Again, I can't thank you all enough for reading, commenting and just coming along on Dust's journey with me. Now, I have a question. We're very, very close to the ending now - I won't say exactly how far, but it's close! For my part, I'm considering updating more frequently - both Wednesdays and Fridays. What do you guys think? Would that kill the pacing, or would that help keep it up and weekly is a little too slow? Either way, thank you all again for everything, I can't ever say it enough! You're amazing, and I'd have never written this much or come this far without you.
Midnight rushed towards me like a bat in the dark, screeching and startling with the toll of the clock and the shivers of apprehension down my spine. My heart seemed to rattle as I worked through the tight alleys of the warehouses, keeping a careful ear out for any guards. A prime place for thieves, after all – the buildings here were specifically for storage. For shopkeepers, for the castle, for the barracks. But, mercifully, luck seemed to be on my side. No one awaited me as I slunk to Borba's building, feeling for the door in the dark, not daring to cast a light.
It yawned open. Relief to see no one inside – just stacked furniture, dusty chairs and cob-webbed tables awaiting sale, sacks of dried goods and shelves of trinkets.
And hidden among them all, at a back corner in the maze, the laboratory they'd made. The laboratory they expected me to serve at, to make them rich.
I set the sack of nightshade down, and got to work.
First, lighting the candles I would see by. Two had been provided, half-melted on the table where the other tools awaited. Shoddy tools, too, probably bought half-price off some retired alchemist. The third…
I lit it gingerly, half-expecting it to simply explode in my face, but no. A low hiss as the wick took, flickering and casting a warm glow that both comforted me and kept me apprehensive. I'd diluted the mixture, given myself plenty of time to finish the skooma and get away. By the time it melted low enough to set off the flammable base, I'd be long gone.
… Still. Better to be quick.
Grains of moonsugar sticking to my gloves. Heavy pitchers of water – wellwater, I noticed with a grimace, but there was no time to purify it, and I had no intentions of letting anyone drink it anyway. Bottles of ethanol, yellow with age, nightshade carefully separated and pulped…
I almost could have enjoyed it, the process. Almost. It was as I'd thought before – not difficult, not for any half-decent alchemist who knew her tools and her hands. But with every bead of wax that dribbled down the side of the orange-yellow candle, danger loomed. With every bottle of alcohol poured, more fumes building in the air, soaking into the wood around me.
Hurry, hurryhurry.
Thoughts of seeing the smuggler's faces as they were dragged off by the guards, at last paying for the people they'd hurt and used. At last able to get back to my work, my research to the Isles. Proving to Lucien that I could stand on my own two feet, that he could let me go both as Listener, and trust me as himself. A swell in my chest, bittersweet as I thought of everything I had to gain – or lose. Hurry.
At last, it was done. The skooma sat in unassuming vials, old labels peeling, hiding the liquid within. I resisted the urge to rub at my eyes until my heavy gloves were stripped off, glancing at the candle. Dammit all – in this summer's heat, it hadn't lasted as long as I had thought. Stupid of me not to calculate for that. Still, it had more time, at least another half-hour. Plenty of time to get out and –
A creak behind me.
Magub. Even in this dim light it wasn't hard to make out his swagger, his scornful smirk as he made way around the furniture to approach. "Finished already, huh?"
"Yes." My jaw trembled – I clenched it tight, willed it to be still and keep that same quaver out of my voice. "I told you, it isn't especially hard."
"Huh. Half expected you t'still be wrist-deep in it about now." He peered over my shoulder to the table, cleaned off as best I could with the water left as the brew cooled. "Gimme one."
I obeyed. He peered at the bottle with a squinting eye before uncorking it, pouring just a few drops on his tongue and swirling it around, like a connoisseur tasting fine wine. My heart pounded, even knowing the formula was pure. Did he think I'd try and poison it? What good would that do?
Relief as he corked the bottle once more and set it down. "Good. Glad t'see you can do as you're fucking told, for once. How many bottles?"
"A dozen. I didn't have the reagents for more."
"We'll double it, next time." As though he read my thoughts he sneered, voice low. "And there'll be a next time, don't doubt it for a moment."
Oh, but I do, you boar-toothed bastard. You'll see. I glanced at the candle, every drip of wax added to the cooling pool reminding me of the looming threat. "This place will be filled with the fumes, now. We should go."
