QUEEN Of RUIN
Their next lesson took place in the library.
It was empty of teachers and students, leaving just stately bookshelves lining every wall and branching off each other like a hedge maze of shelves and scrolls. It was dark and dusty and even smelled stale. Her footsteps were both loud and quiet. Nothing to hide her approach within the gloom, but she knew how to step. Most of the windows high up near the ceiling held only images of a cloudy night sky, save for the back right corner where silver moonlight spilled in as thin, sharp shards. That was where she found the foreign Queen already sitting at a round table with a single lit candle, opened books and scrolls scattered haphazardly around her. As soon as she was close enough, she grabbed one of the books and flipped through a few of the pages. Her eyebrows rose and she flipped all the way to the front cover.
"A Treatise on the Formation and Ecology of Wind Crystals," Longueville read aloud. Wind crystals? She would have thought the woman would have read up on law? Inquisitorial precedent. Codified rights of nobility. Something. Anyone who really thought the Church was going to give nobility the power to ignore a sacred ritual, they were an idiot. If there was one thing Longueville suspected Renia de Rutenia was not, it was an imbecile. She did not seem like a woman content to lay down and accept her fate either. But no, wind crystals. "Good read?"
The Queen's head was buried in another book, a giant red leather cover journal with a gold leaf title that glimmered in the candlelight. Albion: A History. The woman's red eyes seemed to drink in the light, highlighting them with a molten glow. The golden chain sleeve of rubies gilded her right arm, the shine strangely muted under the silver moonlight.
"Once you get past the insipid structure," the woman drawled. "You're left with the banalities of a man caught up in his own genius."
That sounded a lot like the kind of books she had to read as a child. "Dull?"
"Very."
Longueville snorted as she put the book down and reached for another. A scroll this time proudly boasting the royal crest of Albion at the top. The rest was a scrawling family tree made with dark ink. Wind crystals. Albion. The start of a pattern was emerging.
"Found my tip helpful, I take it," she murmured. The next book she grabbed was...religious theory on Void magic. Curious.
"It was," Renia de Rutenia replied with the slightest twitch at the corner of her lips as she turned the page. "Tell me, what do you know of the Reconquista?"
Longueville cast a disinterested glance over the table. "Anything you want to know in particular?"
"Let's start with what you are allowed to tell me," the woman suggested airily and Longueville forced herself to keep breathing steadily. The woman was still reading, having not even glanced up from the crinkling pages and for a moment, Longueville hoped she hadn't caught the moment of tension. Allowed? She was probing for information, perhaps suspecting a concerted effort to keep her ignorant of current events? There wasn't one, not really. Just good ol' Tristainian reticence to admit fault or weakness.
Not that this country was alone in committing that crime.
She shrugged, knowing the woman couldn't see it. "It's less of a rebellion, more of a coup."
"Of course," the Queen breathed with that little triumphant note, her eyes finally raising from the book. "That is a rather important distinction, isn't it?"
"Figure something out?" Longueville asked idly as she grabbed another book. About Germania this time. "Should I be worried?"
"Depends on how much you have at stake in Albion," the Queen said.
She doesn't know anything, Longueville reminded herself as that little knot of ice lodged itself in her stomach. She kept her eyes down on the book she held, turning the pages just to be doing something with her hands. Albion had everything that mattered to her.
"I guess it would be a shame if their vineyards didn't make it," Longueville admitted instead. Her father's estate had vineyards. She could easily recall the trellises covered in the broad green leaves of grape vines, and the green grapes themselves dangling in clusters overhead. She supposed they were still there, unless someone burnt them down. "I'm partial to Albion wines."
"Oh?" Renia de Rutenia asked with a questioning eyebrow raised. "Red or white?"
"White," Longueville decided.
"I never had much patience with white wines," the woman replied easily. "Although I must admit, red has not been kind to me lately. Too dry, too sweet, too tart, too poisoned."
It still took her a moment to register the odd one out. "Too poisoned?"
Renia de Rutenia made a one armed shrug as if she had said nothing out of the ordinary. "Everything in moderation."
There was a twitch of her right index finger and one of them burst from a glittering ruby, more smoke than shadow as it blurred past her. There was a cold breeze, stinging. The library was dark, the shadows moving and closing in until there was just a small circle of - of unaltered reality around the table. She could see it. How the shadows and gloom and even the small motes of dust in the air seemed ever so slightly unreal a few paces away.
