogant, Elaine who wants a reckoning.)
There’s nothing to be done for it, of course, and you reach for your sharpening stone as you sit by the bedside of your daughter, watching her sleep. Elena is so much like Vasilis that it hurts, sometimes, to look at her: small and olive, gentle nature and healing staves, heart so in balance that she can touch the cursed necklace without it’s power warping her. Like her father, and you flex your left hand without thinking about it, the scars pulling taut: in this moment, you miss him so much that it aches.
(if this reckoning goes the way you know it will, you’ll see him again before the morning. You wonder if he’s forgiven you.)
“Mom?” Elena stirs, drowsily, but her eyes don’t open, fingers tangled in the silver chain of her necklace.
“Go back to sleep.” you tell her, continuing to sharpen your axe, metal blade scraping against the stone. A soothing sound, and it’s the only lullaby you’d ever given her: Vasilis had been the singer, not you. “When dawn comes, we’re marching.”
Elena had already fallen back to sleep, before you finished talking: she’s still young, still only a girl, though you’d been that old yourself when you’d left home to make your fortune. You’d tried your best to give her and Ilya a life that was more than this, more than simply running: Tried to give them the peace you had never known as a child. Sibiu had been peaceful, and you’d thought you could make a life for you and your children here. New name, running a small-time mercenary company: you’d known nothing but farming and how to fight, and you hadn’t been any good during your thirteen short years as a farmgirl. So sellsword work it was, small time, far below your skill and the woman you had once been, but it was the best life you could have given them: away from war, away from politics, away from pursuers. Until war and a lost princess had come to your doorstep, and now you’re all running again.
“I didn’t want this for you.” you say, though your daughter will only hear you in her dreams. “I wanted peace for you.”
Elena sleeps on: you stare at her for another moment, one last look of love, heft your axe over your shoulder and go.
***
Your steps are steady and careful, quiet in the dim light: the floor beneath your boots isn’t quite stable, and the building is crumbling from years of disuse. But it’ll do for a night’s shelter, a single night’s reprieve.
The old fort is quiet, but you are not the only one awake at this hour: you set Jasna and Yuria for night watch: Jasna to give her something more productive to do than drink and lose her temper, Yuria as the most quietly steady and reliable in your company. The two of them will balance each other well: Yuria can keep Jasna mostly sober and on task and stay calm through her insults.
(but you are their commander, and you know best how to avoid them as you leave.)
Despite your best efforts, you can’t avoid everyone: the scratch of a quill against parchment alerts you to your staff officer’s presence in the hallway that leads out to this fort’s back exit. Sene is still awake, his head bent over a book as he scribes the spells back into it, and a healing staff across his slender knees, imbuing magic back into both: you’ve never been any kind of sorcerer, but you’ve seen him do this often enough before.
“Commander,” Sene says, glancing up from what he’s doing: his scinwife mark stands out crimson against his pale forehead, wisps of dark hair obscuring it. Two more staves lie at his feet, and you recognize them belonging to Aulis and Elena: he’s been at work all night, and will be at work for hours more.
“I’m going out.” you tell him, and he inclines his head gracefully in acknowledgment, continuing to write. The quill trembles, almost imperceptibly, in delicate fingers, and you frown to yourself: he’s not taking care of himself again, not that he’s ever been good at that “I’ll be back before dawn. Get some sleep.”
You know he’s always been a light sleeper: up before dawn to meet with you about tactics and battle strategy, last to sleep at night, sitting hours up working on logistics, on the ledgers and supply lists. But in the scant nights since he returned from Valea Aurie, fleeing the army at his heels, he’s slept even less, even more fragile around the edges of his sharp tongue.
Suspicion blooms slow and bitter in the back of your mind, because you’re fairly certain that something terrible happened to him while fleeing the capital. You spent years as a general for Tirana, before you ran with Vasilis, and you remember the kind of atrocities you had to stop with first commands, and then the sharp edge of your blade. Even at your most arrogant, you never believed that you had the right to take what you wanted from those weaker than you: you’ve killed men and women for less, but the original sin of your homeland is weakness.
(You are not his mother, though you have tried, in your way, since Ilya brought him home, since he joined your company. You might have been his mother-in-law, in a future where you live longer than tonight. You can suspect all you want, but you will never be able to draw the truth from him: you are not Ilya, who he trusts alone.)
“Understood.” Sene says, impassive as always, as you walk away: you don’t know what or how far his glimpses into the future have shown him, and you’re not going to ask because it won’t make a difference. You’re going to die tonight: you’ve made your peace with the inevitable, but you don’t want to know what happens next.
“Keep my son out of trouble.” you turn back at the last, standing just inside the doorway: Sene meets your gaze, red eyes fixed on you, solemn in his too-young face.
“You don’t even have to ask.” he says, quietly, his voice a promise.
***
“Where are you going at this hour, Commander?” Ilya asks, falling in step with you as you walk up the hill: for now, the rain has stopped, moonlight filtering wanly through the clouds. He is your son, but there is a chain of command to follow, and he knows it: you hadn’t exactly ordered him to stay put, but you’d strongly suggested it. You knew you should have given him his turn at night watch early instead of just trusting that he’ll sleep.
