Lost.

[Qaeli]

Limsa Lominsa– Fisherman’s Bottom

Late Evening

 

Two silhouettes populated the endrun of the port, huddled beneath cowl or tricorne as the rains continued to hammer the port for the third consecutive night. All eyes were turned to a brigantine ship that had been badly damaged, albeit it remained afloat whilst the porthands moored and divested her of unnecessary articles.

 

“Sahagin raid,oi? Wha’s th’damage?” asked Qaeli. “Can see a few ballistae an’ ball breaches fore an’ port,” the silver-haired woman commented as she paced to the side, noting the outwardly obvious inflictions. Her tongue clicked with disapproval at the ruins of the figurehead; once a depiction of a courtly-appareled woman bearing a dagger in one hand and flagon in the other. Only the skirt remained.

 

“Bola snapped Her Ladyship in half, through the bow and through the first stanchion. Would’ve held but for the falconet rolling just above. The footing buckled, taking Bergonier with it,” recounted Voliant, Qaeli’s provisions officer, who happened to be particularly brawny for a Duskwight.

 

The news of Bergonier’s passing had struck harshly. A knifemaster,  the Wildwood had been implicit to the young woman’s growth from boisterous waif into lethal bladedoxy. Yet for the sorrow it bore her, it was a pale vesper to the abyss that it would lay upon Bergonier’s wife. Still, she never allowed herself to become moored by loss, and thus kept her mind to the details.

 

“S’o’er a tonne’s half a’ three yalms. But ribbin’ held up, I see. Duskiron beltin’ kept true, aye?”

 

Voliant glanced to the young woman. Even now, nearly seventeen years after her—a mere child at the time—surprise induction into the crew of the Needle, her maritime knowledge was surprising. “Correct, though several bolts and rivets cracked as a result. They’ll need replacing.”

 

“Th’fuck’re scalebacks doin’ wiv such artillery, anyroad?” the silver-haired woman asked without direction, arms folded in her consternation. “Ye said they emerged from th’shoals an’ opened fire?”

 

“Correct. Never seen the like. Seawater should’ve rendered powder useless. Not countin’ the difficulty of moving ‘em in the water. We know now they’re not so primitive, and yet…”

 

“Well, naught fer I’ a’ th’momen’,” said Qaeli as she turned to face the muscled Elezen. “See t’th’repairs. When she’s ready, ferry ‘er t’Moraby fer th’final preparations.”

 

“Of course,” he answered as the comparatively diminutive woman turned to take her leave. A question toward her plans stirred on his tongue, but there it remained. One look at the steely calm of her despairing profile told him all he needed to know. “You needn’t always carry this burden yourself. I could accompany—“ he began.

 

“Sod off,” she said as she started down the gangway, “Nae a lil’ lass anymore. Ye frighten ‘er, anyroad.” She waved a hand dismissively over her shoulder, throwing back her hood in the same motion, suddenly needing the sting of the torrent that hammered the seaboard. “I’ll meet ye in Moraby.” 

 

Mist Residential District – Predawn

 

Nearly a bell had passed since Qaeli settled upon the rooftop across from Bergonier’s home; a stone and mahogany-wrought bungalow that he had labored four years to build. Though smaller than its neighbours, it was all the home he and his wife needed—and the ceilings were vaulted to account for his respectable height. She had been so proud of him for etching a worthy livelihood in the wake of the company’s disbanding after Carteneau.

 

She had watched the column of smoke rousing from the chimney top dwindle into a thin thread. Comprised of checkered black and sandy brick, it was the centrepiece of Bergonier’s home. For years, he had obsessed over having a fireplace and chimney, like a ‘proper gent’.

 

Beyond the array of houses and manses alike, the first splinters of the morning began to thread the sky. Soon Nischa would wake, and be off for the smithy. By the time her feet hit the well-kempt grass that waited beneath her two-story-high perch, her stomach was churning with unmitigated nausea. 

 

The young woman had never been a proponent of love beyond the familial, regarding it as illusory and fickle. Nischa was the advocate that gave pause to such a stance. Through many nights of binge-drinking, infidelity and memory-induced panic she had stayed at Bergonier’s side, wholly devoted without thought to condition.

 

And now she was going to learn that her great love was gone. Forever.

Qaeli had earned many monikers in her short years, many unsavory and unflattering, but ‘coward’ rarely visited her reputation; yet as she began to cross the cobbled street, reticence struck her to a halt.

