The Brotherhood
Chapter Seven
Curious, the deer trotted towards where Marisa sat, legs crossed, very irritable. At ease, it brushed its head against her resting arm and startled, she lashed out at it. It baulked slightly but returned again to nuzzle her, much to her anger. She stood up and kicked at it, felling it with a blow to the head.
"Can't a mage sit in peace any more?" she growled to it, dusting herself off. She'd been sitting, relatively calm, in the forest of Elwyn, thinking about her plans, and every animal in a mile radius seemed to find her. It frayed her patience. She had followed Cony's complicated trail and it had led her all over Westfall, then she'd lost it completely until she went into Duskwood. Duskwood, I tell you… she thought. She'd been into the mine of the worgen where none remained and walked through Darkshire, finding the house she had stayed at. Inside were sleeping two children and a grandmother, just the sort of people to help 'poor, helpless Cony' out. Marisa had smiled and knocked on their door in the dead of night, complacent in her disguise, and a small girl had answered her with hard eyes and told her that evil could not set foot past the door. Marisa had been disturbed that she could not, even though she knew very well that she was an evil person. Instead, she had asked after Cony, and the girl told her that she was gone and would say nothing else.
Her search then led her back into Elwyn where her trail was clear and straight into Stormwind. Stormwind. Was she suicidal? Marisa certainly hoped not- she was going to be having stern words with that girl when she found her. More than stern words. Grimacing, she decided she'd continue her search now, as it was around lunchtime and she didn't fancy hunting for her own food. She walked through Elwyn forest, thinking that it would probably do her better to buy a horse, but she also didn't want to leave her own trail. Edwin would chastise her greatly for abandoning her duties during this important time to search after one trainee, but she didn't care. North and Cony went together, a great pull on her mind.
"Yer name, miss?" the guard asked as she approached the gates of Stormwind. An ugly man, too bulky to be just muscled with a burnt, red nose and bushy graying eyebrows. She regarded him with disdain.
"Arianne Mistleigh." She had actually taken her pseudonym straight from a younger Defias who had come from Duskwood. If he'd bothered to look her up, which he wouldn't, he'd find she'd lived in Raven Hill, and as no record of Raven Hill had been taken after it was abandoned, the investigation would stop there.
"And yer business in Stormwind?"
"Pleasure. To see the city, to eat the food… it has been many years since I've had the opportunity to travel here."
"Okay, that's fine. I'd just like to search that satchel you have, please." He held a hand out and she passed the bag to him. Silly man, he wouldn't find anything. The guard rummaged through and came across her collapsible staff, which she'd brought just in case. He called to one of the other guards, who came over.
"She has a staff, is that okay to go through?" he asked.
"Err, depends on what classification it is." The other guard turned to her. "Do you have a license to carry a Class 5 Magical Conduit?"
What, by the gods, was a Class 5 Magical Conduit?
"Clearance? Where I come from, sir, you carry a weapon or you die."
"If you've trained at any mage school, they'll have given you clearance when you graduated. It's a piece of paper, signed by your Instructor. You don't have it?"
"I never went to Mage School," she hissed, wanting to call him an idiot but refraining for her own sake. "I was always a mage. I bought the staff; I kill undead with the staff. The staff isn't going to spontaneously blow a crater the size of Dalaran in your city, don't worry."
"I'm sure, miss, but you need clearance from a Magister of the Third Echelon or above to bring a Class 5 Magical Conduit into a city classified as a Rank A Municipality, under the Mages act of the year 623 by the King's Calendar."
"That is absolute bullshit." She said, regretting it immediately, but could not stop herself. "If it means so much to you, keep it, but I want the gold I paid for it reimbursed, or for it to be given to me on my exit from the city."
"I'm afraid that would be a direct breach of the Stormwind City Guard's Charter, Chapter Seven, paragraph three." He replied, and Marisa wanted to punch him in the face for being such a know-it-all.
"Keep it, then." She sighed. "Can I go in, now?"
The two guards removed the staff from her bag and put it inside a crate. She winced, thinking that if the crate were examined, they'd find residue of black magic still on it.
"Are you a mage?" Guard Smarty-Pants asked.
"Yes." She stared him right in the eyes and glowered at him, hoping to cow him to submission. He looked a little uneasy, but not scared. She wished she was normal Marisa, and then she'd really give him the evil eye. He rummaged in another crate and pulled out a form.
"If you could fill in this form," he said, handing her a quill and pot of ink. Rolling her eyes, Marisa smoothed the form out on top of a sealed crate and looked at it.
Name:
Age:
Race:
Class: (if Death Knight, please specify which class you trained in before being ruthlessly bound by the Lich King's rule.)
Reason for visit: (Please do not include a full itinerary.)
Fair enough, she thought, filling it out in handwriting completely opposite from her own. They'd probably have it on file from all the letters she'd sent that were intercepted. Bastards. She finished and looked at the other half of the form.
Last postal address:
She strained to remember before writing, The School House, Raven Hill, Duskwood.
Trained at: (Please specify which branch of your class you studied, under which high Instructor, and which grade you attained.)
Marisa looked at it, dumbfounded. She hesitated and wrote, N/A. The last part of the form was a statement to sign.
I, (please print name here in common) do swear that upon my entrance to Stormwind City, I will abide by its laws, refrain from and violent, outlandish, overly-sexual or prejudiced behavior in public, and if an invasion of the Horde/Scourge/Burning Legion/Defias Brotherhood/Dragonflights (assorted)/Demons (assorted)/Elemental/Silithid/Centaur/Other hostile being were to occur during my stay, I am capable and willing to take up arms against them.
If you were below the age of majority for your race (if Death Knight, if you were below the age of majority for your race before you were ruthlessly bound by the Lich King's rule), please have your parents sign for you.
Signed: (please sign in common)
She signed with a flourish and marveled about how uptight the humans had become since she had last been into Stormwind. Well, Marisa supposed, times were hard. She handed the paper back to the smart-arse guard who looked over it lightly and sighed before filing it away in yet another crate and giving her back her bag.
"You may enter now," he said, and she nodded curtly at him and decided that the first street urchin she saw, she was going to kill it, screw the contract. They had taken her collapsible staff! That kind of thing was expensive and only a few supply wagons that were eligible for hijacking had them. Angry, Marisa stormed through the trade district, not bothering to switch her sight to the magical spectrum and look at the path Cony had taken, looking for a street urchin.
On a corner she found a scrawny man begging, his arms outstretched. Grinning, she walked up to him as if to give him coin and his eyes lit up, a faint smile changing his face. Marisa pulled out her sword in one swift movement and plunged it deep into his chest. He looked down, fear and surprise twisting his dirty face into a grimace of pain, and then caught her eyes. She made sure that the last thing he saw was her hungry, evil eyes.
