City of Misfortune
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At that very moment, ensconced in the Chamber of the Sun, surrounded by all the heads of state and important officials, Princess Lisa of Tiberoa was undergoing the first coming-of-age ritual held without the Moon Daggers for the first time in as long as any could remember.
Everyone was a little disappointed about that last fact, to be honest, since seeing the heir to the throne brandishing a pair of wickedly sharp knives tended to cement her image in people's minds in a very big way, but since as the Moon Daggers had never been rightfully returned to the throne after their shocking theft, the crown was left with little options. Princess Lisa was instead being handed a brand new royal scepter, to the mixed feelings of all.
Gehrich personally didn't give a shit, since he was out standing in the courtyard just beyond the palace walls with approximately six hundred other Tiberoans while the sun beat down with all the enthusiasm of an active volcano. He'd never seen the appeal of the Daggers in the first place, and at this point, he was just hoping that the scepter would take less time to hand over.
His eye caught movement coming from behind him, and reflexively, he snapped his eyes over to check. The gang of kids in the alley just behind Gehrich was messing around with cheap frost magics- crushing the tiny wax capsules in their teeth and collapsing into giggles as they found themselves sucking on eye-ball sized chunks of ice within seconds. The ones who got bored with that amused themselves by hucking them into the tightly packed crowd. The magics themselves sold for a penny a handful at any of the stalls around here, but the more powerful versions were reserved mainly for the military. Gehrich didn't think much of bought magic, but they were decent enough kid's toys.
He wasn't in any danger of being spotted at the moment; he'd made sure to keep his head down and his appearance as changed as possible, and even with the level of notoriety he'd received in the past couple of months, not too many people could connect a face to his name. The heat made him uncomfortable, but he'd been living out here in the desert for years now, and he could bear it. Gehrich might have been putting himself through no small amount of trouble for this whole stupid occasion, but he figured it was worth it.
He liked Lisa. More than her sister anyway. He figured that was rich, coming from him, but he thought that she belonged here more than Emile did. Er, had, really, now that Emile had married into Serdian royalty. Beautiful older princesses don't tend to stay at home looking after things, and Emile had never been anything other than beautiful.
He liked Lisa, because she wasn't the pretty sister, because she wasn't the one who was meant to give big speeches at the end of the day to make everyone feel good. He liked that she'd stayed home and taken care of the house during that whole shitstorm he'd stirred up, and he liked that she was the one to move behind everyone's backs to free her sister. Word was that she'd faced down some of his men by herself, relying only on status and stiff upper lip. He liked that. Royalty had to be sneaky, and it had to be haughty enough to get things done.
The word also was that she had a major thing for the botanical freak in the market district, which didn't hurt Gehrich's opinion of her either. Emile had fallen for a King, almost as unattainable of a target as you could get. Lisa, on the other hand, went for the grimy-fingered botanist who everybody knew as a decent enough fellow, once you could get him to stop talking about plants. (He's from Donau, everyone said. He just isn't used to the desert.) She was a Tiberoan girl, through and through. Took care of the home, protected it with her life, and chose her targets carefully. Once Zior had finally skipped off the mortal coil (Sooner rather than later, thought Gehrich, the fat fuck), she would make an excellent queen.
The crowd went quiet, suddenly, and then erupted as the trumpets bla-a-ated triumphantly as Lisa, followed closely by her retinue, and bearing her new scepter without a trace of self-consciousness, descended into the roped-off courtyard.
He cracked a grin at all the noise, even as he reflexively pulled down his hood. It seemed he wasn't alone in his opinion. They'd loved Emile, sure. But she'd left, and Lisa had always struck them as more… something, than her older sister. More susceptible to the crusty wiles of gardeners, certainly, which boosted everyone's ego no small amount.
She came to a halt in the center of the roped-off enclosure, a shy smile on her face as she held her scepter held gracefully as a bouquet of flowers in her white-gloved hands. She wasn't beautiful, not really. She stood too nervously under the regard of the crowd, and she was built like a bundle of sticks. She didn't have that luminous quality of her sister, or her stature, either, but she was pretty enough in her own way, and they all loved her for it.
It wasn't that he regretted what he'd put her through, because Gehrich wasn't prone to much in the way of regret. Not that he didn't have his share of regrets, but his were never things that he could make up in this way, much less spoken of.
