It was the pain that kept Lucia tethered to the world, and comforted her to know that she was far from dead. Her entire body felt like it was on fire, and for the briefest of moments she felt he had finally passed and was now descending into the depths of hell that awaited her for all her failings as a friend, sister, and mother.
Her vision swam with the faces of those she had let down, many of whom were long since dead, thethe only physical reminder that they had even existed at all. Minor people she had only seen in passing to those she shared clan and hold with for many years. All of them looking at her with nothing more than disgust lacing their features. She knew that their hatred was justified, her action and inaction were something that had kept her awake at night when sleep would never come.
She heard muttered voices of people long since dead, those she knew passed to other side years ago. She heard her father Rogan's soft and solemn voice speak of her duty to the realm. He spoke of little else for as long as he had lived, before he passed into the embrace of his ancestors. Lucia never lived up to his expectations, she cared not for the duty of her home providence, she was too concerned with being a playmate and confidant to Elincia. Geoffrey picked up the slack for her, dedicated every waking moment to his family and country in addition to watching out for Elincia, growing close to her all the while as the seasons changed and they grew.
She prayed the end of that kinship, well before Elincia married Tibarn, was something she would not have to see again.
Then there was the harsh and imperious voice of King Ramon, and even though she had not heard him say a word for more than five years, she knew that voice from anywhere. It was like that of a mad man, righteous with a zeal that was placed him somewhere between a benevolent savior or an arrogant bastard who over reached himself.
Lucia knew which one of the two the King really was. As she imagined falling deeper into hell, she remembered memories of the royal family she had hidden in the deepest recesses of her mind for her sake and that of her brother. Elincia's cries as Geoffrey was viciously beaten with the barbed scourge as Lucia used her own body to protect the princess from the wrath of parents discovering the two together. She had not thought about those five months for years, and she shuddered as that violent beginning showed the true madness of Ramon. She heard her brother splutter out a mouthful of blood as the blows kept coming as the regent vented his rage against Geoffrey
Her failures passed through her mind as she fell deeper into this abyss. She only brooded on her failures in life when her life was hanging on by a thread, her greatest for last.
She thought about her shortcomings as a mother. Lucia was keenly aware that while she was motherly and tried her best to raise the children of the castle, especially her own Paris most of all, she had made many errors raising her son. She knew that he was singled out for abuse from other members of the castle due to his parentage, and that for all intents and purposes he was a bastard born out of wedlock. Although Elincia had granted her royal edict to formalize Paris as a part of the family that was Delbray, he was still insulted constantly and occasionally violence.
She could have done more, not only to protect him but to keep him from bearing that bastard name at all. Maybe she should have told someone about Paris' father, maybe she should have fought harder to keep him closer, and maybe she should have chased after him. Maybe… too damn many maybes were the bane of her life.
The pain overwhelmed her mind, pulling her out of this depth of self hatred and despair. It was that familiar sensation that kept her mind focused and sharp to dispel the sensation that she was dying. She rose from this familiar black pit and rose forward like a bird rising from the depth of a Begnion canyon under the light of a full moon as the sensation of life pulled her back to the realm of the living.
Lucia opened her eyes, her lids felt as if they were made from lead. She expected to awake to a cold dark dungeon or cave where she would be chained to the rugged stone walls where she would be put on display like some trophy.
Waking up in a warm room in a rugged but well built cabin with a roaring fire in a large bed cover with linen and fur covers was the furthest thing from her mind in all likelihood. But there she was, in a room that was warm and sheltered from the uncomfortable elements that wailed like they were souls in torment.
Her limbs felt as if they had weights chained to them, but she had been wounded enough to know that this was an illusion of recovery where her muscles were overused and there was not enough blood to provide energy to them with the loss she took falling on Ludveck's blade at the end of the fight.
She wondered how they had gotten here. The nearest ranger station that she found when she studied the dated map was twenty miles away, and she could see the waxing moon hang lazily outside the pane of glass, the next phase from the previous night. Her wounds were still fresh and she could not feel the telltale signs of scarring yet so she doubted that she had been unconscious for more than a day. She flexed each of her fingers as if she was pulling a crossbow trigger, each one responded. Her toes responded with enhanced sensation as she moved her feet to make sure that they were all there and had not lost any to frostbite that was all too common for this part near the cold mountains. She had almost lost her nose during the Judgment of Ashera, getting lost in a snowstorm while scouting for the army, and would have froze to death it had not been for the eyesight of Janeff who pulled her from a growing snow dune. She never imagined that she could feel such cold again as long as she lived.