He dropped, lifeless, onto the paved street floor and Marisa pulled her sword out of him, wiping it clean on his shorts. Partially sated, she looked around for an inn, finding one just at the end of the street. It looked posh, but Marisa liked her comforts. Perhaps she would go and find a brothel somewhere, to further assert her control over people in general. However, the idea of bedding some nameless, faceless man or woman didn't excite her that much. She wanted Cony.
Frustrated, she paid the innkeeper woman and went to her room, jumping onto the feather bed and laying on her back awhile, still fully clothed. Deciding to actually check the magical spectrum, she lazily shifted her vision and choked a little. The air around her was full of Cony, saturated with her- she had been here. She had been here for a very long time, in the grand scope of things, and recently, too. Excited, Marisa leapt out of bed and surveyed the whole inn. The loft above the stables and the stables themselves were her hotspots, the kitchens, all over the streets of Stormwind. The newest trail was one leading back out of the city, mingling with the trail of two weak mages.
Emboldened by her discovery, Marisa let herself smile for a moment before her stomach rumbled and she went down to the dining room, where she was treated with some delectable Stormwind Salmon in a creamy sauce served on a bed of herbed buttered potatoes. The wine was also excellent, much crisper and flavoursome, on many levels better than the stuff the Defias imported into their pubs. Nevertheless, she did yearn for a taste of her more sordid life, and the woman soon found herself treading Stormwind as the night descended in search of a decent brothel.
Some poor person was going to be on the receiving end of a great deal of repressed sexual tension tonight.
-
"Stop it, Rebecca!" Conyeri moaned, sweat beading off her forehead.
"Why should I?" The girl asked, pausing to look at the groom seriously. "You said you wanted me to…"
"It didn't mean this…" Conyeri gestured to the upturned cart. "I asked you to help pull it out of the mud, not push it further in!"
"Sorry," she murmured, not sorry at all. They looked at the little wooden contraption and sighed. Lady Ashcroft was waiting in the carriage, but Conyeri had wanted to check out the cart anyway. It looked like it had been in the wars: there were slash marks, one wheel had been kicked in and the contents pilfered. There was blood, also, lots of blood.
"I wouldn't want to be the owners of this thing…" she sighed and tugged once more, the wood finally coming free of the thick, sludgy mud. "Gods, look!"
Rebecca stared, eyes wide. She had never seen a dead body before. "Who… what…" she stuttered, white as the dress she wore, which was now brown at the hem. She bent down and touched the face with one hand, shivering at the coldness of it. "It's an elf."
"A blood elf," Conyeri observed. "Coming down from Silvermoon, probably."
"Who do you think did it?" Rebecca asked, shuffling closer. Uneasy, the pseudo-boy looked at the blood elf's wounds. They were precise, twin neck slashes and a simple sword through the heart- it was not a thug that could kill that efficiently. A trained assassin or a rogue, perhaps.
Or a Defias.
She ignored that little voice.
"Probably people who don't care too much for the Horde." She lied. "Maybe traveling the opposite direction. This is neutral land, but it's quite close to Loch Modan, so dwarf presence is high. I don't really know."
"You know so much…" the Ashcroft daughter cooed, latching herself onto Conyeri's arm. Conscious of Lady Tight-Arse in the carriage, she wiped her hands off and left the carriage as it was. Passing Horde could bury that elf, not she. The sky shook suddenly, bringing a cacophony of thunder a few seconds later. Rebecca jumped a bit and tightened her grip on 'Connor's' arm as she was led back into the carriage and helped inside, to a prompt scolding from her mother for getting her dress dirty.
Once that was done, they continued along the road. It began to rain heavily and soon Conyeri was soaked through, sitting on the front of the carriage. Her hair and clothes stuck to her and chill sank deep into her bones, the winter leeching her of her strength. Her hands became numb on the reigns as night approached and her teeth began to chatter, but it was her job. She was being paid to go north and other than being rained on, she was doing it in style. The Ashcrofts would not let a 2-day journey be anything but comfortable- even now they were headed to a small Inn in Thesalmar once they got into Loch Modan, after traveling through Redridge into Searing Gorge and heading north steadily. The new terrain fascinated Cony to no end: the stark oranges of the mountains that melted into ashy grey soil and hardened earth in the Searing Gorge. They were nearly into Loch Modan and Cony was already killing for food, a bath, and a bed.
They passed through the Stonewrought Pass, but not without Cony turning back a little guiltily and looking at the lock she had had to pick. The gate was locked and Lady Ashcroft hadn't produced a key- presumably the fired coachman had owned it, so she'd slipped small set of thief's tools that she had kept on her person since Marzy had taught them how to pick locks out and quickly opened it. Nobody seemed to notice.
Once they got into Loch Modan, Rebecca got out of the carriage and came and sat at the front with her. Not by her doing, but after seeing her daughter shy from the horses, Lady Ashcroft had insisted that she be taught about horses and learned to tolerate them, and who better for the job than a groom?
"You're not actually going to ask me about horses, are you?" Conyeri asked knowledgably, her eyelids drooping, yawning. "Anyhow, it's too late for today."
"You can teach me when we get to Theddlmire."
"Thesalmar." She corrected, sighing as she peering into the gloom. She needed to light a lantern soon. "And trust me, I'm going to stuff my face and pass out as soon as we get there."
"You're so honest, Connor," she said, smiling. Gods, what did she ever do to deserve this attention? First from Marisa, and though Rebecca was obviously not a power-hungry magic-addicted sex fiend, she still hesitated at the attention, for good reasons. Rebecca thought she was a boy, and so obviously liked boys. When and if she found out, she'd do one of two things, and Cony couldn't decide which was worse: freak out and set the authorities on her, or roll with it and keep pursuing her.
Oh, the conundrums of being young.
"What's the point in lying? You'd just pluck the truth out of me anyhow, or see me at the Inn." She shrugged and glanced at a signpost they passed. Not long now.
"Boys usually lie to big themselves up," she blushed. "Both metaphorically and physically. Where are we?"
"Put your glasses back on and you'd be able to read that signpost." She chided the girl, who merely made a silly face. "Another hour, maybe. I need to light the lantern, can you take the reins?"
"Me?" she looked shocked. "I can hardly stroke a horse, let alone drive a carriage!"
"Then you can light the lantern. Since it's rainy, you'll need to-"
"Connor, I'm a mage."
She looked dumbly at Rebecca for a moment before it dawned on her. "Ohhhhh, sorry," she said, embarrassed. "Mages conjure fire… forgot that a minute."
She rolled her eyes and the lantern at the front of the carriage burst into flame. Conyeri realized something. "If you're a mage, why not just make a portal to your house?"
"Well, good question. Firstly, I'm a mage in training and portals are forbidden outside class in case they go wrong. Second, portals only go to main cities. And third…"
"Third?"
"Third, we'd end up in Ashenvale if I was doing it." Cony chortled. "Seriously… I suck at arcane magic."
"What school of magic are you specifying in?"
"I thought fire, just to piss off my mother."
"Piss off? What bad language from such a high-born young lady." Conyeri teased her, chivvying the horses a bit.