“You should be asleep, boy. We move out at dawn tomorrow.” you tell him, roughly. “I thought I taught you to listen better than that.”
Slowly-broadening shoulders shrug beneath his cloak. “Couldn’t sleep and saw you leaving. Where are you going this time of night?”
“It’s nothing to do with you, boy. Go back and go to sleep.” you glare at him: he glares back.
“I’m not a child anymore., Mother.” Ilya says. “Unless you order me, I don’t have to go.”
Stubborn boy. There’s too much of you in him and almost nothing of his father: he even looks like you, ebony-dark and coarse, beaded braids, and someday he’ll be as tall and broad as you. Your image, only writ shorter for now and male, and the only thing he has of his father are his eyes, startlingly indigo and clear.
“Stubborn boy.” you grunt, after a moment, and cuff him upside the head. You have a lot you want to tell him, but not a lot of time. “Fine, then. Walk with me and talk. But when I tell you to go, you go back. Immediately.”
You don’t start walking until you see him nod, but he falls into step with you almost immediately. He’s only a few inches shorter than you, less than a head, so it’s not that hard for him to keep up: you’re listening intently as you walk, trying to hear any sign of Elaine and where she’d be waiting.
“There’s some other things I want to know, Mother. I just barely started working, and you put me in charge of a job. I’ve definitely gotten better with a sword, but I shouldn’t be responsible for anyone else.” Ilya protests, almost immediately.
“You’ll learn with experience.” you’d always intended him to be in charge of the company after you were gone: not that you’d planned for it to be this soon, but goddess knows the unexpected happens. You’ve lived by the sword since you were thirteen years old, when you cut your braids off and took up the blade to make your fortune when nothing would grow in the rocks and frost. Death has ridden with you as your constant companion, and you’re lucky that you lived this long. “It falls into place. Listen to Sene - he’s smarter than both of us. It’s what I pay him for.”
Ilya stares back at you, confused. “I don’t understand: you never would have done this before. Never. What’s wrong? Why are you in such a hurry?”
You can’t answer him for a long moment. You don’t know where to begin, because your choices have led you down a complicated road, paths all converging on this moment. Choices upon choices upon choices to try to preserve the world, and it’s all narrowed down to one. There’s only one question you can ask. “Do you remember your father, llya? Anything about him?” (Drip, drip, drip. White-hot roaring in your ears.)
Ilya frowns. “...Where did that come from, Mother?”
“Answer the question, Ilya.” you want to know what he remembers about Vasilis, your gentle, singing husband, keeper of a song and an artifact that together in the wrong hands, could destroy the world all over again. You want to know what he remembers about his father’s life and death, so you can set the remaining pieces together: how his father died, why he died, the darkness inside your heart you’d spent the rest of your life struggling to not give into again. The contract you’d taken out on your own life should you slip. There’d been only one assassin willing to take that job, but her reputation for getting things done was absolute.
After a moment, he shakes his head. “Gentle...kind, I think. I remember his smile...I remember him singing, around the edges. But I don’t remember much else about him, and you don’t really talk about him much, either.”
You frown: Ilya and Elena had been very young when you’d killed Vasilis, but you hadn’t expected him to remember so little. And you don’t have time to explain the whole story to him, not with a duel waiting for you. “I see.”
The soft sound of metal, a figure moving much too quietly in armor, catches your ear, and you stop dead in your tracks for a moment: a clearing is up ahead, and you’re fairly certain that Elaine is there, waiting. You turn to your son, and stare at him, intent.
“Mother? What’s wrong?” Ilya asks.
“We’re done. Leave me.” You tell him, roughly. Your son’s expression hardens from confused to stubborn.
“Just like that?” he challenges you, and you cuff him upside the head for emphasis. You need him to leave, now: you didn’t want your children to see you die, because you know too well the weight of revenge in a child’s heart.
“You heard me, Ilya. This is a direct order. Return immediately.”
Ilya’s features go quiet and still. “...Fine.” he says: he doesn’t understand. You know he doesn’t understand. But you need him safe more than you need him to understand, and you don’t take another step towards the clearing until you see him go, running back the way you’d both come.
The cloudy moonlight shines down as you shift your axe over your shoulder and go to meet the death that is waiting for you. Elaine is waiting in the forest clearing, wearing the same black armor you’d seen her in not too long before: the heavy plate shrouds her from head to toe, obscuring her appearance to the point where you can’t even tell her actual height and build. In the armor, Elaine looks tall and imposing, but it’s as much an illusion as her distorted voice is.
“Lady Guinevere,” Elaine says, lilting and cold from the depths of her black armor, and casts a familiar blade at your feet, two feet of goddess-blessed steel gleaming gold in the pale moonlight. Her black-gauntleted hand rests on the hilt of that sword’s silver twin, and you recognize the pair after a moment as the sun-and-moon blades from the beginning, the goddess-blessed swords of Ileana of the Seven Heroes.
