On a related note, I'm sorry for not replying yet to those of you who've sent me e-mails. See above, although disregard the part about it being a virtue. In this case it's just plain bad manners. Again, sorry. I'm going to go through them tomorrow.
On yet another note, I watched some of the old episodes a few weeks ago. What was the point with all the tension and the scenes and the frigging telepathic dreams and then at the end is there closure? No. Is there a final scene where Renee forgives Howlyn and/or cuts his head off? No. Damn it, I demand some sort of ending to that story arc besides him dying at the hands of someone only one step above an extra and her re-enacting the Star Trek franchise with Liam "I get knocked down, but I get up again with no explanation at all" Kincaid. Grrr.
~AKA Jay
Chapter Six
Renee woke up slowly, struggling drowsily out of the depths of a dream that refused to transition easily to waking. It clung stickily to the sides of her mind like a black fog and when she opened her eyes it seemed to her that she was still in the forest, shadow-walls of trees rising above her in endless rows.
The forest had been in the dream, she thought. Or was it another forest? It was slipping away.
She yawned widely and blinked and knew that she was no longer in the forest. The blackness around her was soft and layered when she touched it, brushing against her thighs when she stood up and stepped away.
Renee looked back at her erstwhile bed and shook her head, her lips twisting. Of course the Atavus would sleep in something like this, she thought wryly. Yulyn had called it a nest when he described it to her - she would have called it a rose. A black rose, with soft dark petals that rose in progressively higher rows spiralling out from the center.
The petals were only there to block the light from sensitive Atavus eyes, of course. And the arrangement was a purely practical one. Right. And Batman only wore black because it didn't show the dirt.
Renee yawned again, her eyes half-closing.
And froze as a series of still pictures flashed across her mind like an old fashioned slide show: Click - Howlyn sleeping in a bed like this one, bare to the waist, his skin glowing rich gold against the black. Click - Howlyn awake, his head lifted, his eyes fixed on hers and that dangerous mouth relaxed into a slow inviting smile. Click - Howlyn much, much closer. Click - Her shadow falling across Howlyn's face.
Renee flinched, an instinctive body-shudder like an animal throwing off a hand, and the pictures vanished.
A part of the dream? Maybe. An overactive imagination? Probably. Something to forget about? Definitely.
She pushed the moment aside and walked to the window. The first sliver of moon was visible above the trees, its light illuminating the dark stone walls and meagre furnishings of her room. Everything was grey or black or gray-black. No reds, no greens - what would be the point? Everything would look gray anyway in this shadowy night-world she'd brought herself to. She thought briefly and longingly of Street and her multicoloured hair.
The knife came free from its sheath with only a slight tug. It felt almost barbaric to be holding a real knife made from metal and fire instead of nanites and Taelon energy, but there was something oddly reassuring about its weight in her hands.
She tilted it upwards to catch the moonlight and saw in its thin (grey) blade the reflection of her changed (grey) skin and the bony forehead that was all that was standing between her and a permanent place in an Atavus freak how. She tilted it farther and it flashed (grey) light and showed her dark blue (or blue-grey or grey-grey) eyes, looking reassuringly unchanged despite all the changes to the face around them. Those were still hers, at least.
She tugged a lock of hair down over her eyes and smiled at the sudden flash of silver. That was hers too. Street had argued for dying it black - more consistent, she'd said. Renee had refused.
The fingers holding the lock of hair had thick, ugly nails.
Renee tucked the knife away, checking carefully to make sure that no part of it was showing. The Atavus didn't use weapons - they were weapons. Which reminded her Renee took a deep breath and tensed her index finger, watching as a claw sprang to shining life. She turned it one way and the other, assessing its opal glow critically. Not perfect, but close enough.
Leaning against the wall, she braced one hand against the edge of the window and held the other hand out in front of her.
Flames burst from her fingers and shaped themselves into pointed talons. At least that was what Renee assumed she would see if her eyes weren't closed. As it was, all she saw was spots. She pressed her head hard back against the wall and fisted her other hand tighter until the jagged black nails tore at her palm, the sharp sweet pains a welcome distraction from the agony screaming down her fingers and into her bones.
It's not really hurting me, she thought. She tried to send the message to her nerves: it's not really hurting, the energy just activates all the pain nerves but it's not real, it's a trick, there's nothing hurting me, please stop, please, please pleasepleaseplease-
Renee relaxed her hand and the claws disappeared. The pain stopped as suddenly and completely as if someone had flipped the off switch. She let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. She'd been able to hold it for longer this time. Eventually, she said to herself, I won't even notice the pain.
She took another breath and got up off the floor (when had she fallen to the floor?) and stretched, wiping her bloody palm clean on her leg. She checked through her bag to make sure that nothing was missing before she slung it over her shoulder.
