a/n: hey everyone, please enjoy my story. also please check the trigger warnings listed below! thank you :)

Trigger Warnings: Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-Typical Behavior, Misogyny, Attempted Sexual Assault, Menstruation

[one]

speak, soothsayer

Cane was slaughtered on a muddied battlefield. His head, sawed off at the throat, was then placed on a pike. Crows stole his eyes. His ears had been sliced off. His tongue had been taken, too. Whether it had been animal or man to rob him of his tongue, none could tell me.

He was dead.

It was done.

In departing this world, Cane had left me without a male guardian. I had no male cousins, no brothers, no uncles, no father. All were dead long before Cane.

The males of the war-camp thus circled like vultures to assess me and trade barbed words. I had had no menses, either, and it riled them all the more to want a female still inexperienced and fresh.

The tent in which I had lived with Cane was slick and wet with mud when news of his death reached me. I paced and fretted and worried that I might be stolen in the night by some hot-headed male in search of a bride.

It had happened to girls much younger than me. There had been blood between their thighs afterward, and it had not come from their menses.

But it was not a male who came to my tent. It was one of the elder women of our war-camp, coated in her leathery flesh, lips so chapped and pale that it seemed she had none at all.

She said, "Two warriors wish for you to be theirs. So they fight, and whoever wins shall have you."

Without another word spoken, she departed. So it was. At sixteen, unclaimed and with no menses, I was an anomaly.

And there had been my brother, so feared in his own right that no other warrior had been able to provide a suitable dowry in the weeks before his death, though there had been offerings.

Now Cane had passed to the Other World, and I stood alone, wondering if it were not better to take a dagger and join him.

The elder women swept into the tent to dress me in the traditional clothing of our camp for a female in the midst of a claim: a long shapeless robe, and a veil which covered my hair, the tradition of our camp.

The fabric was black. It looked better suited to mourning.

My body was no longer mine.

"The warriors are Ultan and Berach," the woman of leathery flesh said. "You will witness their fight. The victor will bring you to his quarters and break you in."

Rain had softened the soil. It squelched beneath us. The air was humid and sour, sizzling with the odour of salted meat. Children ran alongside us, in flimsy slips smeared in dirt and grime.

Laugher chimed. Pots and pans clattered. A babe wailed.

It seemed overly-large in the slim, meagre arms of its mother, surrounded by other infants; her stomach was distended with another.

Once that one was born, I doubted she would be allowed more than a month to recover before she fell pregnant again.

In the inkwells of her eyes, for hers were so black in shade, my own future was reflected, in which life was to suffer the frenzied thrusts of a warrior half-crazed from battle, birthing babes soon afterward, to suckle and grasp and claw until those pink-mottled hands reached for swords instead of her arms.

Now the squalls of infants made me spiteful toward them. Now the breathless giggles of that small group following us enraged me. I hated their outstretched arms, their frantic giddiness.

Because I was afraid. I was afraid of what had to happen for those babes to be here.

The veil delighted the little children who chased us. It was a novelty.

The elders told the girls among them, "One day it will be you who wears it. You will have your turn."

There was a small clearing, marked in a circle of stones, its middle wet with mud. It was there that the warriors would battle for a bride whose menses had not yet come, for a bride adorned in a veil that showed her chastity, for a bride whose brother's corpse lay forgotten on a battlefield.

I could not even offer him a burial. Out there, alone, in a miserable greyish field, without his head, without me. Would I know his body from the pile of others?

The two warriors, Ultan and Breach, awaited our arrival.

Of the two, Ultan was favoured. He had fought a thousand times, and bore each wound with pride, over his tattooed flesh which rippled and shone with muscle. He had never taken a wife, though I had no knowledge of the reason.

But I had heard whisperings that he had taken females, and broken them, and left them bloodied in his bed.

Berach was slim of frame, which allowed him a swiftness that the bulk of Ultan could not. He sharpened a dagger. His eyes were black, black like those of the woman I had seen earlier.

While he was silent and stood aside from us, I suspected he was no better than Ultan. He had a brutality that was bred into him, and all children that I bore unto him would suffer it also. It was a stirring in the womb which promised me that, something unspoken and sacred.

"Two fine warriors wish to claim Apphia, sister of fallen Cane," the elder woman said. "He who triumphs shall have this wish granted."

Then came the clash of swords and the tang of blood carried on a swift morning breeze. Now there was a crowd around this ring, small and scattered, to witness the claim.

I watched, aware of a distant tinny whistle in my eardrums each time I thought of a long wooden pike staked in mud, half-sinking, and the head which stood at its summit, without eyes, without tongue, without ears.

What had been his last thought, before all had fizzled out? What had he last seen? What had been the last sound to ring within his eardrums before his life was lost? Had it been his own blood to coat his tongue, the last thing he ever tasted? Blood and dirt, perhaps.

Grief came swift and brutal, like the dagger which Ultan dragged across the throat of Berach.

No more was I known as Apphia, sister of the fallen Cane.

I was Apphia, claim of Ultan.

The elder woman whispered into my ear, saying, "You know your place. Bow."

The mud seeped through the robe, and tarnished my veil. I dipped forward, and allowed that mud to christen my forehead, for how lowly I bowed before Ultan.

There was blood trickling into the puddles. Berach's death mask was forming.

Before I rose, there was a shivering whisper along the length of my spine. What words it spoke, I could not quite decipher, and strained to hear. But it was gone. I waited, in front of Ultan, who returned his dagger to its sheathe.

It was then, as the mud shifted beneath me, and my veil whipped in the building wind, that the whisper came again.