He didn't feel guilty about putting her throne in jeopardy, or about making her live with Lenus for six months. (She'd spent three days at the hideout. Three. By the end of it, they were out of food, his ears wouldn't stop ringing, and six of his men were dead.) He wasn't here because he felt bad about this woman.
He'd searched Fletz, and earlier, Donau. The men he was looking for had moved on.
He would find them, and kill them, and everything in his world would go back to normal.
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Six months ago, Gehrich would have told you that he hadn't really pictured himself dying this way- with his ribs crushed all to hell, and him choking on the dust. But, then again, nothing in these last six months had gone quite as he'd pictured it, so by this point, he was just taking things as they came.
Haschel dropped him unceremoniously on the ground, and Gehrich vomited blood. Choked it up, like he'd been drinking something when all of a sudden someone had told a really foul joke. Heh, I ought to work 'punchline' into there somewhere, he thought distantly. S'fuckin' riot.
"Tell me," he said, blood and bile dripping off his chin when he finally got himself under control, "you ever heard of a thing called disproportionate response?"
"You saved me," said Haschel flatly, ignoring him. "You didn't have to, but you warned me in an effort to save my life, and that is why you are not dead yet." He'd gone into his teaching voice, dropping his contractions and harshing up his words like he'd always thought he had to.
Gehrich cringed inwardly, even as the broken ends of his ribs ground against each other, causing starbursts of violently black light to explode in front of his eyes. One of his hands was broken- limp and useless where the blunt head of a hammer had met it. There was nothing he wished he could take back more than that ill-advised Master comment. For ten years he hadn't been allowed to call the man by his actual name, and he'd meant nothing by it. "Dead pretty quick, though," he grunted, trying to prop himself up against a rock as his pallor went increasingly grey. "You want to ask me something, is that it?"
Haschel went still, his face guarded. Gehrich cackled like a drowning hyena.
The old man moved faster than he'd given him credit for, even after the fight. One minute Gehrich was trying to catch his breath while simultaneously laughing his head off, the next, he was pinned against the rock by his neck, his injuries screaming as Haschel bore down on him. "Quiet," he hissed. "Or I'll split your head open right here and forget my obligation to you."
Gehrich snorted once, but not entirely mockingly. Something was wrong with one of his lungs. It hurt, yeah, but it was a bubbly, wet kind of hurt, and he couldn't draw in enough breath and he realized that this wasn't him dying slowly, this was him dying rather frighteningly quickly. Haschel seemed to realize it too, and when he cursed, it was an Islands word that Gehrich hadn't heard in twenty-five years at least and it almost reassured him.
What was less reassuring was the inexorable darkening of his vision and the overall feeling that whatever the old man had wanted him to say was going to go unsaid after all, and he thought very faintly- Claire, wherever you are, I pissed off your dad with my last dying breath, and I can hear you laughing about it.
Things got awful black after that.
When he came to, he was not only not-dead, but he was also almost able to draw in a decent breath. Haschel had already torn up his old sleeveless shirt to bind his ribs with. His mouth tasted tacky, like vomit and potion, and his skin, oddly, seemed like it was buzzing.
Fogs, he thought fuzzily. Dunno where he was keeping them, but he used them all up on me, I figure. He felt unbearably smug all of a sudden.
Haschel caught him looking, and tied off his last knot with a painful jerk. Gehrich went from smug to coughing in a hurry as the old man glared.
The coughing was a mistake. Haschel cursed again, and held a waterskin to his lips until Gehrich could breathe normally.
He'd coughed up blood, but Haschel didn't look worried. Chances were that he'd gotten the hole in his lung plugged up, and his ribs felt like they were more or less back in place. He was glad he'd been out for that.
"So," he said, one arm looped around his midsection as if he could hold his ribs against another coughing fit. "Fire away, old man."
Haschel regarded him, his black eyes glittering. "Are you familiar with a man named Lloyd?" he said shortly.
"Never heard of him," said Gehrich. His voice grew a leering note."Old boyfriend?"
"And what you said about the Princess Emile in the castle being a fake, is that true?"
Gehrich bared his large teeth in a blood-encrusted smile, "True as silver. And lemme tell you, the bitch I got in her place? You don't want to fuck with her."
Lenus can't be intimidated, he thought, and that might save her, but still, it's seven on one.
He almost worried about her. The vicious cunt.
Haschel snorted, "We'll see about that."