There was a curtain across the doorway to her chamber. Not a door, since that might interfere with assassinations or combats. Wouldn't want to give the weak or injured a place to hide. She pushed the curtain aside with more force than was necessary and stepped out into the dimly lit corridor.
Her room was on the third 'floor' of the lodging building; a small area because she'd chosen to say that she was from a tribe that was famous for not travelling. Three stories, she grumbled silently to herself as she continued towards the exit. And no stairs. Just endlessly sloping, twisting hallways. She walked past the caretaker's door - a real door, she noticed, not a curtain - without stopping.
She stepped out onto the street and that was so much worse. Sudden shock of strangeness, her whole body tensing in rejection of all the things that were alien-wrong. Blue-grey moonlight and the darker grey figures of Atavus moving through the streets. Atavus alone, watching everyone. Atavus in groups that were really packs, being watched and carefully not watching.
And then she was out in the middle of it. Stepping into the crowd was like walking into a bad dream, a sick feeling in her stomach as she walked among the monsters and felt every touch of their eyes ring in her like a warning bell. She wanted to draw her knife and charge like a berserker into the crowd. She wanted to run back to the portal and beg Street to bring her home.
She didn't look at anyone as she walked on. Looking meant interest meant need meant vulnerability, she repeated to herself.
The layout of the city was a confusion of black lines in her mind, with a red dot marking the location of the 'bar' she was looking for. Yulyn's mother had taken him there once; Howlyn had been very angry when he'd found out where they'd been.
Renee came to a wider street and had to fight a smile. She was heading the right way. Just a few more turns and she'd be one step closer to making contact with the lowest of the low, the most subversive of the subversive, the scum that made the rest of the Atavus look good.
She couldn't wait.
She turned again and stopped. There was a crowd lining both sides of the road, sleek black heads as far as the eye could see, just like a parade crowd but with far less talking. The eyes of the crowd were focused on a group - a procession? - moving down the center of the street: three men walking a few steps behind another man.
A lord and his guards, Renee guessed, since they were completely ignoring the crowd. It took breeding to be that arrogant. The people watched them as they went by, and wherever they passed the crowds were silent. And still.
Renee watched the procession for a long moment before she turned away. She'd find another way to get to where she was going.
Something twitched inside her, a flash of warning like the sound of a floorboard creaking in an empty house.
She turned back and scanned the street. A sea of black and gold, frozen and still and - there. A ripple of movement at the back of the frozen crowd, one dark head moving along in the same direction as the procession, just a few steps ahead of it, pacing it. Stalking it.
Not my problem, Renee thought. Her eyes flickered to where the guards marched behind their lord, eyes staring straight ahead, and then back to where she had seen the movement.
"Hell." She said with feeling and plunged into the crowd, losing herself instantly in a forest of chests and backs. She pushed her way to the narrow gap at the back of the throng and spotted the back of the stalker moving away from her at speed, disappearing behind the crowd.
Calm settled over her as the map in her mind narrowed to show only a shifting triangle described by the space and angles between the hunter, the hunted and her. She walked quickly, closing the gap.
The ground was sloping upwards and Renee's heart jumped. The hunter was on the high ground now and getting higher. Tactical advantage. The crowd shifted slightly and she could see that he had stopped moving and he was farther away from her than she'd thought. She broke into a run.
He was staring out over the heads of the crowd to where she knew the procession must be, and he was pulling something out of a bag, something that caught the light.
She was going to be too late, couldn't run fast enough now because his hand was going back and springing forward and then there was something in the air, a flashing something no sooner seen than gone.
Renee looked to her left and in a snapshot glance saw one of the guards fall, the others stop. Only a second's glance because ahead of her the hunter-assassin had another deadly something in his hand and she still wasn't going to get there in time.
The knife was in her hand before she thought and as the assassin drew back his arm she threw the knife with all the strength the suit could give her.
The shiny something hit the ground with a tortured metal whine and the knife was in his arm, driven deep into the muscle and god only knew, maybe the bone.
I love this suit, she thought as she reached him and stretched out a clawed hand to grab his arm. He spun to face her faster than she'd ever seen anything move and she didn't feel the blow, it was too fast, and then there was a moment of blurred flying confusion and a great thud as she hit the wall and light flashed through her and blinded her.
She opened her eyes and the guards had reached the assassin. From her position on the ground by the wall she saw them circling him, moving around him in a tightening circle.
The assassin had what looked like a long metal staff from somewhere and he was lashing out with it again and again ever faster until it looked like he had five staffs, ten, twenty staffs sweeping and twirling and flashing in the moonlight.
Christ, Renee thought with disbelief. What is this, the high school drill team? She almost expected the assassin to start high stepping away down the street. His flashy tricks seemed to be confusing the guards though; instead of kicking the staff out of the maniac's hand, they were staying a wary distance away and trying to swipe at him with their claws.
