City of Misfortune
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Or, The Hastily Edited Travelogues of a Malcontent Diplomat.
Alternately, A Lone Warrior's Quest for Revenge and Good Company In A Cold World.
Being a tale of love, death, vengeance, and completion, in a world that's just been saved and still doesn't have the decency to act grateful about it.
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Wink had been steeling herself for this all morning, and while she was not in the least inclined to drink, she was still thinking back to the bottle of cooking sherry tucked behind the sugar canister in the kitchen and wishing that she'd poured it down her throat.
Being drunk for this meeting might not exactly help, but she'd heard from Luanna who'd heard from Miranda (who, she had on very good authority, was not at all familiar with the devil's brew and merely suffered from the occasional morning migraine) that teetering on the thin line between Tipsy and Very Drunk could often lead to sudden miracles of thought processes and negotiation.
Wink had settled for very strong coffee instead, which hadn't made her into a suave tactician by any means, but had merely made her much more wide awake, and more prone to sudden whiplash than her former self.
She had her back to the door and her increasingly sweaty hands tightly clenched before her when the footman stuck his head through and announced that all concerned had arrived, and would she please step in. The resulting attempt to jump out of her skin nearly broke a lamp.
The footman was very understanding, and also had reflexes like a cat, for he was belly-down on the carpet and catching it before it had a chance to chip a corner, and he was nice enough to pat her on the back once he had set it back on its pedestal. He even offered her a nip of his hipflask after a glance around or two, but sheer iron will kept Wink from snatching it out of his kid gloves and inhaling it. Instead, she smiled weakly and gave a curt shake of her head.
"It'll be fine, pet," he said gruffly, taking his mostly decorative pike in hand once more. He was one of the newer footmen who'd come in after the disaster, and while Luanna thought that he didn't have quite the correct attitude for a servant, Wink liked him well enough. She was so glad for the comfort that she was about to swear undying love for him right then and there, but she settled for flashing a quick, scattered smile as she clawed her bangs back into place and ducked through the door.
Her back went ramrod straight as she crossed the room, and her hands stopped fussing with her hair and snapped down to her sides almost as soon as her foot touched the carpet. She assumed a professional, vaguely pleasant expression as she reached the chair facing the throne, ducked a perfunctory curtsey, and sat down, heels crossed beneath her, hands folded neatly in her lap, chin raised and her eyes locked with a warmly maternal grey gaze
Theresa smiled, genuinely, and leaned forward in her throne, "Wink, it is so good to see you."
Wink's cool, businesslike demeanor cracked like cheap crystal, and she smiled despite herself. "Thank you, your majesty," she said.
"Setie said that you had left your bed weeks ago, and were taking up your work again," said Theresa. "You must have been terribly busy ever since, we've barely seen you."
It was to Theresa's credit that she was the only one besides herself that could give Wink even the mildest stab of guilt, but she didn't begrudge her for it. They were family. Admittedly, they were a strange family, with one cripple, one crybaby, one screaming fishwife, Wink, and a mother figure who wore state robes day in and day out, and who they had to call by her full title whenever they were in public. But Theresa did love them, even if affairs of state oftentimes kept their relationship professional at best, and she was, in many ways, still Wink's mother.
"But never mind me," said Theresa with one of her smiles, and it made Wink relax a little. "We have business to attend to, or so my secretary tells me," she finished, leaning forward in expectation.
Oh God, thought Wink. She's going to wink. I know it. And she's going to be very bad at it, and it will be horribly adorable and I am going to start laughing and never stop.
But thankfully, Theresa settled for sitting straighter in her chair and giving her full attention to Wink.
Wink cleared her throat, and reached down to the satchel she'd brought with her specifically for this presentation, and as she pulled out scroll after scroll, a servant appeared at her elbow to take them up to the Queen. Theresa pulled a pair of spectacles out of her sleeve as they came to her, and Wink felt a twinge as she saw yet another aspect of her Queen that had changed. She'd never needed reading glasses before.
"These are…. scouting reports," said the Queen at last. "And estimates from local businessmen, yes I recognize this name."