"In a few." He tilted his head, rolled his shoulders. This was – bad. The look on his face, the almost casual tone, all of it made my hair stand on end. "Just something I gotta take care of, first. No doggie now, huh?"
My heart lurched. I backed away, hitting the table behind me and making the bottles shudder. "What do you want?"
"An apology. For you to bow your head and say how sorry you are for being a mouthy little brat, and how good yer gonna be for me now."
My blood boiled. I swallowed back bile sickly hot. Just you wait and see. It left me in a whisper, reluctant and harsh. "I'm sorry."
"Like you mean it."
"I'm sorry – "
"Nah. Don't believe you." Shit, shit, shit – should I scream? Run? My dirk knife was on my belt but I'd come this far not to kill, to find another way and could I even if I tried? "But I bet I can make you sorry."
The way he moved, the way he raised his hand – just like that night he'd threatened me. "Don't cast a fire spell in here, you idiot!" I fought not to glance at the candle again. What if he realized? What if he made me snuff it out? Dammit, dammit, dammit – "You'll kill us both!"
That awful, leering grin. "Don't worry." The open hand closed, a meaty fist. "I don't need magic for this."
A burst of pain. The whump of my bottom hitting the ground as I dropped, stunned. Ringing loud in my head, and the taste of blood welling in my mouth. I'd been hit before, of course – the necromancer in the cave, fighting the cultists before I told them I'd spoken to Sheogorath. But then, I'd been prepared.
Not this time.
One hand closed around my collar again like it had the night at the shop, dragging me back to my feet. Only then did I come back through myself, sucking in air through the pain throbbing on my jaw, my cheek, only to have it expelled again as now his fist collided with my stomach, making me double over gasping.
My head still buzzed, but now I was ready. I caught a glimpse of a toothy grin, the whirl of movement and, this time, I ducked.
I ducked, just in time to realize I should have done anything but.
He lurched over me and fell onto the table, rocking it as I dived past and scrambled behind him back up onto my feet. The clink and shatter of glass, the thud of heavy alchemical tools –
The sputtering of a fallen candle, landing in a shining puddle.
For an instant, we both froze. He blinked, not knowing – how could he? This place wasn't an ancient laboratory, soaked in fumes. Without my candle, we would have had time to fix this. Snuff the little flame, let him get back to beating me.
With it…
"Run." Without thinking I grabbed his arm and jerked him towards me, back to the door. "Run!"
We ran. We ran and got out the door, into the quiet dark of the alley and for a moment I couldn't decide what would be worse, if it worked or it didn't –
A crack, a high-pitched whistle. The heavy smell of smoke. I pictured the candle inside, sitting in a pool of skooma and ethanol. I pictured the wax I'd made igniting, sizzling.
I didn't have to picture the rest.
Wood flew in splinters. The rush of heat, the roar of the fire was more powerful than I could have imagined, less a force of nature and more a great, terrible beast, devouring. The explosion rocked the warehouse, made it shudder and creak in on itself as gouts of black smoke reached upwards. Another shudder, another groan and it began to collapse on itself, glimpses of vivid red-orange destroying it all inside out.
Magub stared, eyes wide and bright in the reflection of the fire. Already, there were shouts in the distance – guards who'd heard the explosion, the clatter of boots from those coming to investigate.
"What did you do?" His hands dug into my shoulders, shaking me as I tore my eyes from the warehouse to his face. "What did you do!?"
"I – "
"The guards are coming." A quiet voice, a familiar one. Telaendril stepped out of the shadows, somehow calm even as inside the warehouse, cracks and pops could be heard. Tiny explosions – from the storage jars, sacks burnt to nothing, well-polished furniture splitting apart and being consumed. "Go home. I will deal with this."
"I – " The flicker of the flames caught off metal, glinting on the ebony and gold of her dagger. All in a moment, I understood.
"No. Telaendril, no, I told Lucien, I did this to avoid – "
"Who in Oblivion are you – "
"The Listener himself commanded me to – "
"Enough." A new voice, whisper quiet even while cutting through the cacophony around us. As the trample of footsteps moved closer, orders for water hauled in, Telaendril ushered us towards it. Lucien – the chameleon spell dropping as we found a new alley to hide in, Vicente at his side in a heavy cloak.