"Mother dearest is too busy thinking of ways to make our holidays boring." She snorted. "She won't care what I say or do out of her presence."
"Say or do?" she raised her eyebrows. "You'll be going off the rails once you become legal, then? Felweed addiction, prostitution, wanton use of magic…" she surveyed Rebecca. "I can see it."
"Shut up!" she said, slapping Conyeri on the shoulder. "Never wanton magic."
"So just the drugs and the prostitution?"
"I didn't mean that!"
"Okay, whatever you say," she put her eyes back on the road. "Do some magic."
"Why?"
"I've never seen fire magic before." She thought back to Marisa. She didn't do fire magic mostly, though she probably could. Her 'lessons' had actually had some teaching in them, though it was really Marisa showing off with her magic and forcing herself onto Conyeri. Pushing the thoughts out of her mind, she let herself watch in awe, not fear, as Rebecca made fire do all sorts of interesting things. It got bigger, smaller, changed colour, split into different bits, did cartwheels and exploded into little fireworks, brightening the landscape behind them.
"Pretty, huh?" she said, twirling a fiery serpent around her fingers. "These are kid's tricks, though. If I had my license… when I graduate… I'll be able to kill entire armies of scourge with a flick of my wrist."
"You're yawning, miss." She said, frowning. "If you fall off the coach, your mother'll have my head."
"Don't be polite all of a sudden. Rebecca. Becca if you want. And I'm fine… I just used up a lot of mana."
"On the tricks?"
"I did say I was only it training."
Cony laughed and an idea struck her. "Do you want some of mine?"
Rebecca's eyes shot open. "What?"
"My… mage friend used to take mana from me when she was out." Mage friend. She threw up a little in her mouth at calling Marisa her friend.
The two of them sat in silence for ages, Rebecca just staring, her eyes wide and searching. Cony took the hint that she had said something wrong and probably shouldn't have brought that up. "Sorry… if you don't want to or think it's wrong…"
"It's… not illegal…" Rebecca said uneasily. "But… you were close, you and your mage-friend?"
"You could say that."
"Harvesting mana from other people is black magic, but giving it willingly is not… but you and her were…"
"What?"
"Having sex, right?"
Oh, gods.
Some flashbacks threatened her, but didn't surface, thankfully. Rebecca was looking at her, partially hurt, moderately curious and a little scared and repulsed was mixed in there.
"Um… does it matter?"
"You can't take unwilling mana from someone with white magic without… sex."
"Ah."
Her eyes were sad. "I knew that you weren't a virgin… but…"
"Rebecca. Shut up."
Lights rose from behind a hillock. They were close to Thesalmar. "Don't tell me to shut up. Are you two still together? Is she waiting for you? Are you running away from her?"
"The latter." Cony replied dryly.
"She's a rogue mage, right? Then she was just using you to get her fix! You fuelled her magic addiction… was it for the sex? Was it that good?"
"You don't know what you're getting into." She warned in her darkest voice. "And you don't want to."
"Try me, stablehand."
Anger seeped in with the rainwater covering Cony at how naïve Rebecca was being, and jealous too. "Rebecca," she said, swallowing her pride. "I was raped. Repeatedly and with abuse mixed in, by my 'mage-friend'."
She really didn't want to pull the 'pity me, I was raped and abused' plug, but she was irate and soaking wet and freezing cold. Rebecca was a child, rich and immature and cooped up in her mage tower and her stuffy house. She knew nothing, nothing of what Conyeri had been through, was still going through. She was stupid, arrogant, conceited-
"So?"
That was not what she had expected to hear. Mouth agape, she looked at Rebecca, whose eyes were firmly fixed on her and burning with a fiery passion that had not been present before. "You're obviously over it,"
"How can you…?"
"Stop it, please. You pulled a pity plug to win an argument, which means that you're not telling the entire truth, surely, and also you think I'm stupid, which I'm not, by the way." She smirked a bit through the rain as Thesalmar proper came into sight. It was a bustling, plentiful dwarvern town, with snug homes cut into the rock and an ambience of stalwart resistance about it, though it was merry. Rebecca was smart. More than that, she was scarily perceptive. "Connor, please, treat me as an equal. Not a mistress, not a little girl, and equal."
"Okay."
"That implies that you'll actually tell me why you won't let me kiss you."
"Gods, Rebecca? Is rape not enough justification for aversion to sex?" She cried out, perhaps a bit too loud. "Have you ever been raped?"
"No, and I don't plan to, but I have experienced control."
Conyeri paused and bit back another explosion of incredulous excuses. "Control."
"Mages… we get it a lot." She became older. "When you're young, you control the magic. You bend it totally to your will; acting like it's a thing, a toy. But then you get older and your relationship with magic becomes more complex. You lose the control, the sureness, to a more convoluted point of view, which is unfamiliar and uncomfortable to you.
"Some mages are consumed by their need for control. Any way they can- sex, murder, magic- it's a flaw with us, just like warriors have bloodlust. For those already inclined such, whether hereditary or due to their environment, it can drive a person insane."
"Miss Du'Paige speaks of you a lot," he admitted. "She is insane."
Alt had said it before, that Marisa wasn't quite rational, but it hadn't really concerned her. Now…
"She's coming for you, isn't she? Your mage. That's why you're running."
80 percent right.
"Yes," she replied softly. "We need to get into the Inn now. Your brother will probably be asleep and your mother will be irate, and we have still much ground to cover."
"But we just got talking!"
"We can talk more tomorrow."
"No, I want to talk today." She insisted.
Cony sighed, knowing she wouldn't sleep until late tonight. "Fine… come to wherever I have to sleep."
"Is that an invitation?" Thin eyebrows rose. Gods, this girl just couldn't resist, could she? Did she have a one-track mind?
"For talk." She said curtly. "Rebecca, you know I can't-"
"Can't or won't or don't want to?"
"All of the above."
"Bastard."
"Language. A friend of mine once said that profanity shows lack of developed vocabulary,"
She smiled. "They sound like a tight-ass."
"Oh, he was… tightly assed, for sure." She thought of Alt and his great metal bulk. That all seemed so far away. "Help me with the carriage."
"Pssh, no way. I'm going to eat myself to stupor." Rebecca groaned as her stomach grumbled.
"Good, then we won't have to talk."
"I'm never too stuffed to talk."
"Then gods help us." She rolled her eyes and halted the horses. The dwarves had great respect for animals, and the Inn's groom lavished over the Thane and the Baron, giving them the best he had. They conversed for a while as the Ashcrofts paid for rooms and supper, then Conyeri wished him goodnight and entered the Inn. It was nice, cozy and well lit, with clean wooden floors and tapestries hanging on the walls.
"Connor," lady Ashcroft addressed her. "I was informed that you have no problems sleeping in the stable-loft."
"No, my lady." She smiled while glaring daggers at Cefflan, who was awake and in a mischievous mood. The two of them got on quite well: Conyeri thought it was that the only male Ashcroft child had always wanted an older brother and ended up with two sisters. "It would suit me just fine."