Well, at least in body. Her heart had felt the cold more times than she cared to experience.
"You are awake." Agatha's tone filled the air, and Lucia craned her head over the small mountain range of feathered pillows and goat haired blankets to see where the voice came from.
Agatha was kneeling on the ground with Ragnell in front of her. However, Agatha was levitating close to a half foot off the ground with her eyes closed; her hair splayed out as if she was underwater but could still breathe. Her hands were held to her chest, making some sort of symbol that Lucia did not recognize. She looked like a serene statue, the type she would have seen of heroes in the past or statues of Altina in a Begnion cathedral. Only the movement of air in and out of her breast was the only sign that she was not an inanimate statue.
"How long?" Lucia asked with a sore throat. She felt rested, but weak all at the same time. Unable to move but not sick or ill, it was the kind sluggish behavior to expect after a hard drinking session that ended in challenging an entire company of royal knights to a wrestling match. She wondered if this is what Malakov felt every morning.
"A few hours, it is well past the hour of the wolf in the evening. Your healing rate is something that I have been surprised with, and I have seen many winters, so very little surprises me at all anymore."
"I am pleased to have met your exacting standards." Lucia responded with a dry tone, not even bothering to keep her fake accent. Agatha smiled sourly, like a parent dealing with an insolent teenager who was upset that they could not head out for a night of hard drinking with the other friends of the village. Lucia looked at the golden blade of Ragnell, and felt her questions come back to her in a moment. "That blade… you said a friend of yours brought it back to its owner."
Agatha's smile remained, but still kept her eyes closed. "Yes. This sword was once one that I had used for many years before it was placed up like a trophy on the mantle of a fireplace."
"Then you know what that blade is?" Lucia asked, suddenly wondering where her own was until she saw it lying unsheathed on a nearby table with a pot of cooling tea and some tin cups nearby with honey and purple flowers. A moist whetstone laid nearby, a few specks of grey told Lucia that it was used recently.
"That I do. It has been years since I saw it, even longer since I carried it to war. It is a fine blade; ten pounds of sanctified heavenfallen steel gilded with electrum, double edged 47 inches long wrapped in silk and ray skin for formal occasions with polished black leather for combat grips. It has been wielded by heroes, fools, monsters, saints, and those in between the extremes." Agatha described the weapon as she ran her right hand along the flat of the blade, small runes of power glittered as her fingertips brushed them
"Were you once a commander of the Holy Guard or some sort confidant to an Apostle from times gone by?" Lucia asked, although she doubted it. All of the former commanders of that venerable guard, at least those that she could remember were nothing but the paragon of virtue and patriotism for Begnion. None had been exiled, and Sigurn's predecessor lost her head fighting one of the four knights of Daein in one of their many border scraps.
"Something like that." Agatha responded, her hands moving to pick up the golden blade. She picked it up as if it weighed nothing, the blade itself moved with an almost hypnotic pattern to it. She planted her thumb along the edge of her blade and ran it along. A ruby red droplet of blood swelled on the thumb that slowly ran down the finger and dropped to the floorboards.
"And what happened to the previous owner?" Lucia didn't want to hear the words, knowing that she could make a pretty good guess on what happened.
"I do not know. I was merely gifted it not too long ago. Perhaps the previous owner had no more use for it. Triton was not too specific on how he came across it, only that he restored it to the majesty that it had held many generations ago." Agatha responded.
Lucia raised an eyebrow, clearly not pleased with being answered with such vulgar thoughts but lacking the energy to argue for more specifics at this point. Something she had learned when she was young that when an elder refused to speak further, there was no way that you would be able to change their mind on the subject. "Very well, can you at least tell me what tortures await me here?"