(Your eyes narrow: what game is Elaine playing? Those swords were treasures of Ladithi, the holy theocracy. She stands a general at King Elouan’s side, had taken the place that you had forsaken, yet kneels before the Witness and her regent?)
“Take up your sword.” Her soft, distorted voice is cold but still somehow hopeful around the edges: your student, who has waited this long to fight you, longing to truly test your strength against yours.
(You flex your left hand, feel the scars tugging at your palm: you will never wield a sword again, crippled your sword arm for repentance. White cloak and white blade and a white horse: once, none could outfight or outride you in the land from where you came. But you are not that woman anymore, not the Lady Guinevere, the White Rider, the general at the right hand of a mad king.)
You flick your braids back over your shoulder, beads clacking, and kick the goddess-blessed blade aside, send it spinning into the mud. The weight of your axe in your right hand as you lift it is welcome and familiar, and Elaine is silent. You only hope that Ilya actually obeyed you and went back, but there’s nothing else to be done for it now.
“I am not that woman anymore. I need no other weapon but this axe,” your declaration is a roar of defiance as you leap forward, crescent blade of your axe arcing downward: Elaine’s sword rises to intercept your testing blow in a shower of sparks, steel clanging harshly against sacred silver. You strain against her - she’s gotten stronger over the years - before disengaging, sweeping your axe around for another blow. Elaine is fast, even in her heavy armor: unnaturally quick, even, and she’s improved in the years since you left her. The sounds of your blades clashing echoes loudly in the moonlight: an even match, and metal crashes against metal with boneshaking force.
(you haven’t fought a duel like this in years. Not one that pushes you to your limits. Once, this would not have lasted so long: once, you were the best swordsman in the world, peerless, named a goddess of battle by men who didn’t understand the truth behind your legend, but those days are over. You brought yourself down to merely mortal and Elaine has brought herself up-)
“Mom!?” Ilya yells from across the clearing: goddessdammit, why didn’t that boy listen? You don’t have time to spare for him, and you need to get him out of here. You’ve taught him the best that you could, but he isn’t a match for Elaine. Not by far.
“Boy, get out of here!” you yell as you barely sidestep another blow, your boots sliding across the muddy ground, and roll out of the way of another attack. You roll back up to your feet, fluidly, swinging your axe up as you move, though your bones ache: you’re not nearly as young as you were, back in your prime, two children and almost twenty years on. Elaine doesn’t seem bothered, despite the weight of her armor and weapon, but she never seemed to age anyway. She’d been a bird-boned slip of a girl the whole time you’d taught her, barely taller and only a little heavier than Sene, and you wouldn’t be surprised if she’s still the same, shrouded in the depths of her armor.
You parry one slash, Elaine’s moonlight blade sliding down the length of yours: a heartbeat later, she disengages, brings her sword low. Your reaction time is off, just a fraction of a second, but it’s just enough: her sword slides past your guard, you can’t dodge or parry, and then pain as she shoves the blade through you. Your blood is bright and coppery against the silver sheen and all your nerves are afire: you can’t see to check the wound, but you know without looking that this is a mortal wound.
(was this the way it had been for Vasilis, too, at the end, hanging limply on your sword? There was blood against your skin, drip, drip, drip, and white-hot noise roaring in your ears: your vision, your hearing, come filtering back slowly. There are bodies around your feet, all around, an entire village: Vasilis raises his head, weakly, and smiles at you, determined, steel on such a gentle face. The silver chain of the necklace hangs in his fingers, from where he yanked it away from you, and all it had taken was a moment’s touch for you to be overcome-
That night, you bury your husband and everyone else you killed. That night, you cut the tendons in your sword arm: you will never wield a sword again.)
“...was that all? Is this truly what became of you, teacher?” Elaine asks, sounding disappointed, as she pulls her sword free and lets you slump to the ground. You can’t see her expression or body language: her helm and armor conceal even her height and build, but you remember her, once upon a time. Your first daughter, not of blood, when you were too young and arrogant and stupid for the job.
“Mother. Mom.” your son’s voice is anguished: you hadn’t wanted him to see this. You hadn’t wanted him to see you die. You’d always expected to die on your feet fighting, not old and in your bed, because you’ve always lived by the sword, but you didn’t want your children to see you die like this. “Hang on,” Ilya’s face twists and metal rings on metal as he draws his sword and lunges at her: no, stupid boy, no, not your son, not your boy.
“You won’t hurt my son-” You can barely grip your axe and stumble to your feet, even as you’re bleeding out, but you have to try to protect him, somehow, but you can’t get there in time, can’t even stay on your feet.
Elaine raises her sword and knocks Ilya aside, the force of her blow knocking him to the other side of the clearing as easily as if she was swatting a fly, before turning her attention back to you. He’s bleeding, but not severely: Elaine is more than skilled enough to hold her hand, when she so chooses. “I have only one question more for you, teacher. Where is the necklace?”
(Your daughter, asleep in bed, her fingers wound around the chain: the only memento from her father, or so you told her. Your husband, smiling at you through iron blood, silver links hanging limply from his fingers.)