 

A sleeve of dryness coated her tongue and throat, though she felt they would soon be revisited by eft steak and greens.  She leaned forward, bracing her palms upon her thighs for balance, preparing for the inevitable.

 

“Miss? Are you unwell?” came a man’s voice as silky as her favourite pair of skivvies. 

 

Fists formed against her thighs as the acrid impulse dissipated, and she straightened her posture as she turned to face the host of that smooth tone. Ten paces away stood a man dressed in finery fit for a sultana’s gala: decidedly froofy-ruffled poof-neck-thing, cufflinks, slicked black hair and finely trimmed beard, manifold-buckled boots and all. Though of greatest interest was the ornamented handguard of the extremely thin sword he carried; not unlike a sabre, but still half the girth of blade, straight as a needle.

 

“Might ask th’same o’ye,” she said with a long draw of breath, stabilising her insides, “Lookin’ like a choco’ struck by lightnin’. Or a rainbow.” 

The man was unmoved by the dry insult beyond a bare smirk. “Forgive my presumption, m’lady. It simply pains me to witness such a lovely woman in the throes of tra—“

 

“F’ink I’ma propah heave now,” she interjected, her attendance to this man’s flowery prose already spent. “I be fine, luv. There’s a’ leas’ two pillowhouses in th’distric’, tha’ way,” she continued with a glance and jab of her finger down the road. She stilled then, noting a pair of silhouettes approaching, and at least one person courting the roof of Nischa’s neighbour’s house.

 

Lips pursed sideward, she exhaled through her nostrils and turned a look back to the yet smirking, stately gentleman. 

 

“Miss Varily, I fear your meeting with the Widow Cintaux must needs wait. I formally and humbly request that you follow me. Calmly, if it please you.”

By now the silhouettes had come into focus, two Elezen men, one bearing a gladius, the other a steel-studded club lowered to the side, but clearly presented. The one on the roof was gone from view.

 

“Righ’ informed ye be, fresh as tha’ news be.” A scoff bubbled from the young woman’s lips while a hand raked through her damp mane, tucking what she could behind her ears. “’ow ‘bout this,” she began again, looking left to right, “Ye sod off an’ ne’er come near this ‘ouse ‘gain, an’ I’ll nae feed ye yer froofypoof neck f’ing.” A vague hand gesture about her neck suggested the man’s ascot.

 

“Unsurprising,” he said with sighing resignation. “Very well. Superfluous violence it is, then. Gentlemen?”

 

From above, a click sounded, follow by a shrill whistle. Knowing full well what it meant, Qaeli tucked into a crouch in time for a crossbow’s bolt to fly past her shoulder, ricocheting harmlessly off of the cobblestones.

 

Steel and limbs followed promptly afterward as the pair of Elezen came at her from opposed angles, swinging and kicking at her crouched form. The sole of the first boot was intercepted by the punch of a throwing blade produced from beneath the girl’s sleeve, the top-leather of his boot raising from the knife’s tip. With her other hand she snatched his ankle before he reeled out of reach, and with a sweep of her leg to turn her weight, she jerked his leg into the path of the gladius’ downward chop.

 

She felt the metal sever bone at the shin as blood splashed her temple. Abandoning her grip on the ankle, she took advantage of the swordsman’s surprise by delivering a snapping uppercut square between his legs. He slumped just enough to bring his collar within reach, which she gripped in time to jerk his body into the path of the next bolt meant for her skull. The dull thump of metal tip to flesh followed by gurgling gasp ended his threat.

 

Shoving him off, she rolled toward the now nearly one-legged Elezen, ripping free the gladius—and sending up a spurting geyser of blood—as she sprang to her feet in a full dash for cover.

 

The Gentleman looked on silently, looking yet devoid of surprise. Even so, her speed! 

 

“I have heard tales of your prowess, Miss Varily,” he said as he watched the sniper search below for the girl. “The Silver Siren, fast and strong as the crushing tide.” 

 

Several seconds passed as he watched the crossbowman scanning the alleys and yards below. Then steel flashed from over his shoulder, and the crossbow fell from his grip, clattering to the ground below. Dark particles sprayed into the dawning sky, and he fell heavily to the ground below, leaving Qaeli’s silhouette in his place.

“Now ye’ll become part o’one o’those tales.” She leapt down from her victory perch, parts of her slick and sheening with the blood of her attackers as she stepped back onto the street. 