"Coleridge," said Wink. "And Wellspring. They both agreed to finance the project if we agree to a few small tariff details in the next Summit."
"They're bribing you? I can hardly condone that, much less decide how the Summit will sway for them," said Theresa darkly. "And what project? I can't make head nor tails of this." She handed the scrolls back to the page and removed her glasses.
"I was getting to that, my lady," said Wink as she pulled out her notes. They crinkled just a little in her hands as she sucked in a deep breath, then began. "I've had detailed reports of the area surrounding the former village of Neet for the past six months. The incident with the dragon, and my journey to the South delayed my findings, but I've had ample time in the last few weeks to devise a budget, and make several contacts. I have several companies interested in having a hand in the operation, and I have it on very good opinion that many of the refugees from the attacks on both Mille Seseau and the southern sovereignties would be interested in moving north to help in the rebuilding efforts."
"Rebuilding efforts," said the Queen. "Surely you don't mean to-"
"And why not?" said Wink, charging forward with everything she had. It was entirely too late to turn back now, so she concentrated on sounding as confident as she could. "Neet used to be the most financially successful logging enterprise in the entire country, not to mention the fur and fish that came out of the land surrounding the lake. It's been eighteen years since the disaster, and it was a mistake for the Court then to decide to abandon the land."
The Queen stiffened, and Wink realized with horrible clarity that she'd just interrupted royalty and called it on a mistake, and decided that in her next life she would be reborn as an oyster in the deepest tide bed available so as to never risk it happening again.
She tried a different tact. "The Black Monster is dead," she said quietly. "Miranda confirmed as much. And even if It weren't, there's no risk for the Moon Child returning. We can't let that much land and wealth go to waste when we're strapped for resources as it is, and the construction would revitalize the economy in unbelievable ways."
Jobs! shouted an earnestly unhelpful corner of Wink's mind. Fish! Lumber! Burly construction workers ready to stimulate the economy! I HAVE CHARTS!
"And who is heading this operation?" said Theresa, slipping into her royalty voice once more, the voice of a woman who had reigned Mille Seseau for over thirty years and was not in the least inclined to give freely. "Everyone suitable has their hands tied already rebuilding the city, I haven't anyone to spare."
Wink ignored the surprising amount of bile that rose at her words, and swallowed. Looked down at her hands for a second, and smoothed her notes.
"I will be," she said, looking up, her voice crisp. "I can leave within the month."
Silence fell in a curtain of shocked pin-drops.
"Oh, Wink," breathed Theresa, her face a wellspring of heartbroken concern, and every trace of Queenliness melted from her. "I had no idea you were so unhappy."
Wink's notes tore.
0.-0.-0
The spells that they had used to stop the bleeding and keep her upright wore out a half-mile from the battered gates of Deningrad, and Wink collapsed right in front of Theresa and the guardsmen like a sack of hammers.
She didn't remember the rest of the journey. She only remembered pausing for breath at the crest of a hill, the wad of bandages at her back feeling suddenly hot and wet, the wound throbbing. The captain of the guard had turned to say something to her, but even though he was only a short distance away from her, it sounded as if he were much farther. And then the world became wrapped in cotton and snow and her muscles stopped working. Theresa cried out something, a ragged, Oh Soa, catch her! but it didn't matter.
She had dreams, terrible shifting quicksand dreams, where she was clinging to Mr. Lloyd's armor and the coldness of it burned her, but she still hung on with all her might as blue-eyed wolves with teeth like swords ripped at her back. Mr. Lloyd's mouth would move, and she'd strain to hear it, but then a wave of pain would rise up and wrench her frozen fingers away from him.
They told her later that she'd nearly died, that the combination of fatigue, blood-loss, and infection had almost swept her away.
While she was recuperating in her bedroom while the re-construction of the castle carried on around her, Setie and Luanna kept her company, bringing her blankets and hot soup and books on Wingly mythology, just as they had when she was sick as a kid. Setie laughed at her, and said that Wink had talked in her sleep.
"Wink's in lo-o-o-ve," she giggled. Wink, who had never been in love, who had only ever had a mild crush on a castle clerk that had later been thrown in prison for misappropriating funds from the treasury, blushed up to the roots of her hair. Luanna only smiled mysteriously.
