It was the winter evening of a new moon. The snow had yet to come, and the winds were restless, rustling bare oak branches and sweeping up the mountains of autumn leaves on the estate's grounds that had been raked together in the morning by the gardeners, throwing what had once fallen back up and out into the world.
In a room of the estate, the woman sat at a desk of mahogany wood, hunched forward and as still as the stone chiseled contemplative figures of long dead men that were housed in temple halls and museum galleries. Behind her the window shutters were half-open, and the leaves flew by, swirling in the whispering air, none of them floating in, as if they all had to go and they wanted to say one last goodbye.
The room's only door creaked open, and an adolescent girl popped her head around the frame. "Milady," she murmured. "Master Tal wanted to let you know that there's a guest waiting for you out in the back courtyard."
"Did the guest give a name?"
"No milady."
The woman raised her head. "Sarah was it?"
"Yes milady."
"Have a seat. You've been working here for three weeks and two days. Is that correct?"
The girl plopped herself down in the other stool before the desk, her hands on her lap. "Yes it is."
"Do you know the kitchen boy? Lief if my memory is correct?"
The girl's face twitched and she gripped the fabric of her skirt. "I may have spoken to him a couple of times, milady," she slowly answered, glancing at the floor. "I don't really know him that well."
"The chef has told me he has seen enough reason last night to lead him to believe otherwise."
Sarah's eyes widened and she leaned forward in her chair. "But nothing happened," she protested. "We just talked."
"And at such late hours, talking can lead to so much more. Don't blush, girl, it's the truth. First they want to speak to you. Then they want to hold you. Then even that won't be enough for them. Men who could wait till the wedding day are as rare as cats that can bark." The woman rubbed her eyes, blinking. "But I digress. Sarah, I don't want to meddle in your love life. However, I also do dislike hearing about my servants' dalliances." She nodded. "Just so we're clear."
Sarah blinked. "Milady, are you saying that I can still see Lief?" she asked tentatively.
The woman waved a hand in exasperation. "As I just said: if the chef or any other member of the staff of this household complains to me of you two making a racket of any sort of manner, I will be upset. Now, you may go."
Sarah beamed. "Yes milady!" she exclaimed, standing up and dipping her head in gratitude. "Thank you milady!"
"There's nothing to thank me for. Good night Sarah. Please, do try to get some sleep this time. What did I say about blushing?"
"Sorry!" Sarah covered her cheeks and hurried out. A beat passed, and then she hastily poked her head back in the room. "Good night milady!" She dipped her head and then she was back out of sight again.
Katarina Du Couteau shook her head in dismay. She gave Sarah a minute before she pulled herself away from her father's desk – her desk, she reminded herself – and proceeded downstairs, rubbing her eyes again as she did so. She'd been poring over the ledgers by candlelight again, and despite the many times she hid from tutors and their lessons in her youth, she remembered enough numbers to know that the figures for last month weren't good. No matter how hard she tried, she just didn't have a head for managing her House's investments. Steel was more her business. Steel and stilettos. Not commerce and trade.
"You're still up, miss?" The butler called up to her as she descended the stairs. Hair gone grey long ago. A face wrinkled in a kind smile.
"You know me, Jacque," Katarina replied. "Sarah said there's someone waiting for me out at the courtyard. Did you happen to see the fellow?"
"I'm afraid not, miss." Jacque bowed. "Do you want me to bring refreshments?"
"No, I'm sure it'll be fine. If he didn't come with an entourage, then he's probably not nobility. At any rate, it's too late for that sort of thing."
"If that is your wish, miss." Jacque bowed again. "I'll be retiring now, unless there's anything else that might be needed?" He asked pointedly.
"Nothing that comes to mind. Good night Jacque."
"Good night miss."