"What did you do?" Longueville didn't realize she had raised her wand until she felt the ache of a white knuckled grip shoot down her wrist.
"Do you mind?" The Queen asked in a mild, unassuming tone. She was no longer reading. Her red eyes flicked from the wand to Longueville's face. The only emotion she could see on the woman's face was curiosity. No concern or fear, as if having a wand pointed at her was an everyday occurrence. "You know, I never thought to ask. Commoners have no need for wands, do they?"
"I'm no noble. Baseborn," Longueville lied smoothly as she slipped her wand back into her sleeve. She could feel the twisted grimacing smile forming on her face as she summoned up a little bitterness from the endless well of spite within her. Just enough to singe. "A bastard. I was acknowledged, but that was all."
"I see." Faint amusement replaced the curiosity on the Queen's face - she knows it was a lie - before that too was replaced with what could almost be genuine contrition. "That is unfortunate."
"Is that what you call it?" The heat was still in her voice. "Unfortunate?"
Unfortunate was rain when you expected sun. Unfortunate was a missed opportunity. Unfortunate was tripping on a pothole. There was nothing unfortunate about throwing a child away.
"I used to get angry about it, every time I heard the word bastard." The woman said softly as a peace offering. "But my birth status was not something I could change by being angry."
Longueville carelessly tossed her book on Germania back onto the table. "How'd a half-breed bastard end up a Queen?"
"Very carefully," the Queen said with a gentle smile. "But that is a story for another time."
The woman smiled easily, Longueville noted. And everytime her lips curved up, it always seemed to reach her eyes, lighting up her face and softening the off-putting eye color. The mask was perfect and if Longueville hadn't seen her as she truly was in Osmund's office, with the hard, cruel glint in her eye, she would have been fooled.
You should learn to hide it better.
"Well." The thick red book closed with a loud thump. "Today we will be starting off with something of a...question and answer session. You ask the questions, and I will answer to the best of my ability."
Longueville nodded once to show her understanding, then nodded out towards the rest of the room. "What did you do?"
"Ensured our privacy. To all uninvited guests, the library is empty. They will see nothing. They will hear nothing." The Queen set her red book aside carefully and rolled up some of her scrolls. "If they need a book or scroll I am currently using, they will find a perfect copy right where it should be and if they wander to this table, they will find reasons to be elsewhere."
Was she serious? "Sounds useful."
"It can be," the woman agreed before saying what was already swirling in Longueville's mind. "Elemental magic cannot replicate it."
"Not all of it." Visual and auditory illusions, yes. It was what made wind mages such a pain in the ass to fight, but they always fell apart with any kind of physical interaction. It was an illusion, after all. It was the ability to ward people away from an area that had caught her interest. "By finding reasons to be elsewhere, do you mean…?"
"They will find another table better suited to their needs, perhaps. They might lose interest in reading by a sudden need to relieve themselves, hunger, or just plain boredom." The Queen raised an eyebrow. "They might question their own decision to break curfew, if they were a student. I tend to leave the details to the demon. This one can be clever, on occasion."
Yesterday, she would have killed for a spell like that.
She still would.
Longueville gingerly took a seat on the table and used her feet to drag over a chair to rest her legs on. "And what will it cost you?"
She had to remember that. It would always cost something.
The woman settled her head in her left hand and extended her right. The creature of dark smoke and shadow slithered onto the table. It playfully nipped at the extended fingers, drawing tiny beads of blood. The woman smiled, wiggling her fingers and almost cooing at it as it lapped up the offering. When it finally vanished back into a blood red ruby, Longueville let out the breath she hadn't been aware she was holding.
"That was it?"
"That was it," the woman confirmed with a slight shrug. "That one adores me, well, as much as any of them can." The confusion must have shown on her face, because the woman elaborated. "They may be spirits, but they can feel and think. They can hold grudges and they can show favoritism. If they feel slighted, expect the cost to rise accordingly. Establishing a...working relationship can make all the difference."
"How -" She made a broad, flailing gesture in the vicinity of her own head. "- intelligent are they, exactly?"