“I...threw the cursed thing away. Into the river, years ago. It’s in the sea by now.” you’ve never been much of a lying woman, but you’re not going to give Elaine the answers she seeks, nor send her crossing your daughter’s path. Of course your mad king had never forgotten about the damn thing.
Elaine laughs, chill and entirely without mirth. “You’re not even trying anymore, teacher. You wouldn’t throw it away, not when you know more than anyone alive its true nature. Where is it?”
You’re done talking to her, and you stare at her in stony silence. Ilya stumbles to his feet, and her attention focuses briefly on him: your heart runs chill, because you remember Elaine’s single-minded determination and the fact that the king she serves throws away that which is not useful to him: failed generals, his baby, his wife.
“Next time, I won’t hold my hand.” Elaine begins to threaten, begins to lift her blade, just as a distant song echoes closer, borne on the wind, words you can’t understand. It’s one of the songs of the Firstborn, a strange haunting melody, but you recognize the sweet yet strong voice of Mahin, the Meridian Queen of Ayyan, ancient daughter of the eldest of the Children of the Meridian. You would not have dared to go up against her even when you were still in your prime, still able to wield a sword - and Elaine might be willful and arrogant, but she’s not stupid. “...damn.” your former student mutters and turns to flee.
Ilya draws his sword again, tries to bar Elaine’s way. “You’re not going anywhere,” your son is brave but reckless, and angry: you know he can’t win, there is no way he can win.
“Leave her, boy. You can’t win.” your words come out harsher than you want, this once, and Ilya almost wavers.
“But-” he protests, just as Elaine knocks him aside with a precisely-driven slash of her sword, less gently this time, and blood blooms against the rough fabric of his tunic. She will kill him the next time, you know: Elaine’s mercy, such as it is, only goes so far, and you have no idea why she’s been so careful to leave him alive.
“Ilya!” your voice cracks, from pain and helpless worry. “Stop.”
Mahin’s singing, in the distance, grows louder, as it begins to rain again, soft drizzle at first. Her bell-like soprano voice is joined by a young man’s clear, bright tenor, less powerful, less resonant. Age meant truly nothing to the Firstborn, who lived and died outside human constraints, but he was less powerful than the queen: an aide, perhaps?
“...too close.” Elaine’s cool voice betrays a hint of nervousness, such a small hint, the only reason you even can tell is how long you’d known her.. “The next time we meet, boy, I won’t be so merciful.”
Elaine pauses, to look back at you: you cannot see her expression, shrouded by the black helm, but she looks at you, silent, for longer than a moment, before she sheathes her sword and is gone.
“...I made her that way,” you close your eyes for a moment, exhale out, remember a shy, pretty girl with almond dark-moon eyes, ivory skin, and long black hair, staring up at you with wonder and awe. White skirts and shaking slender hands, so small in yours. You remember a paper-fragile girl that you’d forged into steel, and then what? “Willful...arrogant. It was all me.”
“Mom,” Ilya says, his voice shaky, as he kneels down beside you: he’s hurt, but Elaine had known what she’d been doing. The wound will leave a scar, but it won’t kill him, as long as he can get it looked at soon. But you? You’re dying. Everything is fading, in and out, silence and light and the steady sound of rain. “Don’t waste your strength.”
“Listen to me, Ilya.” you tell him, your voice quiet: it’s so hard to talk, but you have to tell him. It’s all you can do, now, to protect your children. “Forget about revenge: don’t go near that woman. And I need you to take care of everything now.”
You want to tell Ilya to stay in Ayyan, to marry Sene, to live in peace among the deep green solitude: but it’s so hard to talk, through the blood, and everything fading. You know he won’t, he can’t, he’s too much like you - too stubborn, too headstrong -but you want him and Elena to be safe. But you can’t protect them anymore.
“Don’t talk like that, Mom.” Ilya says, hefting you over his back, your body draped over his shoulders: he’s so warm, and you are so very cold, cold like you haven’t been since the day you left Tirana, left your frozen homeland and your cold and empty heart. He sounds choked, as if he’s in denial, as if he’s trying to hold back tears. “Hold on a little longer, okay? I’ll get you back to Sene, he can heal you. Just stay a little longer. A little longer.”
(you close your eyes, let the sound of his voice wash over you as he carries you back, everything beginning to fade to silence. You’re so proud of him, your boy, so very proud, and you regret that you will not be there to see the kind of man he will become.)
Story: hope on fire
Colors: bistre (That is the secret that none dares tell who fights for a cause. Dying, we are all alike), spark (Even the sun's got a price on it), Side B (He coughed and shook his crumpled wings Closed his eyes and moved his lips → Look Back in Anger (Lodger))
Supplies and Styles: charcoal, fingerpainting
Word Count: 4302
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: skip
discussion of rape during wartime: one character - Sene- is an implied victim.
.
Summary: Lady Guinevere. Take up your sword.
A teacher and her former student meet in battle, for one last duel.
Notes: needs a story tag.