He's a monster, thought Gehrich, going hollow suddenly. Him and all his friends. The wings and shit- he never had those before. He regarded him carefully, as if at any moment that violet glow could come howling back and turn his old teacher into a draconic nightmare again.
He'd never stood a chance.
It had been just him and that brave, twisted fuck Mappi against seven fully-armed fighters in close quarters. Mappi went down spitting with one move from the dead-eyed woman in black, while Gehrich had gone down with a chestful of broken ribs and purple-hot current still sparking through his fingertips.
He'd cheated. He'd gone for his knife when he'd been trained to go at a man with only his bare hands, and the gods had frowned on that. The tiny girl with the white-Lenus hair hiked up behind her head had struck it out of his hand before he could bring it to bear, and when he'd stumbled back gasping fuck fuck my fucking hand, that's when the King of motherfucking Basil tried to swipe his head off.
Mappi had tackled him before he could hit home. Wrapped his skinny arms around the king's waist and bore him to the ground with a hoarse scream. Drawn his fist up, steel claws glittering on his knuckles, and that's when the woman in black had skewered him. The king lay panting weakly on the ground, the woman's narrow blade barely missing his side as it bit through Mappi and into the flagstones.
Mappi had writhed around the sword, like an insect pinned to a card, his ruined, pigskin face screwed up in regret. Then she'd pulled out. Spattered the king's face and chest in cheery, holiday-colored blood, and he'd coughed at the red taste of it.
And while Gehrich had stood and stared stupidly at the corpse of one of his last allies, his broken hand throbbing wetly, Haschel had clutched something the color of a pregnant thunderhead in one gnarled fist, and exploded into light.
After that, things had gone by quickly. By himself, with a ruined hand, Gehrich hadn't made much of himself.
His skin was still buzzing, but most of the pain had stopped. He looked down at his hand, and frowned after a moment.
Haschel's voice grew less harsh. "You'll be lucky if you can use that hand in combat again."
Gehrich grimaced "Be lucky if I can make a fist, you old fuck."
Haschel hit him. No nonsense. Open palmed, straight on the long plane of Gehrich's cheek. Gehrich's head rocketed back from the blow, biting his tongue as he suddenly remembered vividly what kind of a teacher this man was.
Haschel glowered at him while he got himself back under control. Gehrich gave up, and the sourness creeped into his voice. "Anything else you wanna know before you cut me loose for the wild dogs to fight over?" he drawled, rubbing his face with his good hand.
The older man grunted. "One thing more. Then you can disappear off the face of the continent." He ignored Gehrich's eyes rolling hugely
. "Cough it up," said Gehrich. "Then again, since I ain't dying, you've got all the time in the world."
Haschel seemed almost to hesitate, like he didn't trust himself to say it.
"My daughter," said Haschel finally.
0.-0.-0
It took him three days just to make it down the mountain.
It took him two weeks to make it through the cursed valley (or maybe three? It was so fucking hard to tell in that stupid place.)
It took him one week to make it through the Barrens and arrive in Fletz.
When he got there, he found the house of one of his lieutenants, ordered a bath and a meal as confidently and in-command as he could manage, and just barely managed to shave before he passed out on a makeshift bed in the attic.
It took the town guard less than twenty-four hours to come crashing through the front door with a warrant for his arrest.
The outrage he felt at being caught napping was nothing compared to the white fury he experienced knowing that he'd been sold out.
Fortunately, they'd apparently been under the impression that the fact that his hand was crippled meant that taking him in would be easier than smothering a baby. By the time they'd gained the presence of mind to draw their swords, he'd already hurled three men out the top window, kicked the teeth out of the sergeant, and managed to pull his pants on. After that, he'd smashed a row of oil lamps to cover his escape, and got the hell out of dodge. Three city blocks of Fletz burned, and for all appearance's sake, the lieutenant disappeared off the face of the earth.
Gehrich spent three days slinking in the alleys of Fletz trying to pick up his trail, nursing his injuries and his pride. He eventually broke into the basement of his lieutenant's old partners, and threatened to gut his wife until he got an answer. He had one arm around her throat, her back to him, with his claws dug into her belly without breaking the skin. She, for her part, stayed almost calm, her eyes lidded, her breath hitching in and out without even a squeak. Her husband did not.
When Gehrich left, he knew about a ship that had left Donau harbor the night before, and he knew where it was going.
The next day, Princess Lisa came of age, and half an hour later, Gehrich skipped town.
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