 

“I fear my story does not end here, Miss Varily.” Releasing a briefly-held breath, the last man standing gave each of his white gloves a tightening tug before he slowly drew his sword free of its scabbard, and assumed a curious one-handed stance; one leg tipped forward, the rear leg bent, sword pointed straight ahead, free hand raised in the air behind him.

 

For a moment, the young woman gawked. His stance was as flowery as the rest of him, and too loose, besides. Yet there was a steel in his gaze that she knew very well. Shrugging, she absently wiped at the blood on her cheek, the slowly trickling fluid beginning to tickle her skin. 

 

Without another word she rushed forward, angling low in preparation to dip past the length of that sword. Yet no sooner had she come into range, he danced back in tandem with a waving jab from his blade, forcing her to halt her pursuit in time to snap back and knock the stab aside with the much shorter gladius.

 

His smirk returned, his pose unchanged, the Gentleman waited. 

 

She came forward again, this time sweeping aside to circumvent the obvious lateral stopping power of his weapon. Again he danced back with whiplash speed, a flurry of motion from his sword preceding two rapid jabs for her shoulder and abdomen. Dipping below the first, she managed to slap the second to the side with a downward parry. It did not afford her the opening she had hoped, however, as the marginal weight of the sword allowed him to rebound the blade into a quick, downward cut that bit into her shoulder, breaking her focus long enough to regain his distance.

 

Wincing, she shrugged at the pain, which would soon spread like fire through her shoulder. 

 

This time it was she who waited, though not for long. He came forward with a blindingly swift lunge, though he kept his feet light, proven by the rapid and graceful footwork that followed her parry. Each attack came with surgical precision, forcing the young woman into a backpedal as she fought to keep up with her weightier, shorter weapon. Another two jabs broke through her defenses, one glancing off her side, the other punching into her sword arm.

 

Bleeding and running low on breath, it suddenly occurred to Qaeli that she was going about this the wrong way. Continuing on her backward trend, she took a short leap back to widen the gap. As hoped, he lunged forward to recover the distance.

 

Then she countered. With minimal motion she skirted to the side of the forward lunge while stepping forward, snapping a vise grip onto his wrist, pulling it with her as she committed to a quick spin, stopping the Gentleman’s onslaught with a crushing elbow to the face.

 

He fell to the ground straightway, eyes wide with surprise.

Qaeli peeled the sword from his grip, taking a moment to examine it before she brought the tip to the man’s throat. Drawing in much-needed breath, as much as it now pained her, the tip pressed ever-so-gently to his adam’s apple. “Wha’s all this ‘bout?” she asked, her voice husky with anger and burning pain.

 

With a slow blink, the Gentleman looked up to the girl. For several seconds he stared, marveling at the strength of that blow she delivered. “That is a tale for another time,” he said as his left hand twitched.

 

Qaeli, having had her fill of this lot, was prepared to open a hole in the man’s throat, but found herself unable to move. Or rather, she was moving with a slug’s sense of urgency.

 

Her enemy seemed unaffected, carefully sliding out from beneath the blade before standing up to clasp the dust from his no-longer-pristine attire. 

 

She tried, willed herself to move faster, to cut him down where he stood, to no avail. Time had slowed to a crawl for her alone. 

 

She could only watch as the sword was pried from her hand, gripped tight in the Gentleman’s, and suddenly disappeared somewhere behind her.

 

An exploding pain rocked the back of her skull, turning the world to white, then to absolute black as unconsciousness embraced her.

[Qaeli]

She tasted blood.

 

Unsurprising. A backhand from a hand nearly the size of one’s own head tended to have that effect.

 

A streamer of crimson jettisoned from her mouth, landing at her current mentor’s feet.

 

“Ye quick, an’ strong fuh sich a lil’ bird. But, tuh mich weight in ye movemen’s. Keep ye arms an’ feet light. Attack an’ defense in one, ‘membah?” Bergonier’s daggers—alive with steel—sparked off of each other, ending in reverse grips.