"You can't."
Magub seemed to be finally grasping that something was deeply, deeply wrong. His face yellowed, mouth slack as he stared at each of us in turn. "What – who – "
"Be quiet." Vicente's hand on his arm, the same seductive spell he'd used on me when we first met coaxing the Orc into silence. I caught it only out of the corner of my eye, marching up to Lucien with teeth bared.
"You told me – "
Not a word. He took my face instead, startling me into trailing off as his thumb brushed warm wetness off my cheek. A trickle of blood from my mouth, my lip already swollen where Magub had struck me.
While all around us chaos reigned, we seemed to exist in a circle of pure silence. At last Lucien broke it, stepping back and gesturing to Telaendril. "A change of plans. He will come with us."
She obeyed without question. Those words were enough to shake him from the spell, afraid for his life, but it was too late – she was already shoving a strip of cloth into his mouth, gagging him and forcing any cries for help to die in his throat.
No, no, this isn't how it's supposed to be –
Lucien stood taller, a statue among his subordinates. Cold, so cold his voice seemed to fog even in the summer night. So cold compared to what I'd seen not hours ago at the river. "He will come with us," he repeated, gaze moving to mine.
"And so will you."
I never knew that I could smell fear.
It was acrid in the air, the scent of sweat and urine and sheer terror, clear in the pinprick eyes and beads of moisture clinging to the Orc's face. Between Telaendril and Vicente he was dragged out of the city to the Sanctuary, leaving the chaos of the warehouse fire behind us as we moved, unseen, through the night. Into the cellar, through the Black Door that made him quake and whimper, to a locked door I'd never stepped past.
I wish I'd never had cause to.
I'd assumed it a storage room, or the room of someone long gone. It was neither. Manacles dangled from the walls, an ominous rack with thick leather ties on either side. A table of instruments that threatened pain in all flavours, knives and hooks and saws. A brazier that with a little coaxing burst into sputtering life, making our shadows meld and merge, heating the iron tools in it red-hot.
I knew, with a shudder, that this was where the Brotherhood kept 'guests' less fortunate than me.
The others joined us – M'raaj-Dar, Ocheeva, Antoinetta with a hand over her lips. At my teary stare she looked away. I was alone.
"Lucien." I could still do this. He'd agreed, hadn't he, to my plan, I could still make him see reason. I hated this Orc, I hated these smugglers for threatening me but no one deserved… "Please."
"Dust." Vicente, beside me. A gentle hand on my shoulder, voice low. "Go home."
"No."
Our heads both jerked up. Lucien spoke to Vicente, but his eyes never left me, hard and sharp as flint. "She needs to see this." A nod and the Orc was forced down, on his knees with head back to stare up at him, desperate.
"The gag."
Telaendril yanked it free, down around Magub's neck. Desperate, wet breaths filled the room until he could speak, blubbering. "I didn't know! Swear t'Mauloch, please, I didn't know!" His eyes darted feverishly around the room, stopping on me, flickering back to his. "I didn't know she was one of yours!"
He didn't say a word. A nod was all he needed – Teinaava and Telaendril hoisted the Orc up now, back to his feet as he begged. Everything moved too slowly, the apprehension suffocating.
A rush of movement. The first blow made my breath catch even as it forced the wind out of him, made him double over until he was jerked upright again, just the same as he'd beaten me. The second strike wrenched out a cry from him, a gasp from me.
"Lucien! – "
Crack. Another. And another, the Orc beginning to curse, to groan as he shook his head and gave futile struggle, bound and held tight. Another meaty thwack to his stomach, another to his chest making him choke for air.
"Lucien, please – "
No blade. No thumbscrews, no rack. Just fists, efficiency and brutality, and it was more horrifying than I ever could have imagined. Blow after blow rained down, sometimes changing to find a new, vulnerable spot, sometimes cracking into the same place until I could hear the crunch of bone between my sobs.
"Please!"
Crack.
"You're killing him! Please!"
I tried to intervene. I tried. Antoinetta reached out, but Vicente was faster – a hand on my shoulder, guiding me back, his gaze expressionless. Antoinetta hid under her hair, still refusing to even meet my eyes.
It seemed to go on for hours.
