Of swans and peppermint

[Thadius Dhrin]

The silence of the grave accompanied the cloaked figure. The whisper of silks beneath roughspun could almost be mistaken for the gentle voices of spirits. The patched cloak billowed on the winds of change as the figure entered the inn, wisping up the stairs as unoticed as any other strange traveler seeking shelter for the night.

It paused for only a moment before the door of one Ariane Carnath-Emory. Dropping a pale blue piece of parchment, painstakingly folded into the shape of a graceful swan.

Within the intricate folds lay a message for the once one-eyed warrior woman.

Nightingale,

Nearly two moons have passed since you plucked me from the very fingers of death. For this, you have my gratitude. Though one might question this, considering it was you who placed me there to begin with. No matter.

Never once did you come looking. I was surprised. I suppose I should not have been. It would not do for your friends and commrades to know you for the traitor you are.

I trust that my gift to you has not gone unnoticed. And I do hope that you have taken great care of yourself in my abscence. I have trusted you with something very important, Ariane. Take good care of my son.

Thadius.

The note was penned in the same elegant hand that she had known from before the accident which took his finger. Long had he practiced to regain that control. One could almost picture the smiling young faces of the children of Myrken who had benefitted from the careful instruction of Master Dhrin. Learning letters and numbers, and cryptic messages of....Him.

[Carnath-Emory]

At some point during these last months, Ariane Emory had sunken into the subtle trap of which Kerrak had so often warned her.

This time, at least, there was no liquor to blame, no excess of wine to muddle her thoughts; weeks spent without direction, a month endured without purpose, had been sufficient to accomplish that. That her vision suffered had been a convenient excuse and little more, serving to sequester her away from sister and friends and foes alike. A space had been found for her use at the Meetinghouse, large and empty and secluded enough that she could while away her days in practice, disturbing nothing more than the clouds of dust that flew with each step taken upon those old floors. During these hours, at least, she was of some use. But always they would come to an end, and she would haunt the Meetinghouse halls by dusk, a slim and monochrome figure that spoke little, ate less, and would eventually find its way to the governor's rooms.

Month after month had passed like this. Day after day, each melting indistinguishably into the next. There was some small pride to be found in the strengthening of her limbs, the certainty of her aim. There was a curious pleasure in the transition from homespun blankets to velvet quilts, in surviving the breathless havoc of another night. But this was not the sort of conflict to which life had accustomed her. There were no genuine threats here, there was no need for a weapon, for a Guard, for the sword that the years had made of her.

Sometimes, on the very worst nights, she would dream of such needs. Sometimes, on waking, she was fool enough to imagine that she missed them.

It was this curious absence, this ill-defined longing, which had finally drawn her back to the tavern. She had walked its worn floorboards as if they were foreign land, strange and exotic; she had turned a wary eye to the shadowed corners, that being habit and not hope. Surely not hope. Had eagerly climbed into the attic which had once been her home, only to mourn her sister's absence from it; had inspected the kitchens for sign of Cy Proxenus and found none. Had eventually returned to her own room with wine and bread and memory for company -- and care, on sighting what awaited her there, to not drop the meal upon her own booted feet.

It was not necessary to read that first word, although her eyes knew its shape well-enough -- nor to spend much time examining the elegant arcs and curves of that scripting, the contours of words that flowed like tainted gold across the parchment. After all, only one man in all of Amasynia would make such art of his parchment (and they had danced in his eyes once, paper swans with tattered wings that bobbed and swayed on a malachite sea); only the touch of Thadius Dhrin could forge beauty from poison. With windows shuttered and her door barred, she picked over the words by dim candlelight -- and a keen, thin pain lanced slowly through her gut, as the breath stilled in her lungs.

For over these last months, Thadius Dhrin had told her a great many things, each rivalling the next with its poison. But in all those words, in all those promises, threats, condemnations, there had been not a single falsehood.