The woman's lips pursed. "I will not lie to you, it varies. Some are no better than dogs, others are our equals. As a general rule of thumb, the more powerful they are, the smarter they are. They may even pretend to be weak to get a better price for their services." Her red eyes rolled. "Expect to be tricked once or twice, Mercy knows I had to learn the hard way." Her head tilted thoughtfully. "Be consistent in punishing that. They learn our habits."
For a reason she couldn't quite name, a small chill went down Longueville's spine. She remembered a dream that was not a dream and its simple, almost innocuous questions. "Our habits?"
The Queen trailed her right hand idly through the air, gesturing at everything and nothing. "What we like, what we hate. When we will compromise, when we won't. What we want. What will hurt us. And they will use it against you. Руин - " she hesitated. "The king. Руин. It - "
"Is not a friend," Longueville cut in. It had looked the same, in the dream. It sounded the same. It even smiled the same, wearing the same stupid hat hiding the same thing. But its eyes had given it away. She knew her sister. Her eyes would have never been so cold. That didn't stop it from hurting when it slit its own throat. "I know."
The woman eyed her. "The king and - let's call them dukes - have learned the nuances. They are…" The Queen's smile was unreadable. "Sophisticated. Capable of long-term planning and subtle manipulations. They have convictions. A sense of humour." Her voice dropped to a purr. "They can lust."
Longueville blinked, fighting the urge to recoil as her skin crawled. She tried not to imagine it. "Ugh, no."
The woman laughed a short, sharp note. "You should consider it. There are worse prices to pay." She made a thoughtful sounding hum then. "Far worse."
"You're not really selling me on this," Longueville observed dryly.
The woman scoffed. "If it bothers you so much, just make someone else pay it, remember? Wring the blood from a servant, sacrifice the flesh of a prisoner, inflict pain on someone that owes you a favor, whatever."
"Right," Longueville drawled. "Simple."
Between one blink of an eye and the next, the softness stripped itself from the Queen's face, leaving something cold, hard and brimming with contempt behind. The air grew heavy as the woman idly raised her right hand and swept an index finger through the air. Longueville's breath caught as an ice cold sting languidly traced itself across her throat. Her hand came up, and came away covered in blood.
Okay, she thought. She glanced at the woman and found reptilian red eyes staring back, dark pupils no more than slits and the white of her eyes turned a putrid yellow. Several of the rubies on her arm darkened like ink dropped into a pool of water as the hollows of her cheeks cast sharp shadows. The urge to go for her wand died in the cradle.
"Student," The Queen said evenly. "If you would prefer we skip the pleasantries, I can turn you inside out and sear the information on the inside of your skull instead."
She'd been threatened before. It came with the job. Most threats were just that, threats. Empty bluster made in anger. Not worth paying attention to. Some had that edge, that told her being caught was a bad idea. And when wasn't it? Her current contact could be a right bastard when it suited him, but she believed him when he said she would regret fucking this job up.
She believed the Queen now.
It wasn't a matter of if she would survive. It was a matter of how long.
"I apologize," Longueville forced through her lips and hoped she sounded sincere. "Forgive me?"
For a moment, the pressure closing in on all sides increased before finally fading away. The woman was human again, with a gently amused smile and warm red eyes.
"Of course, I'll forgive you." The woman said pleasantly. "Where were we - ah, debts. Anything that gives you authority over another can be exploited. Leal bonds, family bonds by blood or adoption, master and slave, servant or serf." Her little smile widened. "Teacher and student."
Longueville tensed and the woman laughed.
"The desperate are a more ready source of debtors," she continued. "And children will agree to just about anything. The younger, the easier."
Her mind flashed to that house in the forest, her sister standing in the doorway in silence. No shouting. No yelling or whining. No laughter. Just her sister with that look in her eyes and the yard empty.
She felt sick.
Those red eyes searched her for a long moment.
"You still have it, don't you?" The Queen murmured, sounding as if she discovered something unexpected. "That little voice in your head. The one that tells you when someone deserves it and when someone doesn't. Right and wrong. You still burn at injustice and you have lines you won't cross, hmm?"
Borrowed. It was borrowed from someone better than her.
"You're going to tell me to get rid of it," Longueville guessed.
Over her dead body.