On the last night of your life, it rains, a steady drumming beat against the weathered roof of this old fort, rattling through the deep green leaves of the surrounding forest. It’s been years since you’ve been here in Ayyan, in this Meridian kingdom, but you remember every step like it was yesterday. Mahin had been good to you and Vasilis: the queen had been so generous to you both, when all you had brought had been pursuers through her lands. And now here you are again, bringing pursuers through her lands.
(your former student is among them, leads them. You’d know her anywhere, even known her from a single glimpse when she’d strode onto the battlefield, face and body obscured by heavy black armor, known her from the way she held and swung her blade. Elaine, who you had taught when you were young and blind and arrogant, Elaine who wants a reckoning.)
There’s nothing to be done for it, of course, and you reach for your sharpening stone as you sit by the bedside of your daughter, watching her sleep. Elena is so much like Vasilis that it hurts, sometimes, to look at her: small and olive, gentle nature and healing staves, heart so in balance that she can touch the cursed necklace without it’s power warping her. Like her father, and you flex your left hand without thinking about it, the scars pulling taut: in this moment, you miss him so much that it aches.
(if this reckoning goes the way you know it will, you’ll see him again before the morning. You wonder if he’s forgiven you.)
“Mom?” Elena stirs, drowsily, but her eyes don’t open, fingers tangled in the silver chain of her necklace.
“Go back to sleep.” you tell her, continuing to sharpen your axe, metal blade scraping against the stone. A soothing sound, and it’s the only lullaby you’d ever given her: Vasilis had been the singer, not you. “When dawn comes, we’re marching.”
Elena had already fallen back to sleep, before you finished talking: she’s still young, still only a girl, though you’d been that old yourself when you’d left home to make your fortune. You’d tried your best to give her and Ilya a life that was more than this, more than simply running: Tried to give them the peace you had never known as a child. Sibiu had been peaceful, and you’d thought you could make a life for you and your children here. New name, running a small-time mercenary company: you’d known nothing but farming and how to fight, and you hadn’t been any good during your thirteen short years as a farmgirl. So sellsword work it was, small time, far below your skill and the woman you had once been, but it was the best life you could have given them: away from war, away from politics, away from pursuers. Until war and a lost princess had come to your doorstep, and now you’re all running again.
“I didn’t want this for you.” you say, though your daughter will only hear you in her dreams. “I wanted peace for you.”
Elena sleeps on: you stare at her for another moment, one last look of love, heft your axe over your shoulder and go.
***
Your steps are steady and careful, quiet in the dim light: the floor beneath your boots isn’t quite stable, and the building is crumbling from years of disuse. But it’ll do for a night’s shelter, a single night’s reprieve.
The old fort is quiet, but you are not the only one awake at this hour: you set Jasna and Yuria for night watch: Jasna to give her something more productive to do than drink and lose her temper, Yuria as the most quietly steady and reliable in your company. The two of them will balance each other well: Yuria can keep Jasna mostly sober and on task and stay calm through her insults.
(but you are their commander, and you know best how to avoid them as you leave.)
Despite your best efforts, you can’t avoid everyone: the scratch of a quill against parchment alerts you to your staff officer’s presence in the hallway that leads out to this fort’s back exit. Sene is still awake, his head bent over a book as he scribes the spells back into it, and a healing staff across his slender knees, imbuing magic back into both: you’ve never been any kind of sorcerer, but you’ve seen him do this often enough before.
“Commander,” Sene says, glancing up from what he’s doing: his scinwife mark stands out crimson against his pale forehead, wisps of dark hair obscuring it. Two more staves lie at his feet, and you recognize them belonging to Aulis and Elena: he’s been at work all night, and will be at work for hours more.
“I’m going out.” you tell him, and he inclines his head gracefully in acknowledgment, continuing to write. The quill trembles, almost imperceptibly, in delicate fingers, and you frown to yourself: he’s not taking care of himself again, not that he’s ever been good at that “I’ll be back before dawn. Get some sleep.”
You know he’s always been a light sleeper: up before dawn to meet with you about tactics and battle strategy, last to sleep at night, sitting hours up working on logistics, on the ledgers and supply lists. But in the scant nights since he returned from Valea Aurie, fleeing the army at his heels, he’s slept even less, even more fragile around the edges of his sharp tongue.
Suspicion blooms slow and bitter in the back of your mind, because you’re fairly certain that something terrible happened to him while fleeing the capital. You spent years as a general for Tirana, before you ran with Vasilis, and you remember the kind of atrocities you had to stop with first commands, and then the sharp edge of your blade. Even at your most arrogant, you never believed that you had the right to take what you wanted from those weaker than you: you’ve killed men and women for less, but the original sin of your homeland is weakness.
(You are not his mother, though you have tried, in your way, since Ilya brought him home, since he joined your company. You might have been his mother-in-law, in a future where you live longer than tonight. You can suspect all you want, but you will never be able to draw the truth from him: you are not Ilya, who he trusts alone.)
