troubled waters
i.
It is fifteen days past Emily Kaldwin's tenth birthday when they ship her to the Golden Cat. She is a parcel bound in rough, thick fabric which chokes her breath and paints rashes along her forearms. At first, she kicks and screams and twists against her faceless courier - a growl tells her to shut it, girl; when she doesn't, a needle pierces her skin and closes her eyes. As her limbs numb, Emily's head is filled with the sound of waves breaking against rocks.
ii.
The bread they give her is dry and stale; the bruised fruit falls apart in her water tastes of chemicals, but the dose of bloody red elixer leaves as bitter a taste as it always has.
On the third night, she finds the VIP door, and the corridor that leads to freedom. She has just touched the handle when Madame Prudence's bony fingers wrap round her wrist; it feels as though she will break it in dragging Emily upstairs. Next time I'll throw you to the rats, she snaps, eyes burning. They'll strip the skin off your bones and leave you weeping blood.
Emily is left to the dormitaries after that. The door is locked with a heavy clunk, and - though she does not know this - the bruises that bloom on Emily's arm are the shade of the flowers on her mother's grave.
iii.
If Emily stands on the bed and perches on her toes, the window ledge allows her only a glimpse out of the tiny window. It's too high. All she can ever see is the sky.
iv.
On the fifth night, as the wind battering the walls tries to mask the sound of crying from the next room, Emily lies on her stomach and slides under the ancient metal bedframe to feel along the floor for grates or latches or loose boards. Instead, she is met with cracked leather, and pulls it to herself. Emily's fingertips tremble as they brush over polished whalebone. She has heard about these: words resting like forbidden sweets in children's mouths, but it does not sing so much as whispers and hisses and breathes.
The air around the rune is thick; Emily does not know whether to hold it closer, or smash the tiny window in giving it to the river. In the end, she slips it under her pillow. Perhaps it will bring her luck; after all, she tells herself, how can it make things any worse?
v.
When she wakes, Emily's mouth is dry as the cold air around is a hole in the world: a swirling blue pit that time cannot touch; where Overseers quake and men hold no power. It is emptiness and not-quite death and the feeling of a hand on your arm when you are alone and about to fall asleep. Emily has fallen straight into it.
"The Void," this man calls it. His eyes are bottomless pools, and she is afraid that when he opens his mouth, his teeth will be pointed.
There are islands around her, jagged and floating. On one she can see Corvo: his face is twisted; someone is holding a red-tipped rod to his hand. Hesitantly, she asks if he is alive. She cannot mask the hope in her voice.
"For now." The indifference in the man's tone sets chills down her small frame. "There is a group of men trying to find you, Emily. In the fate I see, Corvo will die helping them."
When she asks if he can change it, she is told it is not his concern. Emily is about to protest, but she blinks - and when her eyes open again she is back in the tiny room with the high window and silver moonlight spilling onto the thin blankets.
vi.
The next morning is spent shoving the rusting bed against the window wall, until Emily can just balance on the bars of the headboard and stare down at the Wrenhaven. She swallows; raises her right hand and draws it back - ready to let the river carry the carved bone monstrosity to some other land, to some other person.
The rune thuds against the floor, but does not break, as Emily's thin arm falls to her side. Floating down the Wrenhaven, dressed in ripped red-stained clothes, is the body of a young woman.
Emily's legs shake as she sits on the mattress; before the end of the day, she hides the rune between it and the bedframe. Corvo will not save her. The dark-eyed man will not save him. When they bring her stale bread and half-rotten fruit and tainted water, Emily grits her teeth and vows she will escape before she joins all the courtesans whom the currents have taken far away from Dunwall.
vii.
Blink, he calls it. And that's it– just like closing her eyes. She is there, and then she is not. Her heart drops to her stomach the first time (and indeed many times after) – there is a split-second of weightlessness, the ground disappearing from underneath her feet and reasserting itself just as quickly. Instantly.
It's difficult, at first - focusing all her energy to one point and then... releasing. It's like exercising a muscle you never knew existed, grasping at something that isn't quite there.
After a couple of weeks, she can do it without thinking.
viii.
She is running, laughing, leaping and blinking from one island to the next. In her mind's eye, it is summer: Mother and Corvo stand talking, smiling; the grass spiky against her bare feet, sweet cool air dancing around her, and glorious gold sunshine soaking into her bones.
There is no grass here, no breeze, no sun – but she is free and she is powerful. Nothing can hurt her. Reaching the end of an isle, she jumps, blinks. Not Madame, not the Pendletons, not Hiram Bur—the ground is gone. She focused and released and blinked but the familiar ragged stone does not rush to meet her feet - the rug has been ripped away but there is no floor underneath – there is no anything – she misjudged and missed, she is short just ever-so-slightly and it's a fraction of a second too long before she realises. Into the Void, Emily falls.
ix.
As fast as she fell, there is a hand around her wrist: cold and dry and bony. Lightless loveless black eyes stare back at her and she is suspended for an eternity – a puppet on a string which could at any second snap. His grip is not as tight as Madame Prudence's on that fateful night and oh she wishes it were – it is far too slack, too casual, too easy for her to be discarded and fed to the vast roaring emptiness below. He blinks.
She is back on an island, on her knees, shaking so badly she cannot stand.
"Be careful." His voice is like feathers, like sand, like ashes. Emily expects him to continue, but he says no more. He is gone.
Throat burning, Emily wails. She cries until there are no tears left in her: for her Mother, and for Corvo, and for the hell she escapes from each night only to be delivered into the mouth of another.
She will not fall again.
x.
It's Fugue Feast. And her birthday. And every other fantastic day of her life rolled into one. For lying under her pillow, gleaming like a wolf's tooth, is the best present she's ever received. It's her salvation. It's the key to the VIP door.
It's easier than she'd expected. She'd planned out a thousand times a way of getting out: she'd hit the girl who brought the food over the head, run out the door, steal the key from Madame Prudence's office (but what if she was there?). She'd open one of the hatches and clamber up onto the roof (falling, falling, her shattered bones fed to the hounds). She'd bribe one of the guards to set her free (crooked yellow teeth revealed by a smirk, But what have you to offer me, little girl?).
xi.
Rule Number 1 - You cannot pass through walls or doors.
It's a bowl that Emily smashes over the girl's head when she brings her breakfast. There is a thud as she hits the floor, and the blood trickling from her nose suggests she won't be getting up again. Emily regrets it only when she realises she could have blinked behind her once she'd opened the door.
Rule Number 2 - This is not a gift.
Gifts are costless kindness, uncomplicated and clean. This is a ball of string in itself; a set of looping conditions neatly coiled into a bunch. She's an experiment; a thing to be toyed with until she is cracked and ruined. It's a fair term, Emily decides. If it got her out of here, it's good enough.
Rule Number 3 - If you overreach, you will fall.
The old lady she meets at the end of the tunnel is kind. She gives the girl bread and blood sausage and lights a fire to keep the weepers away. She knows the black-eyed man, too, and holds the same mark as is etched onto the back of Emily's hand. I'll teach you to talk to the birdies, she says, and Emily listens.