"Her heart feels very interesting right now," was the only thing that she would say.
Wink wouldn't dignify either of them with a response, and buried her head in her book and said loudly that she could feel another fainting spell coming on, so if they wouldn't MIND leaving her to nap, she'd be very grateful.
They heard nothing from Miranda, or the other Dragoons for several weeks.
Repairs on the city and the Crystal Palace consumed her time for many days. The palace had been mutilated in the dragon attack, and repairing it meant that new raw crystal would have to be unearthed from the surrounding mountains. The expenses were enormous, and it was between checking them and organizing the work crews and materials that occupied much of her attention. Her sisters were upset at the responsibilities that Wink was taking on, but she reassured them that she could perform at least some of these tasks from her bed. Theresa gave her approval, and the others reluctantly backed down. It did not Do to go against the Queen.
Still, Setie would always appear at random moments to fluff her pillows and pour her fresh tea and cluck disapprovingly at the mound of paperwork by Wink's bedside. Wink bore it gracefully, but she knew that she had to be doing something while she was regaining her strength- it was either that or go mad. And not the exciting kind of mad where you kill people with an axe. The kind of mad where you sit all day in a dark room with tea-tongs in your ears, wibbling fearfully at the patterns on the carpet. Organizing the number of workers to be assigned to the merchant's quarter kept her thinking of the outside world, and not about Mr….
Exactly. She kept herself busy so that she did not have to think about That.
But she did. All the time.
She had nightmares. They didn't have the same fever-edged intensity that she had experienced during her illness, but they were still terrible. Having her hands twisted behind her back and being leered at by men with beards of all things. Quivering in the face of a raving lunatic with shining wings on his back and a maelstrom of fire in his hands. Cowering in a doorway as the Palace exploded and something many-winged and enormous bathed the city in flame.
And sometimes she'd have the worst one of all- where she was just a little too late, where she just barely not fast enough, and a sword buried itself in his chest and ripped him open, and he'd fall and fall and fall. And it would happen over and over again until she woke herself up crying.
She missed Miranda.
She missed when the city was whole and nobody was terrified of attacks, or monsters, or ancient artifacts. She missed having tea in the sitting room with Setie and Luanna, and Miranda who only drank coffee, and only then with exactly three spoonfuls of sugar. She missed her bright, curtain-draped room in the upper wing that had been one of the first areas of the castle to be hit by the Dragon's wrath.
She missed having a mind that could cheerfully spend an entire day doing paperwork without the occasional flash of thought that this just wasn't exciting enough.
She missed not having to miss men with silver hair and red eyes who made such careful, exact, beautiful plans, only to have them fall apart at the last second as she stumbled in front of his deathblow.
It hurt, and she hated it.
And then one day, the Moon was gone.
No one saw it set. They all just woke up one morning and the Moon that Never Sets was just an empty hole in the sky.
The rumors trickled in from the streets from frightened, panicked people who had already faced so much destruction this year, and they were jumping at any shadow by now. They said that it meant the end of the world was here.
Setie, frazzled from doing most of the day-to-day work that was normally Wink's task, threw up her hands and shouted that she wished that it would hurry up and end already so that she wouldn't have to talk to one more crabby old man about his taxes. And then she burst into tears when one of her stacks of paperwork slowly collapsed into the hearth before she could stop it.
And so it hadn't so much been the end of the world as the end of Setie's career as an auditor, and after that Theresa just said in her cool, kind way that they'd just… oh, forget taxes this year. Until this business with the Moon was over.
Wink experimented with getting out of bed for the first time. She made a step and a half before her knees buckled and she fell, and the shock of pain when she hit the floor brought tears to her eyes. They found her in the small space between the wall and the bed, hands wrapped around her knees, brown eyes mulish and angry.
They helped her back into bed, clucking at how she cringed at the pull to the new red scar on her back, and told her to stay there until her strength was back, poor dear. Then they brought her a plate of warm milk with bread in it.
Wink took one look at that soggy atrocity, recalled every single facet of Miranda's bull moose personality that she could remember, and demanded that someone bring her a steak, medium rare, damnit, or heads were going to roll!