Renee kept her eyes half closed and watched as she slowly began to move herself into a sitting position.
The guards were growling now, showing their teeth as they lashed out again and again and again and again the staff flashed dull gray in the half-light and rapped away the claws. Blood showed black on their faces and on their hands.
Renee thought that this must be how the tigers had looked the first time a human picked up a burning stick and swung it at them: baffled pain, slow circling confusion and a growing mindless fury towards the thing that had changed the rules.
She looked out from under half-closed eyes and saw that the crowd had formed a very wide circle around the fighters. There was a rumble in the air like one growl formed by a hundred throats. A crowd of monsters, she thought, staying out of a fight. What's wrong with this picture?
A louder growl and she looked back to see that the guards were becoming careless in their anger, swinging wildly, taking chances, pressing too close as they clawed the air, seemingly oblivious to everything but the desire for blood under their hands.
One went down as she watched, the staff making a hideous liquid thud when it connected with the side of his head. The other guard howled and threw himself at the assassin. Renee pressed her back against the wall and started to push herself slowly to her feet.
Then she was standing and the second guard was falling towards the ground. No time left to watch. The assassin was already turning to face her and she caught her first real glimpse of his face, laughing and exultant with the guards' blood still wet on his cheek.
She moved towards him as he turned on her with that maniac's grin still in place, holding the bloody staff up in front of him as if he hoped she'd run into it. She stopped about three feet away from him, just out of range, and his thoughts were written clearly on his face, things like: she's afraid of me, she's just like the others, I can beat her.
Renee smiled at him. Slowly, she shook her head. The assassin's eyes narrowed, and he brought the staff around in a shining arc, showing off. He held it like he was holding a broom and she was tempted to knock it out of his hands just to watch his smile drip away. But no, let him keep his shiny toy. He was an amateur with weapons - he'd had a lifetime of practice with his claws.
She swung tentatively at him, glared when he rapped her strikes away, growled when he caught her with a glancing blow. She hoped that she was being convincing, but it was hard to act angry when there was a small gleeful voice running like a river in the back of her thoughts and what it was saying over and over again was I know something you don't know.
Then finally his smile was cocky enough, his tricks were fancy enough, his guard was low enough, and the moment had come. The smile she'd been hiding burst free and I know something you don't know hummed through her like an electric current.
I know, she thought, that if I step in close to you (like this) it won't matter that the staff gives you a longer reach.
I know that you'll be startled and your hands will freeze tightly on the staff (just like that) because you don't want me to take it away.
I know that you won't be quick enough (too slow) to stop me from grabbing the middle of the staff.
I know that if I push hard and fast the staff will hit you in the stomach (ouch) and you'll double over.
I know that even then you won't let go of your deadly little security blanket (just a boy) and I'll have time to step behind you.
I know that when you start to straighten I'll be able to grab the ends of the staff (mine now) and force it up and pull it back until you feel the metal cold against your throat.
She hadn't known that he wouldn't let go of the staff, that his hands would still be gripping it desperately as she pulled it hard against his throat.
She hadn't guessed that it would be so hard to place her knee against the monster's back and brace herself so that he couldn't pull away.
She could never have imagined the horrible sounds he'd make as his air ran out: terrible gasping broken sounds like a child crying. (forgive me)
Renee held him there while he struggled, held him when he stopped struggling, held him as he became a dead weight leaning on her and pushing her backwards. Finally his hands dropped away from the pole and fell limp at his sides.
Renee released the pole and lowered the assassin's body to the ground. His weapon fell across his chest. She realised that she was shaking.
Curling her fingers into her palms, she drew herself up to her full height and forced herself to smile thinly as she met the eyes of the crowd. Behind her the guards were getting to their feet.
There was a rustle in the crowd, a sub-vocal shudder as one by one the eyes turned from Renee and focused on the figure moving towards her.
The lord's face was blank. Renee dropped her gaze just in time, remembering that she should not, must not, meet his eyes. She was not this man's equal. She stared at his throat instead and tried not to think of her own throat, naked and exposed.
"Weapons." One of the guards growled from close beside her.
"Used only by the weak." His partner agreed in a low snarl from her other side.
The first guard held her knife out to her, smirking. He said nothing.
Renee stiffened. Offer help, get insults. Just what she'd expect from the Atavus. She took the knife casually and pushed it back into its sheath.
"Are you often beaten by weaklings?" She asked under her breath.
The answer came from an unexpected source.
"No," the lord said. "They are not often beaten by anyone."
"Never." Said the first guard.
"Well. Never before." The lord said, and the calm in his voice was a terrifying thing. Renee looked down at the ground, her head bent. "And you, my unbidden protector," The way he said 'unbidden' made her shiver. "Who do you guard?"
