Lenneth was bruised and bleeding, but she was alive and the assassins were not and that was all that mattered.
At least, so she tried to convince herself, as she hauled herself to her feet by her bedroom curtains and stumbled close enough to the nearest corpse to prod it none too gently with a bare toe. Lucky more of her wasn't bare; if the assassins had caught her sleeping, things might have gone very differently. They'd surprised her enough as it was, jumping her as soon as she'd locked her bedroom door after tonight's session of Grimoires for Beginners with the longsuffering Master Corfiser. Too settled at the table out in the hallway where they'd met for lessons to even consider moving till she was almost too sleepy to relocate anyway, Lenneth had stayed up long after Aloth had retired for the night, kicking off her boots and continuing to pore over the pages of the baby grimoire he had her practicing with. Arkemyr's Dazzling Lights was far less glamorous and far more rigorous in practice than it had sounded, but as she began to get the hang of it, her curiosity drew her further into the tome's hints of wonders yet to be unlocked. It seemed (or so Aloth hypothesized) that her experience as a Watcher, so frequently interacting with soul energy, gave her some advantage in learning to manipulate it through a grimoire. He assured her that her progress was rapid compared to the average wizard's. To Lenneth, it still felt sluggishly uncooperative with her goals.
It was also lucky, upon reflection, that she had been carrying her baby grimoire when she got jumped by assassins in her own secure bedroom in Brighthollow.
A frantic pounding on her still-locked door began just as Lenneth was going through assassin-pockets for clues and the spoils of a hard-earned victory. The voice that followed the knocking was Aloth's: "Lenneth? Are you all right? Speak up and tell me you're all right before I burn this door down."
She stumbled to the door, wincing as the movement brought to her attention the several places the assassins had got in a blow against her, unlocked it and swung it open. Aloth's eyes went wide at the scene as he stepped into her room. Beyond him, the rest of the Watcher's entourage gradually crowded in, alerted by the sounds of combat. (The assassins had meant it to be quiet. Lenneth could do quiet. She could also do the primal fury of a Watcher caught barefooted and sleepy and distracted by arcane phrases rattling around in her brain. She'd made it loud.)
Aloth didn't ask again, just looked her over and proclaimed, "You're hurt."
"I'm alive," she corrected. "And I would like to go on the record saying that this," she swept a hand around the room in dramatic summary, "was not my fault."
His mouth quirked in half a smile. "Duly noted. While your ability to jest at this moment is reassuring, you're still bleeding."
"Not from anywhere vital," she said, giving herself a closer look. "I think." Aloth narrowed his eyes in suspicion but let it pass as Lenneth returned to rummaging through the pockets of the dead.
"Who were they?" asked Edér, conducting a similar search of another corpse across the room from her. "Nothing on this one."
"Maybe not in their pockets," Lenneth mused, sensing the souls lingering where their bodies had so recently fallen and reaching out as she had done so many times since the bîaŵac in Cilant Lîs. In moments, her world narrowed to the pinprick window beyond the mundane and then opened out again into the vastness of a soulscape, the murmurs of her comrades falling away to a distant and serene hush as she listened for the memories of her attackers.
When she returned to herself, the room was far less crowded, empty of all save herself, Aloth, and the dead. Aloth stood near the door, shifting from one foot to the other and twisting the hem of his tunic in nervous fingers as he tried to keep one eye on the hallway and one on the Watcher. He brightened in obvious relief when he saw her stir.
"They're searching the grounds," he hastened to explain before she could ask. "The rest of them. Pallegina worried there might be more infiltrating the keep and organized search parties. I...volunteered to keep watch here, while you were occupied with...these." He nodded to the nearest assassin.
"Good call," Lenneth approved, "though if there were any more with this group, I didn't see any memory of it."
"What did you see? Anything of help?"
"Not as much as I'd like," she said, "but one thing's for sure. The Leaden Key sent them. They got their orders from an acolyte like the one we encountered in Defiance Bay - she went through that same series of passphrases and then sent them out after me."
"Of course," Aloth said, looking pained. "I suppose it's too much to hope they would leave you alone after how often we've meddled in their plans."