Katarina went into the foyer, tucking her white velvet shirt back into her trousers, rolling her sleeves down and redoing the buttons up to her throat. Nobility or not, there was a need to keep up some semblance of appearance. Other noble ladies would greet visitors with pomp. They would take the time to apply mascara, paint nails, and gloss lips. They'd keep their hair plaited and tied with ribbons. Not her. Never her. Except for dances in ballrooms, and even then, she did it under duress. She preferred pirouettes with thrown daggers, but she had to think of the guests.
Stopping at a nearby mirror set in the wall, Katarina looked herself over, hastily rubbing with a thumb the ink splotch she had absentmindedly smeared onto her cheek and tucking blood-red locks away from her face and behind her ears. She ignored the dark circles under her eyes. Nothing could be done about them. She meant what she had said to Sarah. As for herself, there's no rest for the wicked. Particularly when she kept waking up in a cold sweat before the dawn had even arrived.
Clearing her throat, she stepped to the doors and pulled them open.
The cold wind hit her immediately, pulling her hair back in a stream and tugging at her clothes. Katarina stepped out onto the porch and saw the figure sitting on the stone balustrade and looking out over the courtyard, with the autumn leaves gliding in the air and the swaying trees.
"And here comes the lady of the house, and not a moment too soon," the guest drawled, turning her head around to look at her with a wry grin. "You're up for a drink?"
"Riven?"
The other woman beckoned her over with a hand clad in a riding glove, her boots carelessly dangling off the edge in an eerily girlish manner. Her snow white hair had grown and was tied back in a high ponytail. She was holding an enormous bottle by the neck. "Best I could find on the Island," she explained as Katarina approached her. "I know how you like your wine."
Some people were like that. One goes by a few years without seeing them, and when they do, the distance of time would dissolve like dust in the rain.
"Which year was it from?" Katarina asked, pulling herself up and sitting down beside her on the balustrade.
Riven held the bottle up and turned it about. It was unmarked. "Dunno. Care to try some? Don't look at me like that. We'll take turns. I know it's been a while, but I wouldn't poison you. You know me. Come on, sit down! Talon told me you just got back from Demacia. What was that all about?"
One Week Ago
They said it had been quick, Katarina recalled, as she watched the porters walk past her with the coffin on their shoulders. They said he hadn't lingered, she bore in mind, as the priest droned on about God's plan; a plan so intricate and baffling in its design that the man of the cloth could say no more than that there actually was a plan. Somehow she found that less comforting than if the priest was to say that the fate of sudden death was not pre-ordained by divinity but random chance. At least chance was fair. At least Lady Luck didn't pretend to give a damn.
As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, the priest intoned, now finishing up his sermon with scripture, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff comfort me.
So she knew that the accident had been sudden and short. She only wished that the funeral had been the same, what with less of these people gathered around her with their dramatic mourning and their crocodile tears. What with the weeks it took to plan this. She was willing to bet that over half of the crowd had never shared a word with the deceased, let alone an actual conversation. She had, many times, but at sword-point. Except for that one occasion.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
A baron a few rows behind her whispered in complaint to his wife. The baroness shushed her husband with a sharp word. Katarina would have rather wished it were with a sharp blade, but that was not how things worked in Demacia.
Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Amen.
His book snapped shut. The crowd applauded. Katarina didn't join in. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry, because surely the dead deserved better than a standing ovation for a sendoff.
Of course the dead will be missed. They will also be forgotten, and remembered on anniverseries if they're lucky. The living must always put the dead behind them, because the living must go on ahead.
They were in open fields of green and upon a hill overlooking the rest of the cemetery. It started to rain as the coffin was nailed shut and lowered into the ground. Not a drizzle, but a thunderous downpour to match the one that went for three days and three nights to drown the world, or so the priest's texts told the tale. Katarina wondered if God had ever been to Noxus, where the tumult of storm's rain could continue for weeks on end, such that the roads became rivers and the sewers seas. Or Zaun, where the droplets burned naked skin and flesh like acid, as infused as they were with the chemicals of the city's brown smog and black fumes.