"Then we will eat now." She gestured to the table being prepared. Since there was no servant's kitchen as this inn- The Ram's Horn Tavern and Stayhouse- they would eat together. Not really knowing much about nobility, she didn't know if eating with one's servants was a usual occurrence, but she supposed not. They sat and spoke little, each tired in their own ways, though Rebecca kept looking her way. Cony wolfed food down with three flagons of mead and felt much better for it, though she'd have a headache in the morning. The loft, being part of a stable cut into rock, was warm and she was about to fall into a food and alcohol induced stupor when she heard the creaking of the ladder.
"Connor?" Rebecca asked, her voice searching."
"mmmph." She groaned and rolled over, annoyed. "Aww, Becca, we have to talk t'night?"
"You said we would." She yawned, crossing to the bed. "My mother is asleep and Cefflan is being taught to gamble by the dwarves. It's driving Jeyvs insane."
"Jeyvs?"
"Our butler." She explained, yawning again and sitting down on the end. "He's nice enough…"
"Mmm," she agreed, not having known his name. "Go to bed, Rebecca, you're about to drop off as it is."
"But you said we could talk… I want to know about you."
"I'm your stableboy, you shouldn't want to know about me."
"But I do." She shrugged. "You're not just a stableboy. I know it." Conyeri froze and looked at her. Did she know? How could she have found out? Shit, was she about to get caught? "You have a history."
"An unpleasant one. You don't-"
"I do."
"Stop being difficult about this, Rebecca. If it placates you, after my parents died, I went to Stormwind and became a stablehand. There we go."
"But you'd only been there a month when we came. And I saw you pick the gate lock." She accused 'him', triumph stifled by another yawn.
"There are many pickpockets in Stormwind. You learn some tricks. Before I got my job as a stableboy…"
"For how long?"
"Um… maybe six months?"
"Your accent is too strong for you to have been in Stormwind seven months."
"Is this an iterrogation?" She asked, sitting up in bed.
"I have the right to know if my stableboy is a crook."
"I'm not."
"Your eyes flicker when you lie," she said, and for a horrible moment Cony pictured her as Alt, all metal and wires, a horrible malformation of his once sacred race, unable to ever properly feel emotion, enslaved to the Defias. She regarded Rebecca- she was more dangerous than she had realized. She may be all of those horrible things she'd thought earlier, but she wasn't a lovestruck teenager with a crush- she was suspicious.
"How do you know that?"
"Your eyes have been flickering all day."
"But now does that indicate I'm lying?" she kept the conversation going desperately, to avoid the question. She could very well lose her way north, and she knew it was with the Ashcrofts. She couldn't lose this route away from Marisa and the Defias.
"You're stalling." She smirked. "You're not so quick, Connor the stableboy. Though I think no less of you for it." Rebecca shifted herself and closed in for the kill, but Conyeri put her hand over the girl's mouth.
"Becca, I… uh." She thought of something. "I'm not into girls."
She stopped and recoiled, looking shocked. "What?"
"I like boys." She said, her eyes not flickering, because it was the truth. Conyeri did like boys- she had fancied many of the sons of neighbouring farms when she had been younger. Then they were sent off to war and she stopped really caring for them. She did like boys though, definitely, but she guessed that girls were ok also, but she didn't want to think about relationships with either sex at the moment, even if she was over what Marisa had done to her (which she wasn't.).
"Oh." Rebecca moved off the bed apologetically. "I did wonder. You were so charming and, well… a bit girlish… I'm sorry. I shouldn't have… I didn't mean to offend."
"It's fine." She said curtly. "Don't, ah, spread that around, okay? Your brother might not be as comfortable with me, and your mother would be off with my head."
"Okay…" Gods, she looked so disappointed. Cony felt sorry for lying to her, both about her past and her singular interest in boys, but all the same, she couldn't let herself be found out. The world was built on lies. "You don't like my brother, do you?"
"Gods, no!" she was relieved. "He's eleven, Rebecca."
"That doesn't stop some people." She said warily. "I bet your mage-friend was older than you."
"Twenty… four, I think."
"That's a nine year difference."
"Seven."
"How old are you?" Damn, she hadn't meant to say that- she forgotten she looked younger as a boy.
"Seventeen."
Rebecca laughed a bit, but stopped herself. "You don't look seventeen."
"You don't look like you think only about sex- you can't judge a book by its cover."
"I do not only think about sex!" She said indignantly. "I just liked you."
"Past tense?" she pouted, confident in her security now. Now that Rebecca thought she wasn't interested in girls at all, she could hopefully establish a friendship. She missed her friends, especially Geylan.
"I guess I can't now? Since you're… can I call you gay?" Cony frowned at the word.
"Where I come from, that's used as an offensive term," she said, thinking how the Defias would shout it as an insult at each other, even though many of them liked men themselves. In fact, she realized, the Defias really didn't care what they had sex with, at the end of the day, be it male or female. Had she liked girls before joining the Defias, or was that a side effect of being there? Or had Marisa done it to her?
"Sorry…" Rebecca apologized. "I guess, uh, I should go. Long journey and everything."
"Let's not part awkwardly."
"That's going to be hard." The Ashcroft pointed out. From outside, lightning struck. The thunder was loud and the lightning came right after the flash- it was close. Really close. Rebecca whimpered and the lightning kept striking, closer and closer. She could hear dimly mountaineers outside, shouting at each other. Winter storms were horrible. Rebecca's face was whiter than even usual. For a mage, she was easily scared. "I don't want to go out there…" she whined, clutching Cony's bed sheets with scarily pallid knuckles.
"You can sleep on the other bed. She motioned to the one that the groom was not sleeping on. "He told me he was 'goin' ter git roarin' drunk an' pass out dunstairs'."
"Oh… she jumped as lightning struck again and crossed to the bed. "It smells horrible."
"Deal with it."
"Can't I sleep with you?"
Cony snorted. She just did not know when to stop, did she? "I don't trust you in my bed, sorry."
"I won't do anything, I promise," she pleaded. "But yours is warm and doesn't smell of stuff that comes out of dwarves."
"No."
"Please?"
"No means no." she said curtly, and then made the mistake of looking at Rebecca, all white and wide-eyed and jumpy. "Oh, gods, I am a softy."
"Thank you." She said sincerely, slipping her shoes off. "I promise I won't do anything."
"You'd better not." She warned. "And we're going top to toe. Grab his pillow. I used to do this at sleepovers all the time."
"Sleepovers?" Shit, had she just said that? Sleepovers? The least manly thing one can do short of giving birth. "Connor…"
"I was a lot younger!" she said, embarrassed by Rebecca's mirthful face. "Don't look at me like that…"
"I think it makes you cuddly." She said, looking at the groom's pillow disdainfully before taking it off his bed and getting under the already-warn covers. "Being g… sorry, liking boys and going to sleepovers. It makes you almost one of the girls."
You have no idea… She laughed a bit and said goodnight, conscious of the unpleasant coldness of Rebecca's feet.