Lenneth huffed in frustration and, with one last bitter nudge of her toe, abandoned the corpse and lowered herself somewhat stiffly into the chair at her writing desk. "Nipped at their heels, you mean. We're always one step behind Thaos. What are they even trying to accomplish, framing animancers and stealing souls and assassinating Watchers who would just like to get a good night's sleep, for once? From what I saw of their souls, these initiates knew nothing of the ultimate goals their mission was supposed to serve. Just blind pawns in the Grandmaster's schemes."
Now Aloth looked slightly ill. "I can attest, that is...typical of their operations. I was never told any more than the minimum I needed to know for each assignment. Convinced as I was that I served the gods' purposes, I thought that was enough."
Lenneth eyed him thoughtfully. "So I guess it wouldn't help to try and read your soul, any more than my surprise guests here."
"What?" Aloth's eyes widened and his sickly pallor at the discussion of his old masters gave way to, of all things, a blush. It was a disarmingly fetching look on him, Lenneth thought as he argued, "That's surely not necessary, Watcher. I've told you everything I can about my time with the Leaden Key, such as it was. I wish I could tell you more, but I was simply never privy to -"
"All right, all right," Lenneth sighed. "I trust you. Besides, most of the time when I read a living soul it seems to be their past incarnations I get a glimpse of, so I'd probably just see Iselmyr, and as enlightening as that might be, I doubt she was in the Leaden Key."
"Unlikely," Aloth agreed with a wry chuckle and a look of relief.
"Gotta give Thaos credit for one thing, at least - that man knows how to run a secret organization."
"I really wish I could be of more help," Aloth said.
"You are," she insisted. "Hey. I think I managed to get some Dazzling Lights off on that one over by the wardrobe, before the other one tried to stab me." She gestured to her little grimoire, lying half-open near her bed where it had fallen during the fight, the pages bent awkwardly underneath.
"Is that so?" Aloth asked, with a thin attempt at a smile and an arched eyebrow. "I wish I could have seen that."
"Well, I'm not sure if it came out as lights, exactly, or more as a sort of fizzle and pop and then there was a little bit of smoke." She gestured in imitation of this alleged display. "Arcane smoke. Still made a good distraction, right?" She forced a grin, wincing as her too-broad gestures yanked at one of the cuts she'd taken before wrestling a knife away from one of the assassins. "I'll make you proud yet, teach."
"You already do, Lenneth," he said, his voice soft and his expression turning grim as he caught sight of her hand going to her side. "Are you still bleeding?"
"It's possible the word again would be more appropriate than still…" she argued weakly, trying to twist enough to inspect the cut for herself without disturbing it further in the twisting.
Aloth snorted and stepped closer, laying a hand on her elbow as he bent in. "Here. Stop that and hold still. You're only going to make it worse."
Relenting to the logic of letting a friend tend to a wound she couldn't, Lenneth sat still. As still as she could, straining against the mad energy still racing through her from the adrenaline of the fight. Aloth's fingers were cool against her skin, carefully peeling away the ragged edges of bloodstained fabric where the knife had pierced shirt and flesh alike. From the corner of her eye, she could see him wince. He loosed a breath that barely shook. "Well, it's not terrible."
"See? I told you I'm still alive."
"I'll believe that better once this is patched up. Bandages?"
"In my travel pack. Always keep a kit there, I go through them so often," she admitted sheepishly. Sparing her the retort she half expected him to make about her habitual recklessness, Aloth went to fetch them.
By the time he returned with bandages and a washbasin to clean the skin about to be bandaged, the Watcher's fatigue had begun to set in. While Aloth methodically tended to the wound, Lenneth sat numbly, running over the evening's events in her mind again and again. She was alive this time, but the Leaden Key surely wouldn't stop. They seemed to have no lack of zealous initiates to do their bidding. And with the secretive nature of their cells, one hand never knowing what the other was doing, would even their Grandmaster's defeat put an end to their attacks on her? She was alive - on borrowed time. And very, very tired.
Aloth seemed to notice her sinking mood. "Watcher?" His voice was gentle but the sound of it brought her down-spiraling train of thought to a firm halt.