The Queen clucked her tongue. "Keep it. As long as you can ignore it as needed, I see no harm in having a conscience."
Right.
Longueville bit her sarcastic reply back. "So what do I get out of it?"
"The ability to do whatever you can dream of," came the immediate answer and she hated to admit it, but it was a good one. "The usual vices. Riches, beauty, longevity." The woman tilted her head a little, dissecting her with a look. "Freedom."
"For a price."
"That is all that matters," Renia said. "Power and what you are willing to do for it."
Or sacrifice for it.
"What are the payments? Blood, pain…?"
"Blood. Pain. Flesh. Pleasure." The Queen ticked them off on her fingers. "And freedom in that order."
"Freedom?" Longueville ventured cautiously. "Freedom to do what?"
Her question got her an approving nod. "Whatever they desire. It's measured in people. Haggle," she advised. "You'll learn how to price accordingly and at worst, you don't get what you want."
"And if I renege on a deal?"
The Queen's smile flattened. "I would not recommend that."
Yeah, she figured that would be the case.
"And punishments?"
"That is what this is for." The woman held out her right arm, gilded in gold and rubies. The obnoxious display of wealth concealed the ugly, scrawling scars beneath. "An Arcanum has one function: control. The contract only allows the calling of a spirit from Beyond. To get the same spirit each time, it's better to bind it." She traced a finger around one of the rubies, following the silvery line of writing. "Once bound, you can tie geas to it. Or anchor it."
"Anchor?"
"We can still die." A corner of her lips pulled up. "They can't, unless mortality is shared with them. Your life is their life and they are jealous with their things."
Longueville felt her eyebrows rise without her input. "Are...you telling me you are functionally immortal?"
The Queen reached for the collar on her dress and pulled it down. Just to the left of the woman's center Longueville saw the edge of the angry red brown puckered scar tissue first before she saw the ruby embedded in the skin. It looked like a sword wound, one dangerously close to the heart if not through - Without a word, Renia de Rutenia pried the jewel from its resting place and held the hole open.
It was a sword wound. Whatever had done it had cleaved straight through flesh and bone, scoring a rib before gouging a hole through the slick red muscle of a still beating heart and severing several tubes. A malevolent burning eye glared out from the dark smoke sealing the wound and shadow like stitches pinched the tubes together.
She was vaguely aware that her mouth was hanging open.
"The wound is cursed to never close. Perhaps one day my vanity will get the better of me and I'll take on a debt to heal it." The woman's lip curled in an expression of disdain as she sealed it back up with the gem. "I would be willing to help you make an Arcanum. It can be a delicate -"
The words leapt out. "Can I anchor someone else?"
The Queen blinked, her eyes wide and guileless. "You would have to ask."
"And pay a price?" Longueville sighed, brushing a lock of green hair behind her ear. "Is there a reason why the prices are so…"
The woman shrugged. "It is what Руин's kingdom feeds on."
"Feeds?"
"Oh yes," Renia de Rutenia said softly. "They need us. Sorceresses, I mean. Or sorcerers. We are the door that lets them interact with our world. Without us, they must rely on a naturally occuring confluence of reality, a Haunting, for just a taste." She idly straightened books on the table. "There are other kingdoms. Elemental spirits. Animal spirits. Different payments, different rules. I suppose fire is rather straight-forward," she allowed. "As long as you don't care what burns. Met a shaman of the wolf once under a new moon. They were riding his body, enjoying the chase."
"What were they chasing?" Longueville risked asking.
"Something soft and defenseless. Something that could not run very far for very long at all. They enjoyed the chase. They enjoyed the kill even more." The Queen gave her a soft, pitying look. "Are you sure you want to know?"
Longueville closed her eyes.
What would it change, if she knew? If she had the woman say the words. It was a needless - it wouldn't even be a complication. It would just be a confirmed suspicion that offered her nothing. Not her doing, not someone she knew. She was no saint. Even if she was, she thought with some distaste. There wasn't anything anyone could do about it now.
"It doesn't matter."
She looked out at the darkened library and leaned forward until she was just short of slipping off the table. She passed a hand slowly through the circle surrounding them. She could feel the shadows cling to her skin like spiderwebs, before the darkness pulled back.
Yesterday, she would have killed for a spell like this.