Even though she gagged up every last chunk of it out her bedroom window later, she didn't regret a bite. And every day she walked a little bit more.
0.-0.-0
The scar was big and ugly and red, and would never go away.
She'd seen it, once. Nearer the beginning of her recovery, when she was in the bath and a maid was pragmatically going over her with a washcloth. Craning her neck around, Wink had seen it in the big mirror, like a big red pair of lips on her back, puffy and scarlet, and she couldn't look away.
The maid had seen her stare, and had recognized the beginning notes of panic in Wink's breathing, and had turned the mirror away without a word. She'd gone on washing Wink's hair and Wink had been too shocked to ask otherwise.
She knew that it wouldn't look as bad as that now, but the image stayed.
Wink could feel the stubborn stretch of scar tissue there whenever she leaned a certain way, and she learned carefully to not stress it overly much, or it blossomed into a hothouse rose blossom of pain that only ice and time could ease. And then the nightmares would only get worse.
What a way to remember him by, she thought wryly as she wandered about the frost-bitten gardens of the palace. She was wrapped in a cloak and her hands rested snugly in a fur muff. She didn't like it out here much, in the cold crunch of the winter, but the castle was crowded with work crews and rubble, and at least in the gardens it was quiet.
And then she remembered that she didn't want to remember him at all, thank you, because she had acted very silly and had only gotten in the way, and he was a…
A murdering spying treacherous bastard, so Miranda had said.
And he never said he was coming back for you, either, she chided herself. So stop it.
She walked on until she became too cold, and then climbed the stairs all the way back to her room, regardless of how many times she needed to stop for breath.
The days passed, and the scar hardened and melted into something that she barely noticed, could barely touch even if she strained her arms trying to reach back there, could only trace the merest inch of with her fingertips. She wore thick, soft woolens, delicate silks, and other fine materials, and reassured herself that her skin felt good.
The world didn't end.
And one day, stumbling down from the mountains the same way that Wink and Theresa had mere months ago, Miranda came home.
She was skinnier than a winter wolf, and the white fletching on her arrows was gray and greasy and ragged, not that she had many left. But when she walked into the front hall, she hauled a guard by the shirt collar down to her level and demanded to know why he wasn't at the post she'd assigned him to? And then they all knew that she was fine.
Miranda ate like a horse that night, and didn't tell them anything about her journey until she had polished off half a cow and as much beer as she could fit in. Even then, all she could manage was, "Dart's dad's….an asshole," and then she fell asleep.
Wink told herself that it was all right, that she would find out the entire story in the morning, and that strangling Miranda while she was passed out in a plate of rolls did not fall under the grounds of Acceptable Behavior.
Besides.
She wouldn't allow herself to ask those questions that were struggling beneath the surface of her skin. Is he all right did he make it out of the battle did he say anything about me what's he really like?
It was stupid and girlish and only made her feel bad, so she stayed up late and burned the candles low trying to find something else to think about.
In the morning, Miranda still wouldn't talk until she'd had something to eat, and then she spent the entire afternoon telling them of what had happened. She told them of the dead Wingly cities, of the Black Monster and the mysterious Moon Child, how Rose was eleven thousand years old and had been killing Shanas for nearly as long. She told them of Dart's possessed father, of the Wingly dictator Frahma, of the labyrinthine dreamland of the Moon that Never Sets, and of how they escaped from it as it burst into flames as blue and waxy as its surface. It actually didn't take that long. Miranda had a habit of glossing over the details that bored her, and waxing eloquent on the details that annoyed her. A lot of them annoyed her.
And at the end, they all sat there, too stunned to say anything.
"Poor Rose," said Setie sadly, her blue cap in her hands. Wink remembered that Setie and Luanna both had traveled with the dark Dragoon. "And Dart's father, too."
"Hmph," said Miranda, hands curled around a mug of tea. They were all in Theresa's sitting room, gathered in the collection of soft chairs and tables in the corner. The Queen sat in her chair, a tall, regal looking plush throne of sorts that looked imposing unless you knew as they all did that the Queen kept chocolates under the cushions and three faintly smutty books shoved into the sides. "Brave, though. Can't tell you how many times I told that bitch to die in a fire, and what the hell, she up and does it."