 

The hyuran child took the measure of her opponent. Bergonier held the presentation of a lowly sailor, sleeveless tunic and slops of linen, and often barefoot, same as she. Yet to assume that his appearance was his whole invited a quick, perforated death. His advantages were clear: each arm was a scant few ilms short of the full length of her own body, his height nearly three times—she was diminutive, even by eighth nameday standards—her own, his strength, experience and speed were renown amongst the fleet. Yet she remained undaunted, recalling the steps of their last round:

 

A feinted lunge. A mid-stride backstep to bait a parry followed by another lunge. She bypassed his downward cross-parry with a monopedal twirl to the side, using the spinning force to launch a kick for the outer rim of his knee. He simply lifted his leg above the attempt— a possibility which she had not accounted for—sending her spinning. Then the world was limned with white as the back of his hand met her cheek, stopping her cold. 

 

She sucked the remnant of copper through her teeth and slowly spread her footing, weighted iron daggers secured with opposing grips. 

 

Small feet pattered on the water-slick deck as she dashed forward. The blades held close until she was within proper striking range. An upward jab for his lower abdomen and a backhand slash for his inner thigh were checked by a pendulous swipe and downward parry, respectively. Her arms briefly numbed from the vibration of the force of his denials, but she re-affirmed her grip and pressed on. Her shoulder ratcheted back to spur her astride the straight knee he shot for her face, spinning and ducking between his legs to escape the inbound stab meant for her shoulder blade. 

 

With her now poised behind him, Bergonier promptly leapt forward, wheeling about upon his small and wily opponent. To his steadily dwindling surprise—and rapidly realised chagrin—the little girl was already upon him. The first and second blow he managed to curb aside, but the falsified third in the form of a low slash to the ankle led into a stopping elbow to his inner thigh, clinched by a bone-wrought pommel slamming into his manhood. 

 

All of the breath left him, and he dropped to a knee, nearly eye-level with the small girl that had managed to fell him. Through the tears, he could glean her smile. Frigid iron pat his chin gently.

 

“Tae much weight in ye movemen’s, Berger.”

 

“Not… movin’ fuh a bit,” he rasped.

 

With girlish triumph she tittered, leaning up to kiss his chin.

 

She tasted blood.

 

The air was inundated with an unholy congregation of filth, flooding the senses with the irrefutable presence of death, piss, vomit and disease; a bouquet any woman would be delighted to bottle. Fondness in dream was violently supplanted by disgust in waking, the myriad horrors assaulting her nose—paired with the pounding in her skull—prompted a retch. Metal screeched on metal as she lurched forward, and she realised her arms were fettered to the wall above her.

 

She spat as lucidity returned to her, the haze of the world falling away to reveal a dank, dimly lit chamber. Bone and other unidentifiable detritus littered the ground, presently being explored by a bilge rat. 

 

Gulls sounded in the near distance, and through the impregnable wall of malodorous hideousness she detected the ever-comforting roar and spray of the sea.

 

She was still somewhere in La Noscea.

 

A gradual scan of her environs revealed the source of the light, a single tallow candle—relatively fresh by the scant few tears—in the furthest corner to her right. The edge of its globe of luminescence revealed a grime-encrusted barred gate, though little else could be seen beyond the cage.

 

She then chanced a glance over her own person. Stripped of her prior leathers and linens, she was now garbed in a simple tan slip of cotton and naught else, though it shared in the quality of her surroundings; now complimented by her own vomit. She didn’t appear to be bleeding anywhere visible, suggesting her wounds had been bound or healed outright, albeit the itching wetness at the back of her head suggested otherwise.

 

Careful  twisting of her wrists and a few hard pulls tested the integrity of her bindings:  black iron; ever sturdy and reliable. She began to study the bone and stone fragments around her, hoping for shards or slivers that would be serviceable for her needs. After a few moments of searching, however, the echo of footfalls from beyond the gate filled the room, supplemented by undiscernible whispers. 

 

The jingling of keys preceded the inevitable scream of rust-caked hinges as the gate slid open, and the vague but unmistakable stature of The Gentleman stepped into view.

 

The chains rattled again with an instinctual tug as she looked unerringly upon the man, his eyes under-rimmed by dark bruises, his septum obviously redefined and bloodied by the blow she had delivered. The very sight brought satisfaction to her, albeit the cheating blighter deserved much worse.

 

Either The Gentleman did not notice the grin, or he brushed it aside as he stepped further into the chamber. Studying the young woman’s current quarterage, he clicked his tongue, shaking his head with disgust.

 

“That you should be made to suffer such gross accommodations… truly a travesty,” he said, pausing to observe the wall to his left, the rugged stone marred by various scrawls. “Perhaps you question the reason for your detainment.”