Lenneth stirred to find him kneeling by her chair, the basin and bandages all out of sight now. "Oh - all finished?"
He frowned. "For several minutes now. You were so still, I thought perhaps you were inspecting their souls again and I didn't wish to interrupt. Are you sure you're all right?"
"Just...tired," she admitted. "Maybe actually tired enough to sleep for once. Or maybe Leaden Key assassins will just be one more thing haunting my dreams now," she grumbled.
"The nightmares are getting worse, then?" he guessed, leaning closer, his expression pinched in concern.
"I don't think it's the sort of thing that's just going to start getting better," she countered, her voice aquaver. "Not while Thaos is still out there." She turned her head as she felt the tears well up in her eyes, but too late to escape the wizard's notice. So, if she couldn't hide it anyway, she raised a hand to get rid of the evidence.
Aloth caught her hand halfway there and held it in a grasp so tentative that she held her breath for fear of breaking free of his hold against her own wishes. "We'll fix this, Lenni," he told her, confidence in his voice as he met her eyes. She blinked away the tears, bringing her other hand up to wrap around his and keep him there for that moment. "I'm with you," he said, and she knew it for the truth.
"Thank you," she finally whispered, overwhelmed beyond further words by that truth.
"And…" he dropped his eyes. "If you really want to try - If you think it would help, to read my soul, if perhaps there's some memory of the Leaden Key I've overlooked…"
She blinked at him. "You don't overlook much, as a rule," she said as her grin began to return. "I appreciate the offer, but you really mustn't tempt my curiosity like that."
He squinted at her, wary again. "You've every reason to be curious about the Leaden Key, if the information could prevent another such attack as this."
"Not about them, dear wizard. About you." She took a moment to enjoy the blush returning to his cheeks before explaining. "Don't we both know, if you give me such an opening I'll surely get carried away seeking out every corner of your soul I can. Iselmyr included."
"I'm not that interesting," he protested.
"I think you are," she countered, and perhaps she'd basked in his blush a little too much, because now she felt its mirror image warming her own face. So of course she took to babbling. "And you keep your secrets so well, of course I'm intrigued. I thought Iselmyr was your great secret, and then it turned out you were in the Leaden Key, too. All this time I thought I had you figured out, and suddenly you're pulling more secrets out of nowhere, you know? Gotta respect a well-played con like that, even when I'm the one who got played."
"I never meant to...to play you like that," Aloth insisted.
Lenneth giggled. "Don't look so stricken, I'm trying to tell you I was impressed. But it seems now I'm convinced you're this great man of mystery with layer upon layer of secrets to be uncovered and I cannot rest till I know them all." She shrugged and tentatively squeezed his hand. "Or...maybe I just want to know you better, Aloth. Because...that's what friends do."
He was very still for a moment. Then he slowly stood, releasing her hands before he met her eyes again and said, in a carefully restrained tone of voice, "You already know all my great secrets, I'm sure. What's left is quite mundane." And as much as his earlier promise to be with her had struck her as the truth, Lenneth knew instinctively that this...wasn't. But she let it pass, with a knowing smile. No use denying herself the pleasure of discovering his next secret later, after all. When he was ready. And whatever he might hold back for now, I'm with you was a truth that made trifles of all secrets.
"Then I suppose," said Lenneth, "the mundane art of conversation suits it better than any soul-reading."
His answering smile was not entirely forced. "If by 'conversation' you mean 'Lenneth's curiosity gets the better of her and she asks me endless, unconnected questions,' then…" he shrugged. "I shall endeavor to keep up."
With a slow nod, Lenneth carefully got to her feet. "I'll hold you to that. But…" She stifled a yawn. "Tomorrow is soon enough to begin. I think I really might be tired enough to sleep without dreams for once."
Aloth nodded and backed toward the door as she headed for her bed. "Rest well, Watcher."
She was nearly asleep before he had even closed the door behind him. And if her sleep was not entirely without dreams that night, at least they were nothing to do with her past life, nor with imminent assassinations, but featured chiefly the look in her wizard's eyes when she caught his hand catching hers.