She still would.
"Why did you decide to teach me?"
She didn't look back to see the woman shrug, but she could hear it in her voice. "Why not? I was taught."
"Out of spite," Longueville remembered. And her father out of pride. Руин. She remembered a genial smile and frozen eyes.
"True, but taught nonetheless." The woman shifted in her chair, judging from the rustling of cloth, as well as moving her right arm by the tiny clinking noises the golden chain sleeve made. A moment later, the smell of something burning reached her nose. She wasn't fucking burning the books, was she? Longueville turned incredulous eyes only to see the woman shake her thumb to extinguish a tiny flame, a white roll of burning paper in her mouth. "I am doing this out of the goodness of my heart," the Queen said dryly around the paper and Longueville suppressed a snort. "It makes no difference if you believe me or not. All Руин requires is a deal made of your own free will. It need not be an informed decision."
Longueville frowned before picking up another book. About Gallia this time. "What happens then?"
The woman shrugged and blew out a cloud of smoke that smelled like one of Osmund's pipes. "Up to you. If you want, you can make the initial contract and never call on Руин again."
"It will allow that?"
"Provided you word it properly, it will have no choice." The Queen crossed her legs and laid one arm on her lap. "It needs us. We want it. That is the balance of power. Use it well, and it can only collect when you die." Her lips curled up at the corners. "If you die."
That was the catch, wasn't it? She would be borrowing against her death, or whatever comes after. She already knew she wasn't going to reach Valhalla, if it existed, so she never really thought about it. About after.
"What is going to happen to you?" Longueville asked in a low tone. "If you die."
"Me?" The woman leaned back in her chair, visibly giving the matter some thought. She idly inhaled smoke from her paper roll and exhaled as her gaze drifted. "I'm not sure. I suppose…" Her eyebrows drew together as her expression darkened. "A duke will challenge the king for me." She answered softly. There was a hint of something jagged, something chipped, something brittle in her voice before it became derision. "Руин will allow it, of course."
The king and - let's call them dukes - have learned the nuances...they can lust.
They learn our habits. What we hate...what will hurt us. They will use it against you.
There are worse prices to pay.
It wasn't pity she was feeling. Was there such a thing as second-hand empathy? There were echoes of horror and compassion rattling somewhere in her chest like marbles. She could almost see the expression on her sister's face once she connected the dots. She could almost hear the words. They were muted against the dull grey backdrop of why should she care?
She was not her sister.
"Favoritism?" Longueville asked. "You or the duke?"
"Yes." The Queen gave her one of those unreadable smiles as the paper roll between her fingers abruptly burned up, leaving nothing but trails of ash trickling down her hand to blow away on an unfelt breeze. "It will never happen," she asserted. "And if it does, I deserve it for being an idiot."
Longueville raised an eyebrow. "Magic eating poison."
The woman winced. "Extenuating circumstances."
"Of course. Happens to the best of us."
"I would have been fine, eventually."
"I believe you."
The Queen rolled her eyes.
"They still have it, you know," Longueville volunteered. "What they pulled out of you."
"Of course they do," the woman muttered, utterly unsurprised. "I will be destroying it before I leave, so if you want to procure a sample for your employer, you have two days."
Ah. Shit, some tired part of her said.
"How long have you known?"
"I would have bet money on a thief or an assassin the moment I met you," Renia de Rutenia admitted gracefully. "The details filled themselves in later. Would I be correct in assuming you didn't exactly choose this assignment?" Longueville let silence answer for her. "And the poison is a secondary objective, target of opportunity? I do wonder what could be worth stealing out from under all these noses." The woman's red eyes searched her. "And why it is taking so long."
Longueville bit her lip. She wanted to insist that it was her business and that she didn't need assistance, but the truth was, she did. It had been almost a month and the Vault remained as impenetrable as it had been since she arrived. Lately she had been kicking around the idea of resorting to brute force, but she didn't have a good feeling about it. She didn't know how much force was necessary. The more force she had to apply, the more time it would take. The more time it took, the more chances for some busybody to interfere. And there were more people to interfere now. The early arrival of Princess Henrietta's retinue was the worst thing that could have happened, but there was nothing she could do about it.