Agatha would have rolled her eyes if they were open. "Such assumptions. I have been told much about you. Lucia of Delbray, the fiercest true blade to walk the earth in a century. You are the milk sister of the Crimean queen, sister to the lord commander of the Royal Knights, and a mother to a young child. You are wounded from more than a dozen cuts, including one that would have severed your heart from the primary veins and would have killed you faster than a blow to your neck with an axe. If we were to torture you, why would we have given you one of the best rooms in our fortress, bind your injuries, and leave you without restraint?"
Lucia scowled. "So I am your hostage then?"
"Believe what you will, that isn't what I said though." Agatha said as the blood continued to dribble to the floor with the slow methodical regularity of a blacksmith hammering a billet of steel into a blade or breastplate. "You are a guest under my care, and I will stop any from laying a hand on you. I imagine Triton and Ludveck would like to have a word with you as well as myself, but we will not invoke violence or make petty threats against you or your kin." Agatha smiled to herself, the same way an old mother would remembering a child now fully grown when they were young as she spoke of protecting this noble's child from anyone foolish enough to threaten him and his mother like the first three brigands they had come across this day.
Something else grabbed Lucia's attention, the fact that her name was just used. "I never told you my true name."
Agatha opened her eyes and looked over, giving an almost imperceptible shrug. "I share meals with an exiled Crimean noble; our pasts are something that comes up in conversation quite a bit. Method of reduction would reason that there are three people in this world who would want him dead at any costs when word of his departure from his island prison got out. One is a reigning monarch in the middle of an event that could change the balance of political power for centuries, and another is a male who is more acquainted with giving orders than performing them. That leaves only the right hand of the queen as the most logical choice. He expected you much later, to be sure."
Whatever trace she was in ended slowly. Her white hair yielded to the demands of gravity and she was once again on the hardwood floors. Agatha looked at her bleeding thumb, flicked the rest onto the ground, and quickly wrapped it with a strand of linen cloth. She got to her feet and walked back to the table, laying Ragnell down to Lucia's polished blade. "So he's told you about everything then?"
Agatha poured tea, added honey and the purple flowers to the two cups and brought them over to a stool near Lucia's bed, and placed them down on a side table nearby. "Not everything, but if you don't mind talking, I would be interested to hear your stories. I would be willing to share as well." She sat down and the ghost of a maternal smile flashed across her lips as she brought her own tin tumbler to her lips and brought the other one near Lucia's, "Tea?"
"I will remove that foul tongue before it speaks another word of slander, whoreson!" Arkin bellowed. Tact was never a strong suit for Marek, he spoke his mind and the devil takes the consequences. It should be of no surprise that accusing Arkin of being a slave monger, a lickspittle simpleton, and a dozen other demeaning terms that violence was the result. Mia forced herself to remain hidden as Arkin lashed out with his spear, striking at Marek with the tip of the weapon which Marek easily avoided, untying his bear cloak that would prove to be too much of a hindrance and drew forth his rapier.
Mia was forced to admit that Marek had a good case, good enough to take it to Elincia and have this man be thrown in the dungeon for a long time.
It had started not too long ago. The two had gotten into a heated argument in the queen's personal garden, far away from the bohemian nightlife of the nobility. He spied various solders in several stages of inebriation and undress with each other on their way to the garden. All the better then, there would be less of a risk of someone coming across them.
When they were alone as he saw it, Marek had confronted the lord with his knowledge about his part in the trade of Laguz slaves. The evidence Marek had presented was enough to make any trial a guarantee success. There were the census records that showed the same families living in the same state for generations without being seen by the royal enumerator. Testimonies in trials of which Laguz were sentence for years of forced servitude of crimes, crimes which were always against the property of Lord Arkin. The spending habits noted by Elincia's spy network showing the flush of money from Kalidor and the selling of the few Laguz that moved from Overlord to lesser lords for labor projects that were never completed despite working on the same church or bridge for ten years.
Arkin had attempted to rebuff, but it was when Marek had confronted the Overlord about his debt to the Bandit Queen and that it was her that told him he was involved in the slave trade told the Overlord of the South that this was not an attempt at blackmail that the lordling could use to sway his vote for Marek's accession.
It was a blow to the ego, showing how one could be taken down politically, before he would be humbled in physical combat. Then Marek had used the insults to provoke Arkin in to striking out.
