crying wind
by Lockehart
If the healer hadn't personally told Lise Hawk would survive, she'd have thought him dead and a ghost. The young man certainly behaved like one: he drifted about the castle, startled all the Amazonesses, and sometimes went up and down the mountain, using his ninja skills to stay hidden and slaughter the monsters hereabouts. Most of the soldiers felt he was doing good, but all admitted to being spooked by his strange ways. The most Lise had seen of him was when she'd caught him sitting on the castle battlements, sketching: the face of a bright young woman, looking out of the slate with, she thought, quite an accusatory look. She still didn't know who the mysterious woman was--Hawk refused to tell.
They had a sort of truce, both of them: Hawk showed no inclination to leave, Lise didn't bring the matter up, and they could both pretend he wasn't living on her charity. If it wasn't for some questions she wanted to ask him, Lise wouldn't even be looking for him now, lest her advisors start warning her about "spending time along with a strange male, and Navarrian to boot".
She finally found him, up in the tower this time. Again sketching, chalk scratching against a piece of slate. The picture was of the rugged mountainous view from the tower windows, and Lise wondered about the girl she'd seen him draw. They remained that way for a while in companionable silence broken only by the sound of the chalk (to be gotten in abundance in the mountains, and Rolante's main exports) on the slate. Lise watched him, and relaxed, finally away from stressful dance of court proceedings.
At last Hawk put the final touches on the sketch, careful not to smudge the chalk and looked up, oddly shy. He held up the slate to her, a faint grin showing on his face. "You like?" Hawk, you're truly a ghost, a shadow of who you once was.
"You've got talent," Lise responded neutrally, mentally comparing the sketch with the view.
"I could draw a more permanent one, if I could get my hands on some charcoal and parchment. Payment, you could say, for sticking around your castle so long when it's pretty clear I annoy half the advisors, startle half the soldiers and scare the children."
"That... won't be necessary." Silenced again, they watched as the evening sun slanted rays into the west-facing tower.
"Hawk, who is that girl?" Lise broke the silence suddenly, and wished she hadn't. Hawk's face went inward: his eyes shuttered and froze over, his body stiffened. Finally he spoke.
"She's... an old friend. Jessica." The way he spoke the name gave the work 'friend' different meanings. "She's dead."
"I'm sorry."
"You didn't kill her." Lise knew from Hawk and a few of her informants that Navarre's new king had crowned himself by bringing archers and some thugs, catching the Navarrian thieves' guild in a meeting and killing them all, then making those same thugs and archers the new army and assuming control of the city. Since the thieves' guild held the only real power in Navarre after the old king died, there was little resistance. She'd been looking at things from an outsider's view, Lise realized. Hawk was practically an outcast from his own land. His only family had been the thieves--all dead, killed in front of him, and then there was Jessica. His friend, his lover? Hawk had a very good reason for playing the ghost.
"You didn't, either," Lise said, the words popping out of her mouth unbidden. He, she realized, was very much like her. He was probably angry that his country was captured, grieving over the death of friends and family, guilty that he hadn't been able to make a difference, especially when it came to one special person. She'd blamed herself too, for Eliott's capture. Overwhelmed by the 'should haves', Lise had kept busy with her work and squashed all that into a corner of her mind. Still, the conversation was bringing up a lot of things she didn't want to think about. No, she couldn't cry! Not here, not now.
It was only when Hawk jerked up with a look of shock on his face that she knew how correct she was. "It doesn't matter, does it?" the ninja choked bitterly. "She's beyond my help now."
"You aren't," Lise shot back and stormed from the tower before her emotions could get the better of her. The last she saw of him, Hawk was staring at her, but he looked thoughtful. Maybe that was good. Maybe.