Katarina pulled her hood up and yanked her oilskin cloak around her, already feeling the water run down her hair and neck and drip into her eyes. As the crowd dispersed, they all wondering if they were mentioned in the will, or having already put the entire affair behind them, what they were going to have for lunch, as the living were wont to do for things that didn't really concern them, Katarina looked to her friend who was trying in vain to open her parasol. In mourning or not, she didn't look good in black. "Here," the redhead muttered, taking it from her hand and walking alongside her. "Let me do it."
Her friend nodded. Her eyes were still puffy and bloodshot. Somehow that just angered Katarina even more.
But then again, she thought, as she glanced back and saw that the gravediggers were already setting themselves to the task of shoveling mud over the six-by-six hole in the ground, the man in the coffin wasn't her brother.
"So how have you been?"
Riven shrugged. "Been better," she mumbled as she adjusted to the knockback of the liquor. "You?"
Katarina grabbed the bottle from her. "Alright, I guess."
Riven raised her eyebrows as the redhead took her swig. "You guess?"
"Shut up." The bottle traded hands again. "I've just been very busy."
"How so?"
"Paperwork. Spreadsheets. Paying taxes and trying to find ways to cover debts and leases before the collectors start knocking on my front door."
Riven grunted. "The more you own, the more you've got to manage. That's the burden of nobility. I don't envy you."
Katarina snorted. She was starting to realize just what made a House strong these days, and it was money, not blood. An irony when she remembered the old mottos the patriots bellowed as they marched on the streets when she was a little girl. The chants the soldiers took up as they raised shields and charged enemy lines when she was their commander. The slogan emblazoned below the country's emblem on the front door of High Command since before she was born. The times when things had been much simpler than they were now. Or perhaps they were always this way, and she was finally growing up and pulling away the blinders the naïve and innocent tended to have over their eyes before they become cynics.
"Enough about me," she said. "How are things on the Island?"
Riven started talking about the Ionians rebuilding. New bridges. New houses. New towns. Recreating what was destroyed in a few days of war took many weeks, months, years in peacetime. Riven's been doing her part in it all, hammering the nails and laying the bricks along with the rest of them. Katarina had noticed, along with the missing sword on Riven's back, that there was a small band of twine on her middle finger.
"Progress's been slow," Riven said, handing the bottle back to her. "But we're getting there. You should come with me on my way back. The weather's a whole lot warmer then Noxus could ever be. They actually have a summer over there."
"I don't think I'd be welcomed. Treaty or no treaty."
"I'll vouch for you. The times have changed now."
Katarina thought of the last time she was in Ionia. Burning fields. Burning houses. Burning temples. Holding her nose as she passed the bodies piled by the roadside with flies buzzing in the air and maggots on their slack faces. Watching the rivers redden as the crocodiles fed on floating flesh. Firm when the fathers and mothers were brought before axe and sword, noose and stake. Silent as the children were forced to dig their graves. It's been six years, and unlike the corpses, some memories had a habit of staying fresh. But just like ghosts, they brought bad dreams.
Indeed. Perhaps the times have changed, but people never forget.
"So what do you think?" Riven asked, smiling.
"Raincheck." Katarina put the bottle to her mouth and threw her head back. The wine was sweet and strong, and the year it was made was probably a year for excellent vintage back on the Island, but Katarina was still bitter. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve. "I have a lot on my plate now. Lots of paperwork. Maybe sometime next year?"
Riven's smile wavered. "Sure. Fine. Whatever."
One Week Ago
"Shit happens," Talon had muttered, back when Katarina had first received the invitation to the funeral and after she had let him read the contents of the letter. Thinking about it in the carriage on the ride away from the funeral, she found his words to be more concise than any epitaph anyone could come up with for a toast; more eloquent than any inscription the stonemasons could engrave on the tombstone. Indeed. Shit happens. Let everything else go without saying. That there is a better place that people can go to only once they have died. Katarina tried not to look at Lux as she pondered this.