With a negligent flick of her wrist, the Queen's left hand went from empty, to holding out a good sized glimmering ruby. After a moment of hesitation, Longeuville took it. Like before, it was cold to the touch, but quickly warmed to room temperature. The gem seemed to breathe, a faint pulse like a heartbeat pushing at her fingertips. Her skin crawled, the sensation traveling down from her fingers through her arms as if she was trying to get away from herself. She held the gem up to the shards of moonlight spilling in from the windows. The silver light fractured, glittering as a hundred sparkling stars around a shifting shadow within the jewel. As she watched, the shadow split in two, then four, before reforming as a dark shape within the red.
Whatever you can dream of...for a price.
"So!" The Queen began, sounding absolutely thrilled. "What are we stealing?"
Longueville blinked. "We?"
"So this random man the Headmaster ran into just happened to have a magical artifact capable of killing a full grown dragon with a single cast?"
"Yes?" Longueville tried with a half hearted shrug. "If you believe the old man."
Renia de Rutenia sighed. "Well, the fact that he chose to seal it away lends some weight to the tale…" They passed a few giggling curfew breakers without getting so much as even a second glance. They could hear nothing, see nothing, feel nothing. She suppressed a shiver as a flailing arm passed through her as if she were no more than a ghost. "...Dragonator?" She heard the woman mumble under her breath. "Dragon's bane?"
This time it was Longueville's turn to sigh. "The name is really bothering you, isn't it?"
"Yes!" The woman hissed. "Yes, it is, alright? I'm sorry, but 'staff of destruction' is the most banal -
"We're here."
"...So we are."
The Vault looked the same as it always had. A large stone door with a pentagram carved into it. It was infuriatingly simple in its design, at first glance. However, with just the slightest bit of mana channeled into it like so…A spidering web of light bloomed into existence under her hand. Within seconds it grew to encompass the entire door, some twenty - twenty five feet in height covered with arcane diagrams made out of glowing white light. Every line was still in place. Immaculate.
"Best I could figure, it needs a key of some kind," Longueville said as the Queen flicked a finger against the stone door. "Well, I was hoping it just needs a key."
"Counterspell," Renia murmured thoughtfully. "Same difference really."
The ruby in her hand froze. That split second warning was enough for her not to startle too badly when one of them popped out. It was ugly, squat, squishy and many limbed like a cross between a spider and a slug. It slowly scuttled back and forth on the floor, a single burning eye staring upwards.
The Queen inspected it critically and then took a very deliberate, large step off to the side. "Well? Go on then."
For one terrifying moment, Longueville's mind was blank.
Then gradually, the words came to her.
"The job...is getting me in that vault, grabbing a one item and getting out without setting off any alarms, traps, protections, monitors or any triggered security measures in the process." She ran the sentence an additional two times in her head, searching for anything she missed. The spirit sat there for a moment, then shifted its eye to the side to look around her at the door. It didn't have an expression, but she could almost hear the dull 'um…' "Keeping the arcane array intact is not necessary," she offered. "Price?"
Its eye moved back to the center and narrowed.
Flesh.
In spite of herself, she turned towards the Queen. She didn't know what she expected to find - a clue maybe - but the woman had on a perfect mask of polite curiosity, betraying nothing. Their eyes met and with the glimmer of amusement in her eyes, Renia raised an eyebrow and mouthed 'haggle.' She contemplated asking if she could - maybe - get another spirit, or something, instead, but this felt too much like a final exam where she was expected to sink or swim.
So flesh.
"How much flesh are we talking about?"
The spirit shifted left and right, then extended a spindly arm. It sketched a quick rectangle in the air and Longueville blanched.
"Half that." At least. "From where?"
Its eye narrowed further.
Hip?
Longueville put a hand on said hip and noted just how close to the skin her bone was. "Thigh," was her counter offer and the spirit moved closer. "Just flesh," she said quickly. "No pain, no blood."
It paused.
Yes.
"Deal."
It lashed out as a blur of shadow and smoke. Longueville hissed as her right leg developed a cold spot, just warm enough not to burn but cold enough to feel tight as she put weight on it. She stretched her leg out to look and hissed again. It had torn through her skirt leaving a ragged hole in both fabric and skin. The wound was an ugly blackened color and shriveled like dried meat. Bordering the black was flushed an irritated red and yellow, like a healing bruise. True to its word. No blood, no pain.