It was good, but unless Marek could back it up with his own skill at arms, it would have been a hollow victory that meant nothing, even if Mia managed to avenge him.
Well, Mia thought, let's cross that bridge when we get there.
The spear point flashed by Marek's face, who only managed to feint to the left at the last possible moment, already trying to bring his blade into Arkin's guard. The lord was expecting this and used his halberd shaft to knock Marek's rapier aside. A shock ran up his arm, causing Marek to focus on keeping the blade in his hands.
The two broke apart and Marek kept his blade up to provide some sort of barrier as he kept his mind on his footwork. This was a duel, but Geoffrey had taught him much of fighting those wielding a different weapon than your own.
True, the lance weapon provided greater reach and the halberd provided both the strengths of the axe and spear without the clear negatives of both. In a simple fight, there may have been a greater advantage to the spear wieldier.
But it was not a guaranteed advantage, training against such weapons were something that Marek focused on with his sparring sessions with Geoffrey who was both a lancer and swordsman in equal measure. Each time they sparred, Geoffrey reinforced the lessons that Ludveck had taught him during the time between wars.
Many swordsmen tried to match the battle strategy and techniques of their lancer opponents and without the same reach the swordsman might as well have thrown himself on the spear tip and got it all over it. Marek parried a probing strike with the halberd, keeping his form tight and waiting for Arkin to come to him. He wasn't going to play the role of the fool and surrender his training to the anger that had bubbled in his veins.
Marek was a duelist through and through. While he could wield a sword from horseback with a shield in his off hand, or could wield an axe with both of his hands as he cleaved through mail, he preferred to have one weapon in one hand and to strike with the precision of a barber-surgeon removing a tumor. It was not the most flexible form of fighting, and he had to change his style greatly when he was facing more than two opponents, but it evened the field against one opponent, even one as skilled as Lord Arkin.
Arkin showed that he had earned his position through vicious cunning and strength at arms. He was older than Marek, older by far, but if he was past his prime, then Marek could only have imagined how powerful that the Overlord of the South would have been in his heyday. The strength was great in his blows, when Marek had to parry a strike from the man he felt fatigue set into his bones. In a war of attrition, the Overlord of the South would be the victor.
Marek gritted his teeth and sliced the air in front of him, extending his arm to score a lacerating strike along the uncovered left knuckles of Arkin. The skin parted, exposing yellow cartilage and shards of white bone to the raw air. Arkin's face twisted to a demonic mask of pain and agony. "I am going to gut you and present your carcass to the whore queen as a warning." Arkin cursed as he lashed out with the blunt end of his weapon, barely missing Marek as he leapt back to avoid the blow.
"You have yet to kill me." Marek responded, not rising to the bait. He brought his blade to a guard position and slowly stepped backward to defend himself from any sudden attack. Arkin struck out again and again, a flurry of blows that was like lightning that caused sparks to fly as the metal struck against metal and splinters to fly in all direction when Arkin brought the haft of his weapon to block the blade strikes of Marek.
The two fought with all of their skill, strength and desperation, both knowing that this could be their last fight in any way this ended. The seclusion of the garden was not a guarantee, all it would take was one drunk to stumble their way in to see the peers of the realm fighting with murder lust in their eyes to raise the call for the palace guard and it would be all over.
It had to end, like this, with no escape. The victor would write the history and the dead would pass into anonymity.
With a vicious strike, halberd's blade sliced through Marek's guard and tore into his left leg, slicing muscle and coming close to destroying tendons in that leg. The pain threatened to overwhelm him, but Marek quickly reacted, the adrenaline keeping him tethered to the moment.
He changed his footwork and resumed his fencing stance to parry a decapitating strike. Again and again he kept his defense up; again and again he resisted the killing blow. The strength fled from him like the blood from his many cuts and blows.
Arkin lashed out with his fist, making contact with Marek's nose. Marek felt as if he was struck with a hot iron as the blood gushed from his nose. It wasn't broken, but the distraction caused him to falter and Arkin followed up his strike by using the haft of spear to send Marek spinning, his off shoulder almost dislocated has he slammed into the stone wall.