-
"I don' like this place," Dez said, looking around at the wooden buildings. "Sumthin' aint right 'bout it."
"Not so loud." Geylan told him as they walked through the village. "Where the hell are the locals? It's only eleven, some should still be up… guards and such."
"Remind me why we're even here?" Harrman clutched the hilt of his sword.
"We're looking for Councilman Smithers… he's supposed to be operating on the town council, somehow rallying the people here to the Syndicate." Geylan replied. "Though why they're interested in this little village in Silverpine is a mystery…"
"Maybe there's… gold 'ere? Or they 'ave some powrful mages?" Dez jumped a little at a crow cawing on a roof. "Or they're gonna use this place to creep everyone out to death."
"Shh…" Harrman stealthed and Geylan followed, leaving Dez the only visible one there.
"Aw, don't leave me-" He was cut off his complaint as a speeding blur of vicious claws and teeth barreled into him from the shadows, knocking him clean over and onto the ground. He gave an almighty push at the thing and it sprung off him, but in that short time, about twenty of them had come out of nowhere to surround them. They were worgen, huge and gangly, covered in fur and very angry-looking. They looked around for escape but there was none.
The fight began and soon fur was flying everywhere. Harrman and Geylan took the worgen down swiftly, slashing and stabbing vital places with ease, and Dez was roaring and swinging his sword around in a storm of blades, cutting them down… but there were so many and this could not go on forever. Geylan sidestepped one massive paw and sunk his dagger into a furry chest, not waiting, turning to his next opponent who lunged at him, massive jaws open wide. He fell under its weight and struggled, stabbing it in the back, but it didn't even feel it, sinking its teeth into his shoulder, preparing to rip a chunk out. Dez came to the rescue by seeing him and chopping its head clean off. He stood up and winced as blood began pouring from his wound. There were still about ten left and they were coming from all angles.
Harrman twirled and ducked and danced a deadly dance, his sword and dagger wounding and maiming, his young face beaded with sweat and his muscles protesting at each movement. Down they went, up they came, again and again, meeting the warm metal of his blades, drenched in blood. A paw pulled his leg out from under him and he cried out, a dying worgen thinking to bring him down with it. He hacked its paw off, but he was down and several of them descended on him, ripping his armour, and he thought he might have lost a finger.
Dez stood, panting, charging for his next kill. Blood pumped in his ears as he beheaded, opened, chopped and sliced the worgen, working their numbers down. There were only a couple now, converged on Harrman's struggling body. Dez took care of them, his rage increased after seeing his friend fall in battle, worgen falling around him, his wounds forgotten. Cut, pierce, and hack to pieces, blood flying everywhere, gleaming yellow eyes dilating with fear at the sight of this unstoppable demon. He was the only one left; there was only he and the enemy, to be annihilated, torn from the face of the earth, cast into oblivion.
And then there were none left.
He picked Harrman's limp body from under a bloody pile of monsters and looked around for Geylan, though he was in a daze. He could only see worgen, just their black fur, and no sign of his friend. There was no time to waste in the village of worgen, so he trudged on, out of that place, carrying Harrman like a baby in his arms, before collapsing by a tree and falling into a deep, deep sleep.
Fire crackled somewhere near; its warmth suffused Geylan, his decimated body yearning to be closer to it. He quite wanted to go to sleep, but he could acutely feel cold hands tending his many wounds, tutting over the state of him. His eyes opened a crack, but everything was too blurred, there were only hazy smudges of light and darkness.
"No, don't open your eyes…" a voice said. It was raspy and slimy, the common sounding dead in its mouth. "I can't believe I'm actually helping a human…"
"Ngghh…?" blood gurgled in Geylan's throat and he coughed, his ribs unbearably painful, tears streaking from his bloody eyes.
"Shut up." His saviour told him, irritably applying bandages to his wounds. "You would be left for worgen fodder if not for me. And I'm only doing his out of gratitude- you helped me greatly with my job." He almost felt her smile, for it was a female voice. "The Pyrewood council is all but wiped out, thanks to you and your friends."
He was left alone after that. His wounds mended fast with the aid of whatever the woman had done to them, and come dawn, he felt well enough to open his eyes, and almost screamed. It was an undead who was stoking the fire. She turned to him and smirked. "Never seen a Forsaken before, little human? I'm Faerleia, and by all means and at any other time, I would kill you gladly."
"Hmmm?" he asked tiredly. "Uh… my friends?"
"The big one took the little one out of the village. He fought with such vigour after he thought he'd died, I have never seen such in a member of the Alliance before."
"Not Alliance," he grimaced. "Defias."
"Ahhh." Faerleia grinned, taking some fresh bandages out of a leather backpack on the floor. "You need to get out of here by next nightfall, or that worgen bite will effect you. Bastard Arugal…"
"Huh?"
"The villagers here have all had their blood cursed by Archmage Arugal. They turn into worgen by night."
"And by day?"
"They are humans… but you care nothing for Alliance, anyway, so it shouldn't make you guilty. You killed a lot of them for me."
"Oh… you're welcome?"
She laughed, and the sounds grated on Geylan's ears- it sounded like a dying cat being dragged across a bed of nails and a chalkboard. "Now, get out before I have to kill you."
"I can barely…" he pushed himself up from the chair he had been seated in, his legs wobbling. "Ugh…"
"You took a great deal of damage." She said nonchalantly. He limped over to the table and panted at the effort. A triangle-headed stave of some importance hung in a case on the wall; this was a town hall, and several such artifacts were displayed here. He broke the glass and propped the stave under his arm, finding it made the perfect crutch. The undead merely regarded him coldly and he limped out into the village to find it… quite normal.
There were a few humans about, at the doors of their houses, looking at the pile of dead worgen. Some wept, others just stared. Children demanded to see but mothers ushered them back inside. Nobody came near the town hall, thankfully, and Geylan kept in the early-morning shadows as he hobbled painfully out of the village, keeping a low profile. After some time he found Dez and Harrman, the smaller man propped up against a giant tree, his clothes ripped to create makeshift dressings. He smiled meekly when Geylan approached. "Wild night?"
"Very," he rasped, looking at Dez. "Is he…?"
"Ok? Yes… but he's completely out of it. I saw him last night after he thought I'd gone down, before I passed out, Shaw… he was a demon. Cutting them down so fast, so angry…" his eyes fell to Dez's breathing body. "I'm honoured that he fought for me."
"As am I." Geylan painfully sat down by a tree. "What do we do now, then?"
"You're supposed to know."
"We need to get out of Silverpine, for sure…" he mused. "I don't like this place, at all, and we probably killed Smithers last night. The people there turn into worgen at night because of some blood curse."
"Why didn't you tell us that before?"
"I didn't know. My rescuer told me, but she didn't want me to stick around."
"Oh." Harrman checked Dez's temperature. "He's fine, I think, but won't be conscious for a while. We'd have to carry him."
"We can't, physically."