The crack. The wail. The groan, the gasp for air, the whimpers as he was forced painfully upright again only to endure another battering of blows. This wasn't a bar fight, or a brawl. This was systematic torture, the breaking down of flesh and mind until he was openly sobbing, begging, promising everything and anything if only it would stop.
And I could do nothing but scream behind my hands, and beg alongside him.
He was – a mess, by the time Lucien seemed to finish. His own fists bore scrapes, telltale bruises on the knuckles in evidence of what he'd done. Magub was barely recognizable. His face swollen so his eyes were barely visible, skin purplish-green, blood trickling from the shattered pulp of his nose, between his broken teeth, from one of his ears as he sagged. Pulverized meat.
"Am I to understand you are a fire mage?"
It took him a long time to respond. Finally he coughed, a gob of blood spat, whispering. "Yeah. I can – I can kill. Have, would. Do it, fer you. Please. Please. Please, no more. Please."
"Let him go."
I didn't dare speak. I didn't dare ruin this. Telaendril and Teinaava released him, let him stumble forward. Please, please. He teetered, almost collapsed, only for Lucien to grab him by the back of the head and steer him –
Towards the brazier.
No.
No, no, no, no –
I'll never forget those screams.
He pressed him in and down, face forced into the fire and ash of the brazier like drowning a man in a fountain. But this was worse, infinitely worse. He writhed, he howled – howled until he couldn't even manage that and what followed was worse, animal whimpers and guttural gurgles as his limbs uselessly kicked and flailed. The stench of smoke grew thicker, sickly with burnt flesh. And through it all, Lucien never moved. Never flinched. Just held him until, at last, his struggles stopped for good.
The corpse hit the floor with a heavy thump. It – I prayed it was a corpse. No one could live like that. No one should, not how he looked. The image seared into my memory, behind my eyes.
He was done with him. His gaze slid away, back to mine. I shrank against the wall – I couldn't help myself, feeling my jaw quake, sucking in little breaths as he approached.
His eyes, gods, his eyes. Grim and feral, cold and certain all at once, predatory. He leaned in close, voice a hiss, raising before my face a hand blackened with dried blood and soot.
"This is what I am."
He moved away. My ears ringing, my head spinning, fire and dark whirling around each other until the room became a blur and I sank, sliding down against the wall to huddle, to hide. Movement around me - orders to clean up the mess. The sound of dragging. Whispers, a hand on my shoulder making me jerk.
"Come."
I followed in a stagger, barely hearing anything around me as Vicente led me out towards the common room, back to the Black Door. That awful door, with the engraving of the Night Mother so ruthlessly sacrificing her children, just as maman would have me. That damned door where the symbol of the Black Hand sat high, the symbol Lucien had shown me not moments before.
This is what I am.
I stood there long after all else went quiet, nailed to the floor and hugging myself tightly, seeing it all again. What remained of Magub's face, charred and twisted beyond all recognition in a permanent rictus of agony. Lucien's hiss, that blood-blackened hand. Our words, the night I'd told him what he'd echoed back to me.
This is what I am.
"Dust." Vicente's gentle voice woke me from my reverie. I met his eyes and could hold it back no longer – a jagged, staccato sob left me, splintered me, my head falling against his chest as he held me there in silence.
"Why."
"You must understand…"
"No!" I tore myself from him, the fear and grief that had coiled inside lashing out vicious, snarling. "It isn't right! He told me, he said I could, without bloodshed, without – " I hiccupped, hardly able to breathe through the rattle of my heart against my ribs. "It was monstrous, it was, no one deserves that, no one – " Near hysterical, but how could I not be?
Even through my tears, I saw it out of the corner of my eye. A glimmer of soft green. The spell he'd used on Magub to calm him. The spell he'd used on me when we first met.
He reached for me, kind, soothing. For my own good. Complacence. Obedience. Make the best of it.
I struck out. Uncoordinated, flailing, but enough to crash into his arm and make him lose the spell as he stepped back, blinking. "Dust – "
"No." It left my lips guttural, like a curse. "No. I have a right to be angry, I – gods dammit, after everything the Brotherhood has taken from me, you won't have this. Let me feel this, Vicente. Let me be what I am." I sucked in a breath, wet and shuddering. "And if that kills me, if you have to hate me for it, so fucking be it."