"You're probably wondering why I wanted you to come along with me to all that,' the blonde woman asked in a quiet voice that somehow managed to pitch itself over the sounds of galloping horses and pounding rain.
"The thought did cross my mind."
"I believed he would have wanted you there, you being his nemesis and all that. You know he talked about you a lot."
Katarina smiled. Years ago, boys and men loved to talk about her, Noxian and otherwise. They still do, but not as much. There were other sixteen year old nymphs with emerald eyes and flaming scarlet hair now. Always have been. Always will be. "What did he say?"
Lux smiled and gave a little careless shrug. "Don't know. I just remember that it was practically the first time he ever seemed interested in a woman. Not romantically so, I mean. For him, it's always been the army and the country first. It used to drive Mother crazy when she tried to get him to attend a banquet, hoping he'd fall in love with one of the girls there. Father even once asked him if he preferred men. I thought it was just in jest, but I think he wouldn't have mind if it turned out to be true. Father could never be disappointed by him. He always looked to him over me." Another shrug. There was a slight catch in her voice now. The tiniest of quivers in her lips. "And I always thought what with the war being over, I'd never have to worry about him getting himself killed any more. Just seems unfair.'"She sighed and shook her head. "Just seems unfair."
A horse. A rearing horse and gravity had killed him. Not an epic battle amongst beasts and magic for the future of Demacia. Not a duel between master swordsmen for the hand of a beautiful maiden in marriage. Not even a tavern brawl over a spilt mug of ale that tasted so bad it could be used for wood varnish or paint stripper. Just a simple tumble from the saddle when out on the royal hunt was what did him in. Falls on his head one fine afternoon, and all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Sir Garen Crownguard back together again.
Katarina wondered what she'd do if Lux broke down right this instant. Would she hold her and comfort her? Would she scold her? Or would she just ignore it? She learnt long ago what her father and her people thought about crying. Even at funerals in Noxus it was looked down upon. Stoicism was strength. Here though, sobbing was something to be encouraged, welcomed even, and that baffled her.
"I must seem quite wretched, don't I?" Lux remarked sheepishly.
Katarina shook her head. "Hardly. I was just thinking that it's strange, that we'd only get to know each other better when he died and not before."
Lux's eyes widened. Then her face twitched and she broke down into tears again.
Katarina sighed. Her sister was much better at this sort of thing. Had been. She leaned forward and beckoned that the blonde woman should hug her.
The horses whinnied as the carriage came to a sudden halt.
Lux drew away and smiled weakly. Katarina nodded and threw open the carriage door. She stepped outside and noticed something peculiar. She held her hand out and up to the heavens. Completely dry. No rain now.
"Strange," she muttered, lowering her arm.
"You say something?" Lux jumped out beside her and waved off the coachman.
"Just talking to myself. Pay me no mind." Katarina craned her head up and took it all in. The rows of bushes sheared and trimmed till they resembled dragons and pegasi and griffons. The white doves and pigeons perched about on the tree branches. The excessive dozens of stairs leading to the mansion up at the top of the hill. A lot of grandeur. A lot of preening. Much like their people.
"Remarkable, isn't it?" Lux asked out loud.
"Yes," Katarina murmured. "Remarkable."
In the inns and taverns, they say that King Jarvan IV has a dragon for a mistress. A human girl with inhuman eyes who guards his back and warms his bed. Katarina would rather that her own partners were at least, amongst other things, mammalian, but that's just her opinion on the subject. Perhaps it's not enough that kings can sleep with any normal woman they want. After all, royalty had to eclipse their subjects in all things by reputation, or why else would the people take them seriously?
"Come on," Lux urged, taking her by the hand. A peculiar gesture, till Katarina realized that she was trembling ever so slightly. "Let's go meet my parents."