In a chorus of feminine voices, it said: "The Oracle, all-knowing and divine, is gifted now to thee and thine. No man shall know what future he sows, but he who asks, shall receive what he is owed. Speak, Soothsayer."

"Rise," Ultan ordered me. "And look upon your victor."

Though I remained kneeling, I straightened to oblige his request. Blood stained his cheeks, his front; he had shown no fear in battle.

Then a sudden thunderbolt of wrath gnarled his features, and he looked to the one of the elder women, who hovered somewhere at the edges of the clearing.

"You have delivered me a blind woman," he spat. "Do you wish to make a mockery of me?"

Whisperings rippled through the crowd. The elder women shifted forward, overstepping the sacred stones and rocks which formed this clearing, where the feet of women rarely trod.

I found myself manhandled, shifted, thrown between cold shrewd faces. What frightened them? What was it that made them reel backward like Ultan had done?

I had not changed. I had merely heard a strange voice; not one voice, but hundreds of soft voices melting into one.

"It is not possible," the elder woman whispered. "It cannot be. In one hundred years we have not seen it -..."

"Child," another cried, "have you heard it? Have you heard the Oracle speak?"

Because I was frightened, I could not bring myself to speak. I simply nodded.

"Soothsayer," the elder woman said. "She is Soothsayer of Illyria! The first in a hundred years!"

Unbeknownst to me, the whites and pupils of my eyes had been wiped clean, like stains from a plate. What showed was a glassy sheen behind which pale wisps of smoke seemed to whip, roll and coil as if sentient.

My true thoughts could not be known through my eyes alone as a result. No-one could tell in which direction I looked.

It was only the turn of my head which signalled that I stared at one of them, only for their own eyes to hastily dart away.

No-one faced me. Even Ultan turned, and shunned me.

"Look not into her eyes directly," someone cried. "It brings misfortune."

Ultan asked, "What is she worth?"

"More than a wife," the elder woman simpered. "More than jewels and land and gold and whatever it is that your heart craved 'til this day."

"You tell mistruths to spare yourself the shame of bringing her to me. Soothsayer." He spat at the ground. "Nonsense."

"It is the truth. She can foretell the future. Bind her to you, warrior Ultan, and ask her what you wish."

"How do I bind her to me?"

The elder reached for his dagger. She slit his palm and mine, and held them together.

"Blood blended," she said. "A bond formed."

Ultan crouched before me, his humour dark and bubbling.

"Soothsayer, shall I know power like that of my father before me?"

The Oracle spoke through me: "The power of thine father was vast and hard-won, yours shall be greater, and what you have, you will gift to a son."

What sweet delight sparked within Ultan's soul. He stood proud and tall, beating his chest like warriors did before battle. Around him much delight did spread, seeping outward into the little war-camp around us.

Ultan ripped a strip of his shirt and tied it around my eyes. I was lost, afraid, unsure of what had happened and what was the reason behind it. My heart clanged as loudly as all the gongs crying out across the camp.

Ultan hauled me around by my arms, dragging me this way and that. Because of the sash, my sight was lost, and I could not tell to whom he spoke.

But he shouted out, "A son! I will have a son and he will inherit what is mine!"

Within me, the Oracle swirled and swirled.

That morning I had been a girl without a male guardian.

Then I had been offered as a bride to be claimed.

Now I was Soothsayer of Illyria.

x

That night, Ultan brought me to his tent. There were lowly animal hides upon the ground, which served as his bedding. He dropped me on it. His weight was sudden. His hands sought me out, opening, forcing, until he suddenly ceased and swore.

"You bleed," he said. "You have your menses."

It was the first time that I had ever had them, on the day the Oracle awakened.

He shoved me aside. I repulsed him. Some warriors cared little about menstrual blood. But it seemed that Ultan found it off-putting. He forced me to sleep on the other side of the tent, away from his bedding, so that I would not sully them.

He threw a wet, dirtied rag at me. It slapped on my arm, because I was still blinded by the sash and could not see.

"Wash your filth," he told me. "And sleep."

x

At the first watery drippings of dawn, he brought me to a different tent. From her rasping voice, I could tell that this tent belonged to the woman who had dressed me in the veil, and told him the power of the Oracle.

Ultan forced me to bow before her.

She pulled the sash, and I saw her withered face. She turned me left, and turned me right, gripping my chin tightly.

The sash was replaced. It was an odd thing to be glad for it, for the sudden light had burned my eyes, and left them aching in their sockets.

I thought of Cane.

Ultan asked, "Will the Oracle rescind its prophesy if she is clipped of her wings?"

She answered, lowly, calmly, "The Soothsayer has no need of wings. She is bound to you. She has no other purpose than to serve you. Take what you will."

x

So while the war-camp was waking, Ultan dragged me out to the field, like the field in which my brother had been murdered. There was a rock, jagged and lumpish. He placed me over it, and knew that it cut into my sternum.

Pebbles had scraped and cut my legs. I bled even before the dagger had been pulled. I screamed, I fought. It was my right wing he pulled first. It flexed and rippled in his grip. He made the incision.

Pain swelled. I almost bit through my tongue.

He plucked the tendons like chords.

My eyes had been blinded. I could hear nothing over the hot thrash of blood in my eardrums. Ultan held me by the throat, his grip so tight I thought my neck would snap.

Then it was finished. Then I was clipped. He dropped me. I slumped against the ground.

The blood settled in my ears so immediately that I felt as if I had become deaf.

My tongue was swollen and bleeding. I tasted blood and dirt.

I could not see.

It was done.

Sinking into the mud, I heard the hungered caw of a crow.

x