The whistle of displaced air was the only warning he had before he brought the blade up to protect him. His back was against the wall, and the razor sharp axe blade of the halberd pressed against his cheek, drawing blood. Marek put all of the strength that he could into keeping the blade from taking his head away from his jaw.
"Farewell, little lordling. Another family line has been brought to an end. Don't despair, your brothers will join you soon. Maybe the Delbrays as well if they don't bend the knee to me like all the others." Arkin sneered with a smile of pure venom.
Marek felt his last restrain fall away. He had been hoping to spare Arkin, to shave his head, tear out his tongue and put him to work on one of his own public works seemed like the appropriate punishment for such a vile man, but this threat against his younger brothers, against his guardians, was too much. He heard Ludveck's words in his mind, "Honor is a word we use to control others." Finally, he understood their meaning. The honorable thing would be ideal but right now, in this battle, the honorable thing would not work. He would die, the last of his family would die shortly after, Geoffrey would be shamed, and the north would be a puppet state of the southern providences.
The practical solution was the only one that could have a chance of working.
"No." Marek said in a flat voice. He brought his boot down on Arkin's outstretched foot with all of his strength. He felt bones splinter like dry twigs and the face of Arkin twist as he howled in pain. The pressure on Marek's arm eased and he struck out.
He slashed his blade, slicing arterial veins and tearing into the windpipe of Arkin. On the return stroke, Marek drove his rapier deep into Arkin's stomach and pulled it to one direction.
Marek's hands became wet as the Overlord of the South's stomach spilled out. Marek brought his boot up and kicked Arkin's back to the earth. The fabled noble and ruthless politician looked dumbfounded as his entrails were now outside his body and blood pulsed out from his throat. Arkin gazed Marek with a piteous look of shock, who spat on his face. "Now a line has come to an end."
The last thing Arkin saw before the darkness took him was a blade's tip, cutting through the air as it screamed to his right eye.
Marek tore his blade free from the corpse, disgust written on his face as the reality set in of what he did tore at him. Goddess, how could someone get used to that? He looked at the gutted cadaver, and it took a bit of his willpower not to discharge the content of his stomach.
He walked away, bloodied blade still in his hand, with a stride that betrayed his unease and wounded leg as he sat at the lip of a fountain.
Mia stood in the shadows as she watched the blood drip off of Marek's hands, body, face, and clothes. She didn't know if it was his fist kill, and if it was she would understand the feeling.
She remembered her first death, it haunted her dreams for years before she became fully adapt to the art of taking life. She remembered the feeling of the blade part ribs as it punctured lung and spine. The blood frothing from the mouth that spilled from under the helmet as death took him. She eventually kept the nightmares at bay but it is something that would be seared into her memory.
She saw a shadow descend from the walls; a massive bird flew down, diving like a barn owl found a small mouse running through a field. It was a hawk laguz, that much was certain. She swore that it looked like Tibarn, but the way the feathers were shaded and the pattern had the distinct female lines and a slight plumage.
The hawk landed near the corpse, and in a blur of shadows and feathers the figure revealed herself to be Kalidor, the bandit queen of Tellius.
She had the face of a reaver, close to the brink of barely contained slaughter hiding just beneath her eyes. She looked at Marek, then back to the corpse. She refrained from striking out, to eviscerate the corpse and tear the body to bits so that the worms would not have to chew. She looked like she marshaled her anger, and glanced over to Marek.
"You killed him." Kalidor said in a flat voice.
"Aye." Marek said, planting the tip of his sword on the ground and resting his chin on the tip of his pommel. The blade had no notches or dulling, while the enchantments he saw manifest in the training hall did not aid him in the battle, it was clear that they held good in maintaining the edge of the weapon.
"You were supposed to keep him alive. He owes me a great deal of coin, and I have far less opportunity to collect it with him dead." Kalidor's voice held an edge of warning, like a venomous viper hissing to warn off an intruder.
"You can still get the money. He needn't be alive for that." Marek said and glanced over to Kalidor. "He may have founded a dynasty after himself and a harem of whores that gave him many illegitimate children along with the handful of trueborn sons and daughters. They were obedient to him, but not the family. They may hold together for a year, maybe two, but eventually there can be only one who will hold the mantle of overlord. They will fall into bickering and fighting amongst each other. Such chaos can be used for your advantage. Coin goes missing all the time."