A cracking sound sounded out and she turned in time to watch the arcane array on the vault door shatter like broken glass.
So that was it.
So this was how the woman tempted people into making what she was sure the Church would consider deals with devils. She was not even being remotely subtle about it, and it was working.
She thought she could laugh. She didn't. Instead, she looked over once more. The spirit was on the Queen's right shoulder, spindly legs hooking onto the fine golden chains of the...Arcanum? Its red eye was roving the ceiling as two claws fastidiously arranged and rearranged the woman's black curls. Longueville tossed her the ruby and the spirit caught it.
"Shall we?" Renia asked.
In answer, Longueville pushed those great doors and they whispered open.
The Vault looked much like a library with a few display items. Most of the items were tomes, grimoires and scrolls still in their casings sorted by some esoteric criteria. Knowing Osmund, probably alphabetical. She drifted over to the display pieces, eyeing the tags. After the first few steps, the hole in her leg was easy to ignore as she dragged a finger through the dust covering some of the names.
"Here it is," she whispered.
"Oh?" The Queen abandoned the book she had picked up. "...This?"
The Staff of Destruction was an ugly clumsy looking thing. It was a hefty cylinder of a dull greenish brown color. It seemed like it could be extended, a slightly smaller cylinder sticking out of one end while the other had a roughly rectangular protrusion slapped on it with odd bits and ends sticking out even further for no purpose she could discern.
"That is not a staff." Renia de Rutenia said, her face scrunched up in confusion. "It's not even magic."
Longueville reached out and flicked the tag.
"Staff of Destruction," she read out loud.
The woman made a frustrated noise in her throat. "Not a staff. I do not know what it is but - "
Longueville reached out and picked it up. It had a weight to it that told her hitting someone over the head with it would work just as well. She was careful not to touch any protruding thing. This thing could kill a dragon, the last thing she wanted to do was set it off on accident.
"Does it matter?" She asked as she shifted it around. Under the arm? Too bad this thing didn't come with a strap. She set it on her shoulder. "Not my job to figure it out."
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Queen pick up a large blue crystal or gem with a spiraling purple vein.
"Orb of the Archon," the woman murmured with a scoff. "That name tells me he has no idea what this does."
"And you do?" Longueville wondered.
"No," the woman admitted baldly. "But I intend to find out. It tastes amazing."
Tastes?
The woman handed the Orb to her pet spirit on her shoulder. Longueville watched in morbid fascination as a seam split the creature in two straight through its eye and a wicked maw twice its size lined with curved needle teeth opened up. It swallowed the Orb whole, for a moment it was distended like a snake digesting a fresh kill, then it became a cloud of dark smoke and shadow. It twisted down her gilded arm in loosely braided streams of darkness, sniffing out its ruby.
Longueville paused just outside the Vault doors and gave the stone a look. "So how do I close - "
The Queen reached out with her off hand and clenched a fist. With a small groan, the doors swung shut leaving the pentagram carving intact once more, as if undisturbed. It would take until someone checked the protections for the ruse would come to light.
Longueville let out a small sigh. Stash the staff, inform contact, deflect suspicion. Priorities. "Your Conceal - " another spell she would have fucking murdered for "- is going to last how long?"
The Queen turned back to her. "Let's say dawn. That should be enough time to hide that thing with none the wiser."
"How do you know I'm not just going to run for it?"
"And give yourself away so easily?" The woman questioned, sounding as if it had never crossed her mind. "You might need Longueville again someday."
How had she put it?
I would have bet money on a thief or an assassin.
"What were you, before you were a Queen?"
The woman gave her one of those gentle, genuine smiles that she was beginning to realize were built to hide something ugly. It was the moments when she seemed honest with no hidden depths that hid the treacherous currents.
"I was a noble woman's bastard."
Fair.
Her lips quirked at a stray thought. Why not make it two for two?
"Tip for your trip. Cromwell has this woman, who wears a hood. Reminds me of you."
The Queen regarded her thoughtfully. "Thank you."
"Are you going to save them?"
"Yes, I think I will."
The woman closed her red eyes.
"For a price."
Sepsis caused by gangrenous thigh tissue will set in after eight hours, shock in sixteen.
