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SIARI

Innocence Lost

City of Windhelm

Shit, they'd put something in her food. Or her drink. The world began spinning even before Siari had taken her second boot off, and on one bare foot, she desperately tried to keep her balance, snatching at whatever handhold she could find, her vision blurring. Flailing for support, she knocked the candlestick off the cabinet, and the room went dark before she could hear, miles away, the fake silver candlestick hit the ground.

She couldn't call for help. She wouldn't even make it to the door, her head spinning and her knees giving out. After a few drunken staggers, her legs went completely numb and she fell, back down on her bed, one hand feebly snatching at the air.

Before her consciousness faded, she realized this had been sure to happen. There were always loose ends, always ways to trace a murderer, no matter how careful you've been. A witness noticing you from a hidden place, a drop of blood taken to a mysticist, some last words a victim could impart before dying – and every murderer was found. If not by his or her victims, then by another killer who didn't tolerate competition, or by secret organisations employed by the authorities, whose goals weren't to make arrests, but to simply make criminals disappear. Even master killers eventually vanished or turned up dead, and she'd been nothing like those trained assassins, so it had been inevitable that someone had found her.

As Siari's mind sank away into darkness, she confessed to herself that she was getting what she deserved, whatever it was. Even if they had been children, they'd been witnesses, and they'd seen her, standing over the bed of the wicked old hag that ran the orphanage and drawing her blade across their hated tormentor, pushing her hand onto the old woman's mouth to keep her down and to keep her quiet while the life bled from her throat, black in the darkness of the orphanage. She'd pushed as hard as she could, breaking the old fragile nose under her hand with a slow crunching, so the old bitch was perfectly quiet and still, her eyes wide and staring at her killer… had there been recognition in the eyes? Recognition of the face of one that was no longer a child, but not yet a woman? Or had it been a realization of some sort, that she silently confessed to having deserved these last moments, bleeding out like a pig, because of how she'd treated the children? Even those that had grown up to be young women now? Maybe. It hadn't mattered in the end.

And so, as the old woman had gotten her just come-uppance, so would she. She didn't feel much, no pain, no burning inside, just dizziness and nausea. Death by poison had always been told to be much more painful than what people thought, but this… wasn't really… painful, it was… just… like… falling… asleep…