There was a small moment of silence then, a minute of melancholy that absorbed all of them briefly. Wink hadn't known Rose well; hadn't known any of the Dragoons apart from Miranda, and the brief amount of time that Shana had spent at the castle, but she had wondered at the tall, dark woman with the sword at her hip and the gold in her armor. Rose had seemed like someone made of hard edges, with a blank, cold face and an aura of determination that jolted the bones. Wink had been afraid of her, but had envied her the gravitas that hung around her.
Her hands were being wrung in her lap, and she looked down and noticed them for the first time. There was a question that she wanted to ask very badly, but didn't entirely know how to phrase.
She forged on anyway. She asked in a small, neutral voice, "Did Mr. Lloyd….." she paused. Looked down. Unclenched her hands, then continued, embarrassed, "did he…."
Setie giggled, and jostled Luanna in the side with her elbow as she focused on Miranda. Theresa smiled and gave her attention as well.
Miranda sat frozen for a second. It wasn't a look that she was used to wearing. It made her look vulnerable. Then she told her. It didn't take that long.
And when she was finished, Wink nodded, and said, "All right."
Luanna's face turned and focused on her with her blind pearly eyes, oddly intent.
Wink smiled, "Won't you excuse me for a moment?" She rose slowly, an eternity of rising, and left the room in a whisper of skirts.
0.-0.-0
She didn't quite lock herself away in her room, weeping for weeks on end. She still emerged for meals and for her work and her daily walks, but for the most part, there were times when she wished that she could sit by herself in a dark place and not feel anything for a while.
She did cry. She didn't want to at first. When she got back to her chambers, she was so angry that she could scream, and she grabbed an inkwell off of her desk and hurled it into the fireplace, and the resulting splatters stained her carpet. But then she cried herself sick, and it hurt, because for all of this time, she had been waiting for Mr. Lloyd to come back (like an idiot) and-
And what? She hadn't even had the nerve to imagine beyond that day. Marry her? Sweep her off of her feet and declare his love for her? Say, "I'm sorry for destroying your city and killing off a few friends and relatives of the people your sister knew, trying to take over the neighbors, and trying to annihilate the world," with a rose clenched in perfect teeth?
It had been a silly, girlish dream, but it had been her sweetest one, and so she mourned its death as well.
"He was killed before we even started to fight," Miranda had said. "He was very brave, braver'n you'd think seeing as how he never fought anyone head-on unless he could help it.. He took on that fucker all on his own, before any of us dared to."
The saddest thing was that Wink could picture this, every bored, deadly inch of him exuding enough arrogance and right to power to conquer the world. She could picture it up to the point where he failed- and she couldn't see that. Couldn't imagine it.
It was inconceivable to think of him as defeated.
Even when he had been- at Flanvel Tower, where Dart and Miranda and everyone else made a last stand, when he was weary enough to fall over, his legs failing underneath him, he didn't look like he had lost. Lloyd had looked like it was a mere temporary setback, and his lip curled with the promise that when he got his breath, he'd finish this once and for all.
So she did cry, and the weight of all of those hopes and dreams and the scraps of confusionwondershivers that she had allowed herself to feel bore down on her so hard that she thought that she'd never get up again.
But when the worried knock came at the door, (Setie, most likely, or Luanna if she'd been able to navigate the stairs) she pulled herself together and answered it with a dry face and a mild smile. She'd been stupid. She'd learned her lesson. She would move on.
Wink would find work that needed to be done, and she would do it- it was that simple.
0.-0.-0
Author's Note:
Why Wink?
Why not? XD
I have only faintest idea where I'm going with this, but it doesn't matter. Gives me something to do when BHS's simmering, and I like Wink. And Gehrich. They accomplish so little, but they do it with such style.
Also, this is set in the same universe as my other stories, Black Heart Stomp and Gather Up Our Bones in particular. It doesn't hurt to read them, but it's not necessary. But there's going to be Gehrich, and there's going to be Guaraha, eventually, and their situations are coming straight out of there. Guaraha in particular, the tool.