"Then we wait here." He sighed. "I don't want to either, but…"
Geylan agreed reluctantly and curled up into a ball under the tree, cursing his ribs and falling into a disturbing sleep.
The light was low in the barn, but it was warm and snug. The bed had two people in it, one a boy and the other a girl, sleeping top to toe. Geylan blinked, unsure of what he was seeing. The boy… he looked familiar, but he couldn't quite place him. A pleasant, freckled face with curly brown hair… he couldn't get a better look.
A woman was in a brothel, tall and black-haired, with a severe beauty. He did not recognize her at all, but she was with a man, in bed, her face angry and wanting. For reasons unknown, the room had three cats in and two birds on the windowsill. They watched, unable to leave.
In an office he recognized rather well, a middle-aged man sat, weeping softly. He stopped as an abrupt knock on the door startled him, but allowed entry. In swept a man moulded by years of grief and war, his face grim.
"Shaw, you foolish man."
It was sweltering hot. Banging, soldering, the general din of forgery, goblins skittering around excitedly. The zeppelin was progressing faster and faster.
In a darkened room. "Patrick…" the metal-man said dangerously. "You play with my time."
The sky was blackened, casting a massive shadow over white stone. Everywhere, there was nothing. The gallows swished and swayed in the breeze, newly hanged bodies making the wood creak.
The swift clunk of the executioner opening the floor of the wooden structure. Crying, pleading. Bars and guards. Dead bodies littering the streets. The shadow over the city…
"Wake up, Shaw." Dez was a sight for sore eyes. He looked down at Geylan. "You're having a shitty dream. Writhin' an' all."
"Oh… He sat up and winced as his ribs and shoulder ached. The sun was beginning to set. "I've been out for a while."
"Yeh, nearly the whole day." Harrman said, handing him stale bread. "Eat up."
"We need to get out of here." Geylan replied immediately. "Now."
"Why?" Dez asked, tending to a gash in his leg. "I know it's creepy an' all, but none in Southshore'll miss us…"
"We just… ah, you know when you know you need to do something… without an obvious reason…" He struggled to describe the feeling in his gut. "For example… we needed to go north. Now we're north… too north. We need to wait."
Dez stood up with some help and Harrman offered him a hand, which he took and leaned heavily on his crutch-staff. "Yeh're soundin' awful worried."
"I am, Dez… and I don't like it. All of this, these things I can't explain."
They set off, a shoddy parade of war veterans, hobbling and wincing on torn muscles and bent bones. Harrman was lamenting at his loss of a finger. "How will I do all the fiddly things required of me now?"
"We'll find a priest, don't worry." Geylan lied, his eyes screwed in pain. "I'm more anxious about getting out of Silverpine, and about what we'll do now. Councilman Smithers was our only lead."
"We'll find something else," Harrman assured him, flexing his fingers, gazing at the stump of his ring finger. "I never much wanted a wife, anyway…"
"Yeh're nineteen, Harr, yeh dun't need a wife." Dez rolled his eyes. "By my reckonin', we'll be out of here in about an hour… at this pace."
"You mean this lack of pace." Geylan grimaced. He was disturbed by his dream, or rather, dreams. He was not stupid, and knew that something was going on that he wasn't privy to, a reason why he was dreaming of those things… he hadn't thought of his father in a whole year, and to see him again now did not bode well.
The mist began to clear as they descended into Alterac, following the road until Hillsbrad, tired and still bleeding slightly. Southshore's town hall's clock came into view over the horizon, accompanied by the sounds of a town beginning to fill with pub-goers and evening vendors. The small house on the outskirts of town that they were renting under their pseudonyms was quiet and dim, cold with two days of no heating, but it was the best they had. As soon as the door was opened and the lamp was lit, a feeling of utmost exhaustion suffused all three of them- but there were growling stomachs to feed and wounds to dress. A healer would ask questions, and they could handle the wounds- the Defias were not stingy with their provisions, even if this was a low-importance mission, and they had a full medical kit on-hand.
Their supper, due to tiredness, was a meager meal of cold meats and bread, augmented by a warm cup of tea- they knew that they had to stay awake, if not only to tend to their wounds. Harrman bound Dez's slashes while Geylan tended to his own, before helping Harrman with his severed finger. It was a stump with jagged bone protruding from it- he felt sorry for the boy, it would hurt like hell- but he could hardly concentrate. His shoulder wound was pulsating oddly, driving him insane. Dez noticed.
"You okay, Shaw?" he said, voice gravelly, taking his bloodied clothes off and sponging himself down. "Yeh're jumpy."
"I'm just feeling a bit… odd." He admitted, trying to concentrate on stitching the skin on Harrman's finger. "Probably just tired, Dez."
"I 'ope so…" He looked at Geylan seriously. "You took a big bite… are you sure nothin' got infected?"
"No… but the wound hasn't coloured… it doesn't look infected."
"Whatever you say, Shaw."
"We should sleep now." Harrman spoke up, standing and looking longingly at the small bedroom the three of them shared, with its three beds and dingy fireplace that was always too damp to get a proper fire going in. They collapsed into their beds with a collective sigh of contentment.
-
"Ah, Southshore," Rebecca took a deep breath in. "I like this town."
"Why is that, then?" Conyeri asked as someone fell through a window of an inn to their right in the midst of a brawl. "It seems a bit… uncivilized."
"It is, which is what I like about it. You'll see when we reach the manor… if you don't die of boredom during the first couple of hours."
In a darkened window, a small, inconspicuous house, pushed back from the bright lights and the boardwalk, a flash of something familiar. Conyeri rubbed her eyes and blinked, peering inside. Nothing. Uneasy, she kept her gaze on that little house until they were out of sight and truly absorbed by the verdant countryside. Rebecca was rambling, but she didn't hear her, eyes fixed on the road ahead, mind turbulent, deeply upset by something she wasn't even sure had happened. Now that she was here, she felt as though something was missing, or that she was missing something. Her life was a mess of frayed and loose ends and someone was beginning to knot them together, one by one, tightening around her neck.
She swallowed uncomfortably at that visualization and stayed silent, watching the rolling hills. Only a small, grassy path marked the way to Manor Ashcroft, and as it got dark the track widened and became harder, the earth compacted. Rebecca did not lie- the Manor itself was magnificent- but it held no place for her. No place at all.
Delighted to be off the road, Lady Ashcroft led her children away and into the serene brightness of the grand hall, leaving Conyeri to stable the horses. The butler, Jeyvs, introduced her to the serving-staff, who were merry and welcoming and rather interested in her, though she supposed it was because not much went on up here, nestled into the mountains of Alterac. She listened to the gossip and found that the first snows of winter were expected soon, making her think of the festivals that would be going on back home in Westfall- Winter's Veil, when even the militia of Sentinel Hill would drink a glass of eggnog and pull a few crackers. Sighing, she stabled the horses, stored the cart and fell asleep on the simple bed in a little room off the main stable.
