A/N Thanks to Sweet Sassy Sarah, first off, for reading and editing for me. You save my life, every time. This story was written for the challenges over at Tamora Pierce Experiment: Writing Challenges. The September challenge was to write a story that led up to a given ending line, and this is what I ended up with. The idea of this comes from a couple different sources, most of which I am ambivilant about (the quote I used here, for example, can be taken as I use it here, or Sabine being tetchy about her rank, or about something with her relationship with Tunstall or being a lady knight, etc, etc, etc), but I decided to go with this, mostly because I liked it. Plus it gave me one of the story's themes, and the title. :P This story is actually the story I was going with when I wrote Rosto's chapter in Hidden Darkness, my drabble series, so if you have read that, it may actually make sense now.
Please check out the TPE forum. You can find it here: forum (dot) fanfiction (dot) net/forum/The_Tamora_Pierce_Experiment_Writing_Challenges/70302
"He's cleverer than most Rats, I'll give him that," Goodwin said. "Rumour is that Rosto's family was nobility in Scanra."
Tunstall snorted. "Merchant, mayhap. The nobility wouldn't let one of their own sink so low."
Lady Sabine only pursed her mouth and said naught.
-Bloodhound. Page 132.
Rosto scowled at his brother, wiping the dust and sweat from his face. It had been his second face-plant into the yard's dirt. This was a fact that Aspbjorn seemed to find very funny, judging from the smirk on his face.
"Come on, little brother," Asp called, waving his sword. "You're supposed to be the son of a lord, and you cannot even wield a blade?"
"You're half a head taller and have a longer reach, Asp," Astra yelled from the ledge where she was perched to watch her brothers. She was Asp's twin, and at thirteen had duties that called her away from her brothers' practice in the yard, but it wasn't often one twin was where the other was not. "Come on, Rosto!" she called, waving her arms. "You can do it!"
No, I can't, Rosto thought. He held his practice sword up, regardless. He wouldn't be allowed to cut practice short if he lost a limb; telling his father that he just wasn't made for fighting with a blade would only get him punished.
"We'll practice the third, again," Asp said. "Block to the left."
Asp leapt forward and Rosto waved his blade in front of his face wildly, backing up so quickly that he fell on his rear, having tripped over his own feet. Astra covered her face with her hands.
Rosto was in the room he shared with his two younger brothers, alone. His father had been told about the disastrous practice and had forbidden him from sitting at the table.
"How can I present my son to my neighbouring lords when I know he cannot even hold a blade and stay on his feet at the same time? In front of this neighbouring lord I am set to treaty with? I would be shamed. You can stay away from my table until you have the honour I need in a son of eleven years."
Rosto laid on his back in bed, listening to the sounds of the horses arriving in the courtyard below his waxed and shuttered window.
What about all the things I can do, Father? I'm the one who knows the answers to the battle questions, not Asp and not even Johan, and he's the oldest. I am the fastest, when I don't have a sword in my hand to mess everything up. I can play the pipe like none of the others can. What about all of that?
Rosto fell asleep trying to convince the father that would never listen to be proud of him.
Asp was standing behind him. "You have to tie this cloth around your face, little brother," he said. "The only way you can learn to fight is if you cannot see the blade."
But that doesn't make sense, Rosto tried to say, but the cloth was already over his mouth and he couldn't catch enough air to get the words to come out. He tried again, and the cloth seemed to float into his mouth, making him cough...
Rosto woke up coughing. He was laying on his bed in the dark. The air was wrong...
Rosto tried to get off his bed, but stumbled in the dark, and ended up lying on the ground. He found it easier to breathe once he was on the floor, and began to truly wake up. The reason he couldn't breathe was because there was smoke in the air. Something was on fire.
There had been a kitchen fire one year when Rosto was six, and Rosto could still remember what he was supposed to do. Crawl to the door, his mother had told him. Get down the stairs and out through the courtyard. Don't go through the dining room, you'll go closer to the kitchen that way, and the fire will be in the kitchen...
His mother hadn't come and got him this time, but Rosto crawled to the door as he had been taught. He had his eyes squeezed shut against the smoke, and was crawling on one hand to keep his mouth covered against the smoke. After crawling down the steep set of wooden stairs, Rosto was in the long hall that led to the dining room on one side and the courtyard on the other.
Just wanting out, to find his family, Rosto stood and ran the length of the hall. As he ran into the courtyard, he noticed first that the gates had been left open. They were creaking open and slamming shut in the wind. The second thing he noticed, his eyes still streaming, was that his family was not there, waiting for him.