“Understood.” Sene says, impassive as always, as you walk away: you don’t know what or how far his glimpses into the future have shown him, and you’re not going to ask because it won’t make a difference. You’re going to die tonight: you’ve made your peace with the inevitable, but you don’t want to know what happens next.
“Keep my son out of trouble.” you turn back at the last, standing just inside the doorway: Sene meets your gaze, red eyes fixed on you, solemn in his too-young face.
“You don’t even have to ask.” he says, quietly, his voice a promise.
***
“Where are you going at this hour, Commander?” Ilya asks, falling in step with you as you walk up the hill: for now, the rain has stopped, moonlight filtering wanly through the clouds. He is your son, but there is a chain of command to follow, and he knows it: you hadn’t exactly ordered him to stay put, but you’d strongly suggested it. You knew you should have given him his turn at night watch early instead of just trusting that he’ll sleep.
“You should be asleep, boy. We move out at dawn tomorrow.” you tell him, roughly. “I thought I taught you to listen better than that.”
Slowly-broadening shoulders shrug beneath his cloak. “Couldn’t sleep and saw you leaving. Where are you going this time of night?”
“It’s nothing to do with you, boy. Go back and go to sleep.” you glare at him: he glares back.
“I’m not a child anymore., Mother.” Ilya says. “Unless you order me, I don’t have to go.”
Stubborn boy. There’s too much of you in him and almost nothing of his father: he even looks like you, ebony-dark and coarse, beaded braids, and someday he’ll be as tall and broad as you. Your image, only writ shorter for now and male, and the only thing he has of his father are his eyes, startlingly indigo and clear.
“Stubborn boy.” you grunt, after a moment, and cuff him upside the head. You have a lot you want to tell him, but not a lot of time. “Fine, then. Walk with me and talk. But when I tell you to go, you go back. Immediately.”
You don’t start walking until you see him nod, but he falls into step with you almost immediately. He’s only a few inches shorter than you, less than a head, so it’s not that hard for him to keep up: you’re listening intently as you walk, trying to hear any sign of Elaine and where she’d be waiting.
“There’s some other things I want to know, Mother. I just barely started working, and you put me in charge of a job. I’ve definitely gotten better with a sword, but I shouldn’t be responsible for anyone else.” Ilya protests, almost immediately.
“You’ll learn with experience.” you’d always intended him to be in charge of the company after you were gone: not that you’d planned for it to be this soon, but goddess knows the unexpected happens. You’ve lived by the sword since you were thirteen years old, when you cut your braids off and took up the blade to make your fortune when nothing would grow in the rocks and frost. Death has ridden with you as your constant companion, and you’re lucky that you lived this long. “It falls into place. Listen to Sene - he’s smarter than both of us. It’s what I pay him for.”
Ilya stares back at you, confused. “I don’t understand: you never would have done this before. Never. What’s wrong? Why are you in such a hurry?”
You can’t answer him for a long moment. You don’t know where to begin, because your choices have led you down a complicated road, paths all converging on this moment. Choices upon choices upon choices to try to preserve the world, and it’s all narrowed down to one. There’s only one question you can ask. “Do you remember your father, llya? Anything about him?” (Drip, drip, drip. White-hot roaring in your ears.)
Ilya frowns. “...Where did that come from, Mother?”
“Answer the question, Ilya.” you want to know what he remembers about Vasilis, your gentle, singing husband, keeper of a song and an artifact that together in the wrong hands, could destroy the world all over again. You want to know what he remembers about his father’s life and death, so you can set the remaining pieces together: how his father died, why he died, the darkness inside your heart you’d spent the rest of your life struggling to not give into again. The contract you’d taken out on your own life should you slip. There’d been only one assassin willing to take that job, but her reputation for getting things done was absolute.
After a moment, he shakes his head. “Gentle...kind, I think. I remember his smile...I remember him singing, around the edges. But I don’t remember much else about him, and you don’t really talk about him much, either.”
You frown: Ilya and Elena had been very young when you’d killed Vasilis, but you hadn’t expected him to remember so little. And you don’t have time to explain the whole story to him, not with a duel waiting for you. “I see.”
The soft sound of metal, a figure moving much too quietly in armor, catches your ear, and you stop dead in your tracks for a moment: a clearing is up ahead, and you’re fairly certain that Elaine is there, waiting. You turn to your son, and stare at him, intent.
“Mother? What’s wrong?” Ilya asks.
“We’re done. Leave me.” You tell him, roughly. Your son’s expression hardens from confused to stubborn.
“Just like that?” he challenges you, and you cuff him upside the head for emphasis. You need him to leave, now: you didn’t want your children to see you die, because you know too well the weight of revenge in a child’s heart.
“You heard me, Ilya. This is a direct order. Return immediately.”
Ilya’s features go quiet and still. “...Fine.” he says: he doesn’t understand. You know he doesn’t understand. But you need him safe more than you need him to understand, and you don’t take another step towards the clearing until you see him go, running back the way you’d both come.