"He didn't suffer though." Kalidor responded and kicked the corpse again for good measure, more to vent her frustration than anything else.
"He is dead. Cut down like a common criminal in his own fiefdom." Marek responded, and took the cloth that Kalidor had tossed at him to wipe his hands clean. "A fitting end, all things considered."
Kalidor grunted her affirmation at the through. "And with that the world loses a useless slaver, you lose a thorn in your side, and I have an itch that has finally been scratched."
"What will you do now?" Marek asked as he removed blood from his hands, face, and leg. Goddess he was in pain, but he was alive.
Kalidor didn't respond, she looked at the waxing moon in the distance through an arrow slit window. "It will only be a matter of time before my brother knows I am living in the same city as him, and he will want to come after me. To be honest, I do not know where to go next. I can run my network from wherever I please, but I can't think of where I would end up,"
Marek had a thought pass through his brain, but he held on to it. He simply said, "Speak to me tomorrow evening."
Kalidor, despite everything, cracked a smile at that. She wanted to keep this vile man alive at her mercy for as long as she found him entertaining, and then end him for all the vile crimes he committed.
Still, Marek had a point. Dead was dead, no matter how it happened. She gave this young beorc the knowledge to deal with one of her enemies; she should have expected him to deal with it his manner.
She looked over at the corpse and cocked her eyebrow, contemplating the future. "Although I suppose we both inherited a litter of troubles with the bastards and offsprings of this oaf."
Marek shook his head. "I doubt it. Arkin was the one who established a dynasty, but he had no idea how to prepare for when he was gone. So a few true offspring with soon fight each other for the throne and the bastards who share their father's blood will either find their place in the new regime or try to take power for themselves. They will be too focused on what is in front of their nose and glancing over their backs to realize the full scale of things. Unlikely at it seems, they may get behind one eventually but by then they would have wasted their strength and become nothing more than a shadow of what they were. Quintus saw me leave with his father, as did Lord. I think they may be the more immediate issues."
"Sangra will not be the issue; he was the confidant who told me about the first breadcrumb that got us down this path. Quintus, he is a half blood so his words will be hollowed and fall upon few ears. If worse comes to it, he can always die riding off a cliff."
Kalidor finished her statement and glared into the bushes, her eyes catching Mia's outline, but treated it like something that had always been there and not something worth raising the alarm. "Don't worry about the body, I will dispose of it, it will be found after your corination and the blowback will fall on my shoulders, not you." She smiled that same savage smile that was her identity. "You have proven to be quite entertaining, Marek. I hope we will see more of each other in the future, although perhaps without an audience."
Marek looked over to where Kalidor had seen Mia, and felt his heart sink when he saw his guardian step out of the shadows with a look of concern and disgust, though to what part of the seen. "Yes, I imagine that will happen."
With nothing less to say, Kalidor stood over the corpse, closed her eyes, and began the transformation to the form of the hawk she had. She grabbed Arkin like a rat and took him to the skies, to where marek briefly wondered, but dismissed it as irrelevant. He turned his gaze back to Mia, and could not look at her directly. "I imagine I am in for quite more than a lecture."
Mia looked over at her ward, wondered briefly what Geoffrey would do, then unclasped her own relatively clean cloak and wrapped it around Marek. "I have been part of armies that burned villages to the ground, Marek. I hardly have any high ground in this situation. I am to protect you and keep your confidence, and as far as I am concerned Arkin swung the first strike so if it ever did come to life you were defending yourself."
Marek smiled weakly, still full of nausea but he could at least stand without relative issue. "You have my gratitude then in addition to my trust. Although could I trouble you for some assistance getting back to my quarters? I think that blow to my leg needs some salve and stairs are going to prove to be quite the challenge."
"Just pretend that you are drunk and I think we can get their fast enough." Mia said with her smile returning for the first time since the moon rose past its zenith.
Slowly, the knight and the lordling left the bloodied ground of the royal garden. By dawn, there would be no sign of any violence there. Although Volke would find his roses full of life within the next week, the deepest shade of crimson with stinking vermilion veins when Arkin's body fell in its death spasms.