I expected to be soothed again, to have that spell cast on me whether I liked it or not. Or, perhaps he'd go the other way – angry with my refusal to calm, to let this fire raging in me be quenched. Annoyance at my stubborn spite.
What I didn't expect was his laughter. Gentle, soft and dry like the rustle of a sheaf of parchment. It was my turn to stare as he shook his head, lips twisted in a wry, sad smile.
"You truly are like him. Two sides of the same coin."
The fire in me shuddered, threatened to flare. "I'm nothing like him."
"No, Dust. You are not. And yet, you're his match in every way. His shadow – or him, yours." He stepped closer once more, though this time no spell was summoned. I shook my head.
"I don't understand."
"Why do you think he did what he did?"
"Because he's – sadistic, cruel." I spat, eyes stinging again. "Because he can't let me have even a taste of freedom without reminding me whom I belong to, because – "
"Because she's naive, spiteful, careless." It took me a moment to realize these weren't his own words. Vicente was echoing them, an echo from some conversation I'd never heard them have. "Because she can't bear the thought of obedience, even for her own good."
I sucked in a breath through my teeth.
"You cannot bear the thought of blood on your hands." His voice a murmur, kind, but precise. A needle, pricking exactly where it would hurt most. "And he would bathe in it if he thought it would protect you."
"I don't want his protection." I thought of the anger in his eyes that night I'd helped Aldos, when he saw my torn blouse. That same glint tonight, when he warned me to be cautious, at the welt on my lip. I knew where that rage came from. I'd felt it myself, those rare times I'd seen them in danger – maman, Lucien.
The ones I loved.
He loved me, and this was what his love meant.
"I can't." I rubbed at my eyes, furiously trying to prevent more tears. "I can't live like this, Vicente, I can't."
"Telaendril was told to interfere only if one of the smugglers did so, themselves, or if you were in danger. But we all heard the explosion. He feared for you."
"He's h-hoping to scare me into obedience." My mouth tasted bitter, but my arguments were weakening. I was tired, suddenly so tired of fighting. "Make me stay, make me -"
"You could leave, if you wished."
I froze under his gaze, searching for words.
"If you accepted the consequences – if you would take that risk." He spoke carefully, each syllable measured. "If you fled, you would be punished. The Wrath of Sithis would likely come for you. But there are those who have faced it, and lived."
The Wrath of Sithis. It – her. A shiver like icewater traced down my back.
"It would be an immense risk, and there would be no guarantee of your freedom or your life. But there would be a chance. You could even go to Anya, stay under the Brotherhood's eye there and live your life as you see fit."
That needle again, precise and painfully sharp, as his meaning sunk in. The unspoken question behind it, pulsing.
But you didn't, did you?
"What you said about us, about Lucien." He probed, gently, but with purpose. I wanted to curl up, hide, shield myself from this interrogation that unearthed everything I couldn't bear to face. "It is – "
I silenced him again, thudding into him with a muffled sob. A half-beat before his arm encircled my shoulders.
"I love him." It left me in a hoarse exhale. "Gods help me, I love him, and I can't bear to stay."
An autumn sigh, dry and somber. "And he can't bear to let you go."
"That's what you were telling him that night we had the picnic." I hiccupped through a watery laugh at the memory. "If you love something, let it go."
He stepped back, just enough to allow me to meet his gaze again. There was a warning there, stilling me. "I do not know if he is capable of it."
And I don't know if I can live without it. My eyes throbbed – I squeezed them shut, remembering Vicente's words from long ago. You cannot accept only shards of a person. It was all, or nothing.
"An unstoppable force and an immoveable object." The old riddle, the impossibility. I wiped at my eyes with a haggard chuckle. "But the difference is, he holds all the power." I'd known since Leyawiin, all those months ago, that I was the one who had to bend. Or else…
Or else face the consequences I so feared. Face the risk of losing not only my life, but them. The family I'd made, my last living connections to maman, gone.
Him, gone.
"I need to go." I was wrung empty of tears, just exhausted now. Head throbbing, pinching my brow and trying to drive the image of poor Magub's face out of my mind. "I need…"
I needed to go home and pretend everything was fine. To make the fucking best of it.
"Goodnight, Vicente."
"… Goodnight."