The cloudy moonlight shines down as you shift your axe over your shoulder and go to meet the death that is waiting for you. Elaine is waiting in the forest clearing, wearing the same black armor you’d seen her in not too long before: the heavy plate shrouds her from head to toe, obscuring her appearance to the point where you can’t even tell her actual height and build. In the armor, Elaine looks tall and imposing, but it’s as much an illusion as her distorted voice is.
“Lady Guinevere,” Elaine says, lilting and cold from the depths of her black armor, and casts a familiar blade at your feet, two feet of goddess-blessed steel gleaming gold in the pale moonlight. Her black-gauntleted hand rests on the hilt of that sword’s silver twin, and you recognize the pair after a moment as the sun-and-moon blades from the beginning, the goddess-blessed swords of Ileana of the Seven Heroes.
(Your eyes narrow: what game is Elaine playing? Those swords were treasures of Ladithi, the holy theocracy. She stands a general at King Elouan’s side, had taken the place that you had forsaken, yet kneels before the Witness and her regent?)
“Take up your sword.” Her soft, distorted voice is cold but still somehow hopeful around the edges: your student, who has waited this long to fight you, longing to truly test your strength against yours.
(You flex your left hand, feel the scars tugging at your palm: you will never wield a sword again, crippled your sword arm for repentance. White cloak and white blade and a white horse: once, none could outfight or outride you in the land from where you came. But you are not that woman anymore, not the Lady Guinevere, the White Rider, the general at the right hand of a mad king.)
You flick your braids back over your shoulder, beads clacking, and kick the goddess-blessed blade aside, send it spinning into the mud. The weight of your axe in your right hand as you lift it is welcome and familiar, and Elaine is silent. You only hope that Ilya actually obeyed you and went back, but there’s nothing else to be done for it now.
“I am not that woman anymore. I need no other weapon but this axe,” your declaration is a roar of defiance as you leap forward, crescent blade of your axe arcing downward: Elaine’s sword rises to intercept your testing blow in a shower of sparks, steel clanging harshly against sacred silver. You strain against her - she’s gotten stronger over the years - before disengaging, sweeping your axe around for another blow. Elaine is fast, even in her heavy armor: unnaturally quick, even, and she’s improved in the years since you left her. The sounds of your blades clashing echoes loudly in the moonlight: an even match, and metal crashes against metal with boneshaking force.
(you haven’t fought a duel like this in years. Not one that pushes you to your limits. Once, this would not have lasted so long: once, you were the best swordsman in the world, peerless, named a goddess of battle by men who didn’t understand the truth behind your legend, but those days are over. You brought yourself down to merely mortal and Elaine has brought herself up-)
“Mom!?” Ilya yells from across the clearing: goddessdammit, why didn’t that boy listen? You don’t have time to spare for him, and you need to get him out of here. You’ve taught him the best that you could, but he isn’t a match for Elaine. Not by far.
“Boy, get out of here!” you yell as you barely sidestep another blow, your boots sliding across the muddy ground, and roll out of the way of another attack. You roll back up to your feet, fluidly, swinging your axe up as you move, though your bones ache: you’re not nearly as young as you were, back in your prime, two children and almost twenty years on. Elaine doesn’t seem bothered, despite the weight of her armor and weapon, but she never seemed to age anyway. She’d been a bird-boned slip of a girl the whole time you’d taught her, barely taller and only a little heavier than Sene, and you wouldn’t be surprised if she’s still the same, shrouded in the depths of her armor.
You parry one slash, Elaine’s moonlight blade sliding down the length of yours: a heartbeat later, she disengages, brings her sword low. Your reaction time is off, just a fraction of a second, but it’s just enough: her sword slides past your guard, you can’t dodge or parry, and then pain as she shoves the blade through you. Your blood is bright and coppery against the silver sheen and all your nerves are afire: you can’t see to check the wound, but you know without looking that this is a mortal wound.
(was this the way it had been for Vasilis, too, at the end, hanging limply on your sword? There was blood against your skin, drip, drip, drip, and white-hot noise roaring in your ears: your vision, your hearing, come filtering back slowly. There are bodies around your feet, all around, an entire village: Vasilis raises his head, weakly, and smiles at you, determined, steel on such a gentle face. The silver chain of the necklace hangs in his fingers, from where he yanked it away from you, and all it had taken was a moment’s touch for you to be overcome-
That night, you bury your husband and everyone else you killed. That night, you cut the tendons in your sword arm: you will never wield a sword again.)
“...was that all? Is this truly what became of you, teacher?” Elaine asks, sounding disappointed, as she pulls her sword free and lets you slump to the ground. You can’t see her expression or body language: her helm and armor conceal even her height and build, but you remember her, once upon a time. Your first daughter, not of blood, when you were too young and arrogant and stupid for the job.
“Mother. Mom.” your son’s voice is anguished: you hadn’t wanted him to see this. You hadn’t wanted him to see you die. You’d always expected to die on your feet fighting, not old and in your bed, because you’ve always lived by the sword, but you didn’t want your children to see you die like this. “Hang on,” Ilya’s face twists and metal rings on metal as he draws his sword and lunges at her: no, stupid boy, no, not your son, not your boy.