They can't all be putting out the fire, Rosto thought. Perhaps his father and brothers, and his uncles and male cousins — who had been visiting for the feast with the new neighbouring lord. But his mother and his sisters and all of his younger siblings should be here waiting—
Rosto tripped over something he hadn't seen in the darkness and through his tear-filled gaze. He hit his head hard off something metal on the ground, breaking the skin over his left eye. Pushing himself up, he looked at his hands first. They were covered in mud. Something wet was all over the dust in the courtyard. Kneeling to wipe his hands on his breeches, Rosto touched his forehead gingerly. His left eyebrow was cut open and blood mingled with the mud on his hands; the exact same colour. Looking down, Rosto saw that he had hit his face off the hilt of his brother's sword.
What was it doing out here? Turning to look at what tripped him, Rosto found himself staring at the body of his brother. Asp stared at him, eyes wide. A few feet to the side, Astra lay on her back, her pale dress covered in a dark stain.
Rosto stood slowly, as if sudden movements would wake them. He looked around. The fresh air had cleared his eyes as they adjusted to the darkness. His mother and father, his uncles, his brothers and sisters surrounded him, silent, broken.
Rosto went to each of them, trying to shake them awake, knowing that he was being stupid, but he couldn't be alone, he couldn't...
His sister Petra had had hair the colour of snow, even at three years old. She was lying beside his mother and her hair was red from the blood and Rosto couldn't keep going.
"Ros..." Rosto nearly screamed when he heard the voice, but he made himself stand and walk over to the body. His father had been a big, loud man in life. He had lost none of his size from earlier in the evening, but he looked, somehow, like a child to Rosto as he lay near the gate, his hands clenched over his middle.
"Rosto, you need... run. Betrayed by... new lord... Kill you, too. Run to capital. Your sister... married in... court." His father reached up and grabbed Rosto's hand too tightly. "Not the little... ones... Please..."
Rosto stared at him for a long time, praying to the gods that he would open his eyes again. It was the last time he would pray to any of them in a long, long time.
Someone in the attacker's party had taken his father's sword and he couldn't face walking back through the crowded courtyard, through the bodies of his dead to fetch one of his brothers'. Instead, Rosto took the knives from his father's sheaths with hands dyed red with his family's blood. He tucked the knives into his belt before running from the still-burning castle.
Rosto had never been to the city before and he had thought it would be as simple as asking to find his sister's home. He hadn't known there would be more than one Gjertrud living in the same city. In his mind, 'city' had been a few families living in the same area, or perhaps one big family living in small houses, instead of all together.
After the week's journey, he was ragged and bone-thin. His forehead, where he had hit his face off Asp's sword when he fell over his brother's body, had scarred. With his father's knives tucked in his leather belt that nearly wrapped his waist twice, he looked like any of the rough orphans running the street. Even if someone he asked had known where his sister lived, no one would speak to him long enough to answer.
Three weeks had passed since he had found his way to the capital and he was on all fours in an alley. He had fought off thieves trying to take the meal he had scavenged, but it had taken pulling his knife and taking a swipe to get them to back off. The sight of blood as the other boy fell back clutching his arm had caused Rosto to find this secret corner to retch. He had nothing in his stomach to throw up.
After he had finished, he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and ate the food he had stolen.
He read the flyer and followed the directions to the courtyard. He was only fourteen years old, and looked younger, but the merchant's courtyard was almost empty so they trusted him and the knives at his belt.
It didn't last. He punched out his employer's head-guard the first time the man forced a sword into his hand, and was on the street with new bruises. It was easier to pick pockets than try to find work in a dead city, especially with the long winters closing off trade almost completely. He stole a case from a distracted foreigner and almost threw it in the sluggish river when he saw the pipes. Something held him back, and he was soon playing on street corners. On good days, the coins tossed his way would buy meals for a week. Rosto lived two years on what he found in other people's pockets and huddled in alleyways, trying not to freeze to death.
At the beginning of a rough winter, Rosto realized that he would die, and soon, if he tried to survive on the street, and he went back to hiring himself out as a mercenary guard. He had managed to keep this job for three weeks, a personal best. Mostly it was because the merchant who hired him already had a team he trusted, so Rosto wasn't expected to do more than look mean when their caravan passed other travellers on the road. .
A mercenary girl, three years younger than Rosto and whip-lean, leaned against the wagon beside him. The sword on her belt was ragged, but he had seen her wield it – when he had been unable to avoid watching a sword practice in the early morning – and he knew not one of the other guards matched her skill.