 

“Perhaps me arse itches from this floor. Might be s’from th’sound o’ye voice.”

Sniffing a chuckle, a small grin touched his presently smudged features. “Truly, your charm rivals your beaut—“

 

“Gonna heave ‘gain.”

 

“Perhaps it is also true that you do not fully appreciate your situation.” With a sigh, he turned his focus back to the enchained girl. “Would that I had the patience and time to allow you opportunity to develop such appreciation. Alas, the claim on your blood is not solely mine own.”

At last, some pertinent information.

 

“S’quite a codex, luv.” She flexed her toes, shifting marginally on her seating. “An’ where d’ye settle intae tha’ pool? Mm? Shark ye in cards? Lift ye favourite neckpoof f’ing? Say ye ‘ave a wee prick in fron’ o’ some lass ye were wooin’? Kill ye brov’ah?” Snog ye wife?”

 

The Gentleman was unmoved by the prods up until the last, at which point he bristled, the tension in his gaze and stance visible even in the scant light. 

“Oooh. Tugged a nerve?” She leaned forward, volume diminishing to a careful whisper, “Ye stem wilted? ‘ad a rough time o’ givin’ ‘er th’headboard-shrieks? Figgah’d she might try new f’ings? ”

 

Her captor’s nostrils flared, his chest swelling. At length, he released the tension in a narrow current through pressed lips, pacing to the side. “You and your contemporaries were once conscripts of the Maelstrom’s Thalassocratic Navy, no? Part and parcel of the Black Sails outfit, yes?”

 

She disliked the term “conscript” when applied to herself and her aforementioned companions. While it was true that their numbers were incorporated into the Maelstrom’s overall maritime and landfall assault agendas, it was the Garleans that forced the integration, not Merlwyb herself. Nor would she ever forget the thanks they received for services rendered.

 

“Th’Garlean invasion encouraged strange bedfellowship fer many,” she finally answered.

 

The Gentleman reversed the direction of his pacing. “You and eleven other specialists from your Sloetide company were dispatched aground at Carteneau, each with a list of names. Operatives, officers, engineers, researchers. You recall, yes?” He paused, looking to her for a reply.

 

Her suspicions now aroused, she looked on in silence.

 

“Your unit was assigned to the latter two,” his pacing resumed, a steadily building urgency in his tone, “Three blades for seven throats. And you found them all, didn’t you?” Without waiting for a response, he reversed direction and continued, “Remember you their names?”

 

“They were big names. Some bled intae othahs. F’ink a girl like me can be bothah’d t’membah ‘Vulpitoadius Wundercunt’ an’ such?” She gave a diffident shrug, barely noting the twinge in her shoulder. “Jes’ extra tinder fer th’pyre.”

Metal suddenly flashed in the candlelight as The Gentleman’s sword was freed, its cuspidate tip drawing a bubble of blood from her throat. His glare was nearly as pointed, his breathing disheveled.

 

Qaeli pressed her tender skull to the wall in reaction to the suddenly draw, though she never forsook eye contact. Still, she held a sense of what brought the sudden rush of rage on, and knew enough to temper her tongue for the moment.

 

“Sulpicia Nan Tadius,” his delivery was hollow as it was haunted, all of the charm expelled from his flamboyant veneer. 

 

Despite her prior expression of ignorance, she knew the names of those for whom she had been designated executioner.  The events of Carteneau had a way of cleaving to one’s memory. However, this name landed astray, though “Nan” suggested an engineer or researcher.

 

“Cannae say as I recall tha’ one,” she shrugged once more.

 

“Adjutant to Revius Nan Manilius,” The Gentleman added, the tip of the blade slowly turning.

 

That name struck true. She recalled Revius; he never managed a word, given the dagger plunged into his heart from beneath the arm. He collapsed on the spot. A plain but panicking brown-haired woman attempted to flee the antechamber and shout alarms to the soldiers, researchers and miners that were busied packing up in the shaft below. She barely got out a note before Qaeli had opened her throat. 

“Science officah,” she said with a difficult swallow, “Responsible fer Ceruleum excavation an’ synthesis.”

 

Seemingly partially satisfied, the tip of the sword eased from her flesh.

 

“I and others withdrew from the battlefield when Dalamud began to descend. We held no desire to become part of the… pyre, as you named it.” He turned away, his tone becoming thick with reflection, “I sought the cavern that led to the Cereleum excavation site, from whence I intended to extricate my wife and flee the madness.”