She woke later than usual; the sun already high in the sky when she changed clothes and began her morning duties, caring for the horses and general upkeep of the stables. She was, she learned, to also act as an errand boy, killing two birds with one stone. The taskmaster, a burly man with a slight walleye but a kind voice, told her that there was a trip to and from Southshore to be made every two days, in order to pick up fresh ingredients and other things the household needed. She was to be entrusted with this task- though, she remembered, perhaps that was not a good thing, the shadow in the window playing on her mind.
The trip was shorter without the carriage, Conyeri riding the Thane and holding the Baron beside it, who was to act as a pack animal- a duty far below the magnificent horse, but necessary. She felt the jingling coin purse in her pocket as she joined the midday market throng in Southshore, weaving in and out of all sorts of people, seeking the stalls that the taskmaster had told her to buy from.
"Get yer fresh veg 'ere! Haaaalf price!"
"Finest dairy in all 'o Hillsbrad!"
"Bespoke cobblers, Jakan and Enrik, finest leathers, cloths, mail made to order!"
Conyeri's heart stopped as she heard a very familiar voice through the din. Turning, eyes wide, she beheld Geylan and Harrman, standing by a stall filled with shoes of all manner and size. Panic rose within her- were they sent to find her? Bring her back to the Defias? Was Marisa around, also? The market was set out in rows, and as luck would have it, the butcher came right next to the cobbler, and she needed to visit him. Would the Ashcrofts notice if their meat wasn't from their same butcher? She didn't want to risk it, and took a deep breath, walking up to the stall, one eye permanently trained on Geylan.
"What can I do for you, lad?" The butcher in his bloodstained apron asked.
"I'm buying for the Ashcrofts," she explained, taking the coin purse out and finding the right amount for the meat. "Their normal order." He nodded and smiled, picking some of the best cuts from his frozen display and wrapping them neatly. She handed him the money, thinking she'd gotten away with it.
"Cony?" The voice came from behind her and she wheeled around, coming nose-to-nose with Dez. "By the gods-"
She put a hand over his mouth. "Dez, shut up."
"Oh, Cny, wt hpnd?" She removed her hand, making a quiet sign with her hand. "Cony, what happened?"
"Not now, please," she implored him. "Later. Without Geylan or Harrman. Please." He nodded in understanding, just looking at her desperate expression enough to still his excitement. "Come to the stables of Manor Ashcroft, after dark."
"Okay." He whispered, and then raised his voice. "Sorry, lad, didn't see ye there!" And then he headed over to Geylan and Harrman. Relieved but perturbed, head spinning with questions, she melted back into the crowd and purchased the rest of the provisions, dazed. What were they doing north, pretending to be cobblers?
She returned to the manor and waited anxiously for night to fall. Rebecca didn't visit her, which she was party thankful for due to the privacy, but she was missing her company. Soon, though, she might have more company than she'd bargained for. Suddenly, she was angry. After all the effort she'd put in getting away from the Defias, they still found here! She just wanted a normal, boring life, and here she was sleeping in a barn in Alterac disguised as a boy, wanted for murder! She kicked a bucket, spilling the water inside all over the hay, and watched it seep through. One of the horses whinnied but she ignored it, storming back into her little room, her senses flaring up. She looked around and saw nobody, which meant it must be someone stealthed.
From the shadows emerged a face she hadn't ever wanted to see again- Nightly, the pompous rogue. His face was a smirk of triumph. "Hello, Conyeri DeHayersae."
"Hello yourself," she retorted, staring at him. He was visibly less well fed, haggard and his clothes were worn from traveling.
"I followed the hapless band of heroes up here, on the order of VanCleef himself." He said smugly. "To find you and bring you back. Once a Defias, a Defias until you die."
"Not after what you were doing!" she snarled, thinking of Alt. "I never condoned any of it, and yet I put up with it all, thinking that for some reason I had justified myself. But no, you just had to have your cake, eat it and bake another! I know right and wrong, and the metal-men are wrong. Making innocent people into zombies is wrong. Everything about the Defias is wrong!"
"And so are you," he said evenly, leaning against the wall. "The Defias survive, even thrive, while Stormwind is whittled down, bit by bit, and what we do, we do to make ends meet." He raised an eyebrow. "I didn't come here to let you fight your own morals."
"You came here to kill me or take me back."
"Correct, but I'd rather not kill you. You're awfully pretty, and once Miss Du'Paige is finished with you…" he let his voice trail and the meaning hand in the air.
"Never, you…" hands clenched, she wondered when Dez would get here. "You…"
"Insult me all you like, but I remain unconvinced. How many times did you say no to Miss Du'Paige, and yet you still let her have her way." He grinned. "Perhaps you liked it. Got a taste for it. Well, women are all good, Conyeri, but wait until you have a real man. Then you'll forget all about girls."
"A real man? Who were you thinking of? Seeing as you don't qualify…"
"Shut up!" he hissed, coming off the wall with his hand on his dagger. "We'd rather you came back of your own 'free' will, rather than me having to kill you."
"I'm not going back." She said, fear and adrenaline rising in her. He smiled, as if to say she'd made the foolish choice, and lunged with incredible speed. Conyeri barely sidestepped in time- he was trained and she was not- she was way out of her depth. Nightly was a blaze of deadly metal, and each attack she ducked or dodged was immediately followed by another, harder, faster one. From her boot came a small dagger, which would not do to combat him properly. All she could do was hope that Dez arrived sooner rather than later.
Into the corral, sending the horses stamping and blanching in their stalls, wove the two fighters, Conyeri forced back with thrusts and stabs that expertly aimed for her vital areas. She ducked a neck slash only to be kneed in the stomach, sent rolling over the hay, clutching the area and gasping. She scrambled up and had to throw herself to the floor again, ribs protesting.
"Die already!" Nightly growled. "Stop running!"
A terrified shriek came from the large stable doors and Conyeri wheeled around, seeing Rebecca standing there. She cursed in her head, as many languages as she knew, foul words of hatred for that girl, overriding the concern she felt for her life. Nightly stopped mid-hack to see if she was a threat. "That is too cute."
"Who are you, trespasser? I demand you get off my grounds!" she said, and Conyeri marveled at the fake confidence. She saw the trembling and Nightly would too. "I-If you don't leave immediately, I'll call the guards!"
"Gods…" Conyeri mumbled. "You're a mage, Rebecca. Turn his loins to ice or something."
Though it hadn't been serious, she brightened up and threw a spell at Nightly, who looked at the small blue bolt skeptically before moving aside. It sailed past him and hit the floor, leaving an icy patch. Rebecca, annoyed, started a volley of them, which he gleefully danced around, letting her wear herself down. "Stop it, don't waste your mana."
"What?" she asked. Nightly saw the opening and took it, lunging for Conyeri's throat, and she was too slow to fully move. Instead, she ended up bringing him down on top of her, his heavier body pinning her down.