He had also discovered, in the four years on the street, that a smile and a wink could get him into places even stealth couldn't, and he used this talent. "What is someone as beautiful as you doing wasted on a back-woods frozen caravan?" he asked, grinning.
She grinned back and shrugged. "You've got a better offer?"
Rosto looked out into the frozen landscape and pretended to consider. "Well, we could run into the wilds and freeze to death. Or we could get to the city and starve to death there."
"Hmm. Tempting."
"I know how to show a girl a good time."
The swordswoman looked him up and down lazily. "I'm sure you do."
Rosto grinned and held out a hand. "I'm Rosto the Piper."
"The Piper?" she asked with a grin. "My name is Aniki Forfrysning."
When he was fired from the caravan for filching his and Aniki's unpaid wages, Aniki followed him back to the city. She was tired of the merchant's groping, she said. There were other jobs to be had.
The problem was that there were never jobs to be had, not in Scanra, where trade was a legend and nothing grew but rocks. Rosto brought out his pipes and taught Aniki a few easy tunes. He played better, but he picked pockets better, too. More people would stop for pretty Aniki long enough for him to take their earnings from their belts while they listened.
Rosto had never actively avoided the Rogue's attention in his years on the street, but two were more difficult to hide than one. They found themselves in front of the Rogue, offered a choice. Serve as rushers or take a swim in the river.
It was February. The Rogue assured them that his rushers would take care of the ice. They would also make sure Rosto and Aniki's heads stayed under.
Rosto and Aniki accepted their new positions with smiles.
"And what will we do if we leave here? Go back to the caravans? They may keep even you, Rosto, with a mage tagging along."
"I'm not enough to get anyone honest to keep our Rosto. Unless they have some animals they need healed or some laundry to wash."
"Don't be too hard on yourself, love," Rosto said, smiling at Kora. "You're mage enough for me."
Aniki rolled her eyes and returned to her point. "If we leave the Court and don't go back to being mercenaries, where do we go? There are only so many ways people like us can live in Scanra."
"Then we leave Scanra," Rosto said, lazily. "Find a new court to take up with. Maybe get some actual promotions rather than the leavings like we're left here."
The room was silent as they all thought about this new idea.
"Where would we go?" Kora asked, testing it out.
"South," Rosto and Aniki answered together, immediately. They smiled at each other.
"A big court where we won't be the suspicious new-comers," Rosto said. "Somewhere where the rogue is weak, where new blood is just what they need."
They were two weeks over the Scanran border when they heard their first tale of Kayfer, sitting around a shared fire with traveling horse-thieves. The three of them shared grins that reflected red firelight.
It turned out just as we planned it to, Rosto thought, looking out over the rainy streets of Corus. Quicker and more seamlessly than they had ever imagined, they had been accepted into the court. It had been the work of mere weeks for him to have his people in place, for Kora and Aniki to have the support he needed. A work of a few moments to kill the old Rogue, though he had a new scar for his troubles.
He brushed a finger over the line on his cheek. It was a reminder of his success; the price he had paid for what he had sought.
He had thought the victory would be sweeter, somehow.
His feelings of discontent had nothing to do with the blue-grey eyes that saw into his core and woke the old feelings he thought he had buried in a cold courtyard, he told himself, knowing it was a lie.
He had not been Erik's son in years, had left that boy behind him long ago, but somehow all his ghosts returned to haunt him when he looked in Beka's eyes and all he wanted to do was turn away.
Wasn't it enough that his dreams were haunted by fire and moonlight and bloody hands? Did he have to return to the memories during the day as well? All he wanted to do was forget. It couldn't be too much to ask.
But he kept going back. He couldn't leave her. She had gotten under his skin, somehow, with her fierce dedication to the people no one protected and the way she wouldn't let go of what was right and, yes, even the way she looked at him with her ghost eyes and seemed to see straight to that cold place inside him where his family lurked.
Perhaps if he said something. He had heard the stories; the whole of the Lower City talked in hushed voices about their Terrier, about how she put the ghosts of the pasts to rest. If anyone could save Rosto from himself, it would be Beka.
But that would mean talking about it, and something froze inside him at the thought. Not even Aniki and Kora knew the truth. After so many years of this silence, it had become a real thing – a wall of ice cutting him off from the rest of the world.
He found that he had taken his fingers from the new scar on his cheek. Instead, he brushed his fingertips back and forth across his left eyebrow, across the only scar he had from the night his family was slain.
He shook himself.
"It doesn't matter," he said. "It's all in the past."
He turned from the window and walked out into the hallway, away from his view of Beka's building and away from the reflection that haunted him.
He could forget all of this, if he tried hard enough.
It was, after all, just a scar.