 

Suddenly the light of clarity dawned upon this scenario, but Qaeli held her silence.

 

He paused again, his gaze turning to the scrawl-riddled wall. Slowly he walked to the chamber candle, hooking a finger into the ring of the altar before moving back toward the previous spot that had caught his interest earlier.

 

“I arrived at the processing site in time to see my wife running out onto the scaffolding, the terror in her eyes tangible even from so many yalms away. Then a shadow was upon her… opening her throat as though it were a melon. She was dead before I reached her, the shadow gone into the ether.”

 

The candle yet remained apart from the wall, limning the brokenness in The Gentleman’s face as he looked back to his captive, studying her expression.

Qaeli held passive airs as she looked on, waiting.

 

“I survived Bahamut’s rampage, relinquished my title and commission under suspicion of death, relegating myself to the company of scoundrels and foolish idealists, and devoted myself to pairing a name and face with that shadow. I established a new name, a new creed, a new network. For these nearly six years I toiled, peeling flesh and soul to unearth what I sought. And unearth I did.” His head tilted slightly, a wistful, pained smile creeping to his lips, “One can imagine the precipitous surprise in learning that my wife and four officers were felled by a silver-haired girl of fifteen.”

 

A shrug lifted in answer, the onset of a smirk building on her dirtied features, scarcely masked by the length of her aforementioned silvery strands. 

 

“We were selected wiv propah reasonin’.”

 

“Just so.”

 

“Sae, wha’ now? Ye already said me blood ‘as othah claims. Which mean ye nae goin’ t’off me jes’ yet. Wha’s all this fer?”

 

A wild smile spawned upon the man’s face, and he lifted the candle toward the wall, giving clear sight of the word he had been studying.

 

The sharpness of the angle—given her fettering—made it difficult to decipher the scratchy script, but within minutes she had the truth of it.

 

Justice.

[Qaeli]

“For a girl so young, she has proven exceptionally resilient,” Zazuka said as he peeled the blood-soaked gloves from his tiny hands, comparatively diminutive boots padding along the stone floor. “Malnourished, sleep-deprived, bled, and never a word uttered. Nary a scream, even. Unnatural, I say.” Slapping the sodden gloves upon the utility bench, he looked back to The Gentleman, who was plying through a small manuscript. “Tell me, Aetius,” he waited for the hyur’s attention before continuing, “While I do welcome the opportunity to claim pounds of flesh from that wretch of a girl, as she has cost the Monetarists no small sum with her unwillingness to do as commanded,” he nodded across the corridor, “Why do we keep her here? The others would offer comely reward to have her in hand once more, and so quiet, besides.”

 

Aetius looked back to his text, peeling to the next page. “You mistake her silence for submission, Zazuka. She will never sing the lay written for her.”

 

“Thus I revisit my question: Why keep her here? What is to be gained, her suffering aside?”

 

Closing the book, Aetius looked hard upon the Lalafellin, fingers threading together before him as he leaned over the table. “What could possibly bear more meaning? Knowing my plight, do you earnestly believe I share even a tittle of your incessant gil-mongering?”

 

The Lalafell bristled at the barb, though he knew better than to press the notion without his retinue nearby; though it was not a guarantee that even they could protect him, should he draw Aetius’ ire. The Monetarists kept and employed more than its share of dangerous persons, yet none of them frightened him so much as The Gentleman. For all of his outward flair, the hyur was uncompromising as he was calculating, brutal as he was courtly, merciless as he was calm. There was naught but murder and wrath within his eyes. Were it not for his loathing of the silver-haired girl and her own commensurate lethality and unpredictability, he might have pitied her as Aetius’ target.

 

“Worry not, Zazuka. She will be delivered into the greedy palms of your colleagues. It is by their knowledge of her and the company she keeps that my opportunity was granted. I will honor that debt, when I have what I desire.”

“Why do you not attend to the matter yourself, if her suffering is tantamount to aught else?” Zazuka asked as he clambered upon the bench opposite Aetius.

 

Silence followed the question as the vengeful hyur considered the answer. Lowering his hands to rest upon the book before him, he looked beyond the Lalafell, staring into the nothingness of the corner.

 

“Have you ever witnessed a throat opened to the bone?”

 

Zazuka remained silent, suddenly less comfortable.