"Stupid little girl." He spat at her, his nasty breath covering her face. His hands closed around her neck, attempting to strangle her to death. Rebecca ran over, but he took one hand off and expertly threw a small knife that caught her in the stomach. She shouted out in pain and Cony felt a surge of anger and desperation that powered her to jab at Nightly's eyes. The grip on her throat kept on tightening and he showed no sign of stopping, so she switched tactics and decided that Marisa's lessons had been useful after all. Shifting her talent away, she drew upon the small pool of mana she had remaining, pushing it through her thumbs and into his eyes. He yelped and his grip lessened only a tiny bit, but that was enough for her to draw a breath and kick her knee to his crotch.
Out from under him, she remorselessly snatched the throwing dagger from Rebecca's stomach, which made her cry again as she seized in pain on the barn floor, and stuck it into Nightly's neck, repeatedly, until his yelp became and gurgle and his body stopped moving. Out of breath and struggling to pull air into her arms, she surveyed the stable in front of her, eyes wide and bloody pumping, pulling adrenaline around her body. A creak from the door told her that someone else had entered.
"Cony?" Dez asked, drinking in the sight of one dead body and one wounded one. "What-"
"The Defias." She said shortly. "Though you'd know all about them."
"What? What's 'appened?"
"Are you simple or something?" she asked him, incredulous. "He followed you up here to bring me back, dead or alive!"
"We didn't even know ye were up 'ere!" he retorted. "Marisa wanted rid of all those real friendly with ye, so she sent us up here ta spy on the Synd'cat."
"Oh," she said numbly. "I need to help Rebecca." She remembered the girl on the floor by their feet, squirming in pain. "She's never had a knife in the stomach before."
"Stayin' at a fancy manor… ye've got ter tell me 'bout everything, okay?"
"In time," she bent down and held the struggling girl still, whose large grey eyes were flitting around in panic. "Calm down."
"Connor! Connor! There's a knife in my stomach!" she said, scared.
"No, I took it out," she replied, catching Dez's odd look. "I need to clean the wound. It's quite deep but a clean cut, so you should be fine, okay?" Rebecca nodded while Conyeri went to the little tap and took out one of her clean shirts, wetting it, and gently sponged the blood from around the wound, then cleaned around it, ignoring Rebecca's wails. "Talk to me now, Dez."
"I already did. We're spyin' on the Synd'cat. I wantta know whut yeh're doin' up here!"
"Running away."
"That's a long time in a short sentence." He was obviously not sated.
"You want to know?" She asked, and he nodded. "I ran away after the argument with Alt, nearly got eaten by the ghouls of my parents, nearly became a ghoul myself, slept with a pack of worgen, was nursed to health by a woman with a banshee for a daughter then disguised as a boy, got a job as a stablehand in Stormwind, then started working for the Ashcrofts so I could get north."
"That's a lot of information an' no full stops."
"Well done, Mr. Observant." She snapped. Rebecca had stopped whining and was now looking at her with a mixture of disgust and awe.
"You're… a girl?" She asked. "Oh… by the Light… and I…" she covered her mouth with her hand. Conyeri, despite herself, smirked.
"You like girls, Rebecca Ashcroft."
"I thought you were a boy!"
"But you still like me now, even though you know I'm a girl." She grinned and felt the need to shuck off the small charm that Eva had given her, and as soon as it left its place on a chord around her neck, she felt a great relief. Rebecca stared at her, specifically her enlarged chest, and she wiggled her eyebrows. "Eyes are up here."
"As touchin' as this is, Cony, we need ter decide what ter do now." Dez interrupted her, hand on his hips. "Geylan has missed ye. Ye can't'ne stay 'ere."
"I guess," she sighed. "I felt like I had to go north, and now I'm here, I feel incomplete."
"Come back with us. We'll figure stuff out."
"I can't just run from the manor. Lady Tight-Arse would have my head."
"She really likes you, you know," Rebecca said as she sat up, cradling her stomach and wincing. "She told me that if you were high-born, she'd marry me to you."
"That would 'ave been an awkward wedding night," Dez mused before snapping back to seriousness. "We all felt it, Cony. North is the place to be… but now the last piece of the puzzle is missin', an' when we find it, shit is gonna break out."
"Indeed." The barn was silent, save for the whoosh of wind through the cracks in the roof and the quiet creak of the rafters. A weight settled onto the three assembled. "We need to move Nightly's body."
Dez agreed to dispose of it himself as Conyeri helped Rebecca up. "Connor," she started, but them realized something. "Your name isn't Connor, is it?"
"No, it's Conyeri. Conyeri DeHayersae."
"You're wanted!" she said abruptly. "In Southshore, I saw a poster for you. You killed your parents and ran off to join the Defias!"
"Not quite," she sighed. "You can't complain, seeing as I saved your life."
"You're here under false pretences, running from the authorities…" she gasped and would have pushed Cony away, but she was holding her up at the moment.
"I've got the whole 'bad boy' thing going," she smiled slightly, feeling rather tired. "But Rebecca… Nightly was only the, um, third person I've killed… and I didn't kill my parents and run off to join the Defias."
Dez chose that second to pull out a small, wrapped parcel. "Conyeri, I'm sorry, but… I've not been total honest with anyone. Miss Du'Paige sent me to give this to ye… an' try an' get you back ter Westfall."
She took the package in her hands. It was strangely heavy. She opened it carefully and found an object wrapped in soft, blood red cloth. She took the cloth off and found it to be a bandana, made from the finest mageweave, embroidered with silver thread. It simply read:
Property of Marisa Du'Paige
Inside was a mould, the clay hard, onto which had been pressed the image of an object. It was a brooch, and below it, etched into the clay, was another cryptic message.
You have absolutely no idea what this does.
She sat back, confused at the mould but angry at the bandana. Trust Marisa. She had given Conyeri something that marked her as 'property of Marisa Du'Paige'. She was nobody's property, least of all the Monster's. She stuffed the two objects into pockets and looked at Dez, who seemed oddly melancholy.
"I didn't want ter do it behind Shaw and Harr's backs, Cony, but Miss Du'Paige… ye can't'ne say no ter her, ye of all people know that."
"It's okay… I'll… I need to think for a bit. Can I be left alone, please?" She looked at Rebecca, who was the epitome of confusion. "You too, Becca."
They left her alone to pick up the pieces of her life.
-
Ugh, that was absolutely horrible to do, but I hope I dropped enough little clues to kep people interested about what's going to happen… soon enough, when the missing piece of Conyeri's moral puzzle slots in.
I hope that you see some character development, especially in Conyeri. She's changed and she hardly knows it- though whether for better or for worse, I'm not entirely sure myself. (Well, I am, but that sounded cooler.) Just in case anyone was wondering:
Conyeri- Con-yeh-ree
DeHayersae- Duh Hay-err-say
Geylan- Gay-lan
Harrman- Har-man
Cefflan, Dez, Rebecca, VanCleef, Marisa, Nightly, all how they look.
Rosea- Row-see-ah
Stay tuned for next week's chapter of The Brotherhood, in which we encounter something entirely otherworldly…