"I guard no one." Renee said to his feet.
She heard the smile in his voice. "Only a guard would interfere. Only a guard would risk challenge."
Her eyes darted up and then dropped. Challenge? What the hell had she done that - she let out a breath. Oh yes. Helping meant that you doubted the strength of your ally. No one helped unless asked, and asking for help was something to be ashamed of. But she wasn't dead right now because they thought -
"Yes. I'm a guard." She said calmly, trying to remember everything she'd been told about guards.
She heard a laugh behind her and a low voice said, "A guard who uses weapons." The crowd reacted with a rumble of discontent.
She turned her head infinitesimally and glanced at the first guard. "Is your pride worth more than your lord's life?" She put disbelief into the question.
Another growl from the guard and she thought she might have gone too far. The lord raised a hand and the growling stopped.
"An unusual point of view," The lord said. "But I can't bring myself to completely disagree with it."
Renee relaxed a little. That was about as much as she could have hoped for. "I-" she started to say.
"Who do you guard?" The lord asked again. "Where is your lord?"
She was prepared for that. "My lord is dead."
"Unsurprising," Someone said in the vicinity of her left ear.
She lifted her upper lip in a snarl. "He died of age," she said, still keeping her focus on the lord. "His heirs released me."
"Of what tribe?" The lord asked.
"I can't say." Renee said, hoping that her answer gave the impression of deep dark secrets.
The lord's attention seemed to sharpen. "Will there be battle if you meet again?"
"No."
"Then there will be no problem should they attend the meeting. Come." He turned his back on her and started to walk away.
What? Renee thought. "What?" She said.
The lord didn't look back.
"You are luckier than you deserve." Someone hissed, and she turned to see the first guard hoisting the assassin's unconscious body onto his shoulders. He walked after the lord, apparently unencumbered by the weight.
A heavy arm fell across her shoulders and she found herself being urged forward by the other guard.
"You are fortunate that our lord accepted your offer." The guard said smoothly. Renee stopped walking. He kept walking, dragging her arm along with him, forcing her to keep up.
"Wait-" she said.
"He is one of the five." The guard said, looking straight ahead.
Renee's mind blanked. "The five do not leave their castles," she said numbly. Yulyn had been very clear on that, she thought frantically. Minor lords travel, the five stayed safely in their own castles.
"Yes," The guard said, slowing down now that they had caught up with the first guard. "But now they are here."
"All of them?" She said, hearing the squeak in her voice and not caring.
"For the meeting." The first guard added.
"Perhaps it is well that you have joined us," The second guard said, his smile very white against his dark skin. "The cowards must be desperate if they dare attack one of the five. They grow insane as the time of the meeting draws closer. Who knows what they will try next." He fell silent, his eyes on his lord.
Renee felt ill. She glanced from left to right looking for a way out but saw none. The two guards marched beside her like well, like guards. And even if she got past them, she wouldn't want to bet that the crowd would stay out of it again.
She glanced over at the unconscious form of her adversary, being lugged along over the shoulder of the guard like a sack of old potatoes. His head bounced on the guard's back with every step, his dark hair falling down almost to the ground, exposing the back of his neck. There was something there - Renee looked closer and saw a dark red marking in the shape of a circle.
"What does that symbol mean?" Renee asked. "I haven't seen it before."
"You've been lucky," The first guard said with an amused twist to his lip. "The cowards call it a reminder mark. It shows that this one has killed in the service of his traitorous cause."
Atavus killing Atavus, Renee thought to herself. Sounds like a good idea.
"It's disgusting," The second guard said with sudden heat, looking at the unconscious assassin with loathing. "They willingly mark their body with symbols of slavery." His voice rose to a low roar. "My father died on the Journey!"
"Calm," The first guard said, shooting his partner a warning glance. "Don't think about it now. We will never return to the home world, our lord will see to that." He jostled his prisoner roughly. "And when this one wakes, perhaps the King will allow us the honour of cutting this offensive mark from his treacherous flesh."
Renee stumbled and would have fallen if the second guard hadn't steadied her. She murmured thanks, or thought she did. The two guards continued talking; their voices were a rush of noise in her ears. There was a numbness spreading through her arms and legs, closing in on the core of her stomach where something very like pain was just beginning to make itself felt. She couldn't believe she was still breathing, still walking.
As if in slow motion her head turned to look at the body of the assassin. Hello, she said in her mind. My name is Renee. I came here to help you.
Forgive me.
One of the guards nudged her with his shoulder. "Stand tall," he said. "We're almost to the palace."
_______
Tell me what you think?
Confused yet? Want me to slow it down? Want me to speed it up? Want me to introduce
a cute sidekick for Renee, possibly some kind of talking alien fluff ball? Tell
me. I promise nothing but I'd like to hear about it anyway. *g*