That would suit her purposes perfectly.
Renia caressed the ruby with her thumb, conveying a sense of gratitude and satisfaction through the threads that bound them together. She could feel the demon reluctantly bask in the attention. It hovered in that awkward band of intelligence between beast and man where it recognized simple manipulations but still fell prey to it.
Well, to be fair, plenty of people occupied that intelligence wavelength.
She returned to her quarters humming the melody to a nameless song. The lesson had gone rather well, she thought. And unless she had grossly misjudged Tristain's medical standards, the final exam was a rather simplistic affair.
Pass or fail.
She reached behind her for the clasp to her dress and let the voluminous material fall to her feet. She unclasped her Arcanum next, biting her lip as the freezing cold metal pulled away from her skin. Her right arm flushed with a feverish heat. Her contract scars pulled and pinched, red and irritated as if they had just healed yesterday.
Blood and flesh.
She placed the golden chain within the dresser drawer, ignoring the golden crown atop it. It wasn't until she glanced in the mirror that she realized the reflection wasn't hers.
"Руин!"
She yanked on her night shift in record time and bit her thumb - no anger, no anger - before she turned back to the mirror.
"You are being impatient."
Her mother's image in the glass smiled that woman's wicked little grin. That auburn hair was swept up as it usually was, spilling over in smooth waves. She had her upturned nose and small ears, delicate chin and the high cheekbones Renia inherited. A smattering of freckles dusted the bridge of that nose. Those blue eyes were cold.
Renia had always taken more after her father.
"The eighth clause," it said in her mother's voice. It was a voice built for an airy soprano. "Seven days for minor requests."
"Min - " Of course it would classify healing her of the spores as a minor request. Stupid. "Minor. Fine. That still leaves me three days."
It had to warn her at three days. Eleventh clause.
"Can you do it?" It asked and for a moment, she thought it almost sounded concerned.
It was a lie.
It had always been a lie.
"I will have to, won't I?" Her mother had turned this into an artform. Recruiting. Whoring. Her earliest memories were filled with days watching the wheat be separated from the chaff, as the woman called it. Blood and bloody sport for her favor. To the victor, the spoils. The fortunate losers were eliminated early. Permanently. Surviving to the end had done no one any favors.
Sepsis in eight hours, shock in sixteen.
Her arm snapped out on a whim. Her fingers brushed against its form in the mirror, the silk of a midnight blackness and the chill of a winter's breeze numbing her fingertips. It stopped. She could feel its focus as she dropped her hand.
"Do not break her."
"Did I break you?" It asked and her breath caught at the innocently curious tone. As if it did not know. As if it had not been in her mind. As if it had not forced its way into her very soul, right down to the tiny corner filled with moonlight. She could still hear the echoing shriek inside her head as claws greedily reached for the very last sliver of her soul and failed to find purchase. She could hear that moment of silence, still feel the dread, as it realized what she had done.
CHEAT!
CHEAT!
Her right arm throbbed with phantom pain.
"You will not break her." Renia amended.
"Oh?" It said mildly.
"I know you, Руин." She said, "One of these magi will not be enough. The next debt owed will be paid with one more. And then another. You are greedy."
It smiled a corpse's smile, blackened gums of necrotic tissue and stained teeth.
"You will not break this one, and I will consider giving you another toy. You will not break that one and you will retain the privilege." She would be condemning herself to never calling on Руин again. It was a price she could live with. It would know that. She could not renegotiate without breaking her contract, but incurring debts was her prerogative. She took a breath and placed a hand on her crown. "And if you try to go around me by ordering it of your toys instead, I will kill them. Do you understand?"
It exploded from the mirror in a shower of razor shards, a pit of emptiness behind the glass reached out for her.
It was the work of a moment to press a demon out of reality.
Any demon.
The glass fell to the floor in a song made out of the tinkling shards hitting stone. The back of the mirror was bare wood, a few lingering pieces of glass clinging to the outer edge of the circle. She stared into the dark ruby on her crown. She did not know how long she sat there, waiting for the dark fire to appear.
Eventually, it did and it spoke with its own voice of one thousand screams.
Agreed.
"Agreed," Renia echoed.
Anything, it said as a promise. For my little girl.