“You won’t hurt my son-” You can barely grip your axe and stumble to your feet, even as you’re bleeding out, but you have to try to protect him, somehow, but you can’t get there in time, can’t even stay on your feet.
Elaine raises her sword and knocks Ilya aside, the force of her blow knocking him to the other side of the clearing as easily as if she was swatting a fly, before turning her attention back to you. He’s bleeding, but not severely: Elaine is more than skilled enough to hold her hand, when she so chooses. “I have only one question more for you, teacher. Where is the necklace?”
(Your daughter, asleep in bed, her fingers wound around the chain: the only memento from her father, or so you told her. Your husband, smiling at you through iron blood, silver links hanging limply from his fingers.)
“I...threw the cursed thing away. Into the river, years ago. It’s in the sea by now.” you’ve never been much of a lying woman, but you’re not going to give Elaine the answers she seeks, nor send her crossing your daughter’s path. Of course your mad king had never forgotten about the damn thing.
Elaine laughs, chill and entirely without mirth. “You’re not even trying anymore, teacher. You wouldn’t throw it away, not when you know more than anyone alive its true nature. Where is it?”
You’re done talking to her, and you stare at her in stony silence. Ilya stumbles to his feet, and her attention focuses briefly on him: your heart runs chill, because you remember Elaine’s single-minded determination and the fact that the king she serves throws away that which is not useful to him: failed generals, his baby, his wife.
“Next time, I won’t hold my hand.” Elaine begins to threaten, begins to lift her blade, just as a distant song echoes closer, borne on the wind, words you can’t understand. It’s one of the songs of the Firstborn, a strange haunting melody, but you recognize the sweet yet strong voice of Mahin, the Meridian Queen of Ayyan, ancient daughter of the eldest of the Children of the Meridian. You would not have dared to go up against her even when you were still in your prime, still able to wield a sword - and Elaine might be willful and arrogant, but she’s not stupid. “...damn.” your former student mutters and turns to flee.
Ilya draws his sword again, tries to bar Elaine’s way. “You’re not going anywhere,” your son is brave but reckless, and angry: you know he can’t win, there is no way he can win.
“Leave her, boy. You can’t win.” your words come out harsher than you want, this once, and Ilya almost wavers.
“But-” he protests, just as Elaine knocks him aside with a precisely-driven slash of her sword, less gently this time, and blood blooms against the rough fabric of his tunic. She will kill him the next time, you know: Elaine’s mercy, such as it is, only goes so far, and you have no idea why she’s been so careful to leave him alive.
“Ilya!” your voice cracks, from pain and helpless worry. “Stop.”
Mahin’s singing, in the distance, grows louder, as it begins to rain again, soft drizzle at first. Her bell-like soprano voice is joined by a young man’s clear, bright tenor, less powerful, less resonant. Age meant truly nothing to the Firstborn, who lived and died outside human constraints, but he was less powerful than the queen: an aide, perhaps?
“...too close.” Elaine’s cool voice betrays a hint of nervousness, such a small hint, the only reason you even can tell is how long you’d known her.. “The next time we meet, boy, I won’t be so merciful.”
Elaine pauses, to look back at you: you cannot see her expression, shrouded by the black helm, but she looks at you, silent, for longer than a moment, before she sheathes her sword and is gone.
“...I made her that way,” you close your eyes for a moment, exhale out, remember a shy, pretty girl with almond dark-moon eyes, ivory skin, and long black hair, staring up at you with wonder and awe. White skirts and shaking slender hands, so small in yours. You remember a paper-fragile girl that you’d forged into steel, and then what? “Willful...arrogant. It was all me.”
“Mom,” Ilya says, his voice shaky, as he kneels down beside you: he’s hurt, but Elaine had known what she’d been doing. The wound will leave a scar, but it won’t kill him, as long as he can get it looked at soon. But you? You’re dying. Everything is fading, in and out, silence and light and the steady sound of rain. “Don’t waste your strength.”
“Listen to me, Ilya.” you tell him, your voice quiet: it’s so hard to talk, but you have to tell him. It’s all you can do, now, to protect your children. “Forget about revenge: don’t go near that woman. And I need you to take care of everything now.”
You want to tell Ilya to stay in Ayyan, to marry Sene, to live in peace among the deep green solitude: but it’s so hard to talk, through the blood, and everything fading. You know he won’t, he can’t, he’s too much like you - too stubborn, too headstrong -but you want him and Elena to be safe. But you can’t protect them anymore.
“Don’t talk like that, Mom.” Ilya says, hefting you over his back, your body draped over his shoulders: he’s so warm, and you are so very cold, cold like you haven’t been since the day you left Tirana, left your frozen homeland and your cold and empty heart. He sounds choked, as if he’s in denial, as if he’s trying to hold back tears. “Hold on a little longer, okay? I’ll get you back to Sene, he can heal you. Just stay a little longer. A little longer.”
(you close your eyes, let the sound of his voice wash over you as he carries you back, everything beginning to fade to silence. You’re so proud of him, your boy, so very proud, and you regret that you will not be there to see the kind of man he will become.)