 

“If the blade strikes the carotid artery," he lifted two fingers to tap his neck where the aforementioned artery was located, "It looses jets of blood for several seconds. If the victim is particularly healthy—and spurred by adrenaline—it is likely to be a messy affair.”

 

Zazuka glanced about the room, his discomfort rapidly escalating.

 

Aetius’s eyes closed, his shoulders sinking. “My wife was very healthy, and had just witnessed the murder of her superior.” His nostrils flared with a draw for breath, his jaw tightening. “Each time I close my eyes, I see the blood streaming from her body. In her eyes, the horror… the repudiation of what had befallen her. A merely brilliant and curious mind, with scarce a trace of malice in her heart, slain simply to aid an assassin’s escape.” His eyes slowly opened, the frigid hardness of his stare turning back to the Lalafell, who now bore the likeness of a terrified infant. 

 

“So you see, dear Zazuka, the moment I participate in Miss Varily’s torment is the moment she drowns in her own blood.”

[Qaeli]

She tasted blood.

 

Her own, and the boy's.

 

Crimson cruor bespattered both ground, wall and adolescent, instructing a gruesome telling of desperate travail. It was all made the more glaring by gift of the noontide sun, casting a coppery sheen over the carnage.

 

Her left arm screamed from the break in both humerus and radius, leaving the appendage as little more than a weighted, agonising vine adjoined to her shoulder. Holes and gashes riddled the rest of her. Black ichor mingled with the blood seeping from her midsection, telling of a likely ruptured liver. Her breath felt trapped within her lungs, locked in an itinerant loop in her esophagus; yet for the ragged suffering in her flesh and bones—perhaps miraculously—she had not succumb to unconsciousness.

 

By her guess, Llymlaen would soon part the shores to welcome a new guest.

 

The boy fared less well, a wide-eyed testimony of a soul departed, a body ravaged by unbridled violence. His jack had been torn from the shoulder, exposing the many perforations on his back. His left arm was but a ruin of mashed meat and shattered bone, the remains of his hand laid upon a blood-soaked dagger. His skull fared little better, now reduced to a sopping crater by the iron sphere yet gripped in the girl’s one functioning hand. 

 

Shadows claimed the scene, blotting out the glory of the sun, so malapropos for the madness that roosted here. 

 

She welcomed the darkness, her strength all but spent. With no small effort she raised her head from its weighted loll, to stare into the coming eclipse as her mentors had instructed her in the eight years since her joining. Smile into the face of oblivion, show her the glim of your mettle, and know nothing of fear.

 

Voices clamoured about her, distorted by the relentless ringing in her ears, exponentially worsened by the effort of lifting her head. As her bleary gaze met the coming stygian, two hands reached for her. 

 

She tasted blood.

 

Her own, and the Lalafell’s.

 

Two of his diminutive fingers were caught within the staunch vise of her teeth. Blood was pooling into her mouth, the Lalafell screaming like a child set ablaze as he repeatedly—frantically—slammed a tiny fist into her cheek, temple, and neck. Yet she refused to release him, the delectable sound of bones snapping at the proximal phalanx as her head whipped about violently, like a jackal wrestling the life out of a hare.

 

“Aetius!!!” the little coward screamed, already wide eyes turned owlish by the horror of what was happening—about to happen. 

 

Knowing the arrival of the now-named Gentleman would deprive her of satisfactory end to her bloody work, her jaw clamped as hard as she could manage and she thrashed. Blood struck her face, but the resistance suddenly ceased as the two extremities were ripped from their moorings. 

 

She held her prize behind the wall of her teeth, staring down at the shock-stricken face of her tormentor. Then the Gentleman rushed in, blade drawn. He paused to survey the scene: her battered form still fettered, one eye swollen shut and once-long hair chopped wholesale, yet a savage grin present on that marred and bloodied visage; Zazuka’s collapsed form, gone silent as he clutched at his now maimed hand. Promptly Aetius sheathed his sword, appearing amused and annoyed.

 

“Lackwit,” he began as he stooped beside the Lalafell, casually pulling free his froofy neck-thing in order to bind up the ruined hand. A chuckle dappled his work as he glanced over to Qaeli, who winked. “I once heard you bit off a man’s pride. Chewed it up and fed him the pulp.” The young woman’s feral smile persisted as she slowly tilted her head back, drew in a short breath via her nostrils, and spat out the two hewn digits, one of which nearly struck Aetius in the brow, the other tumbling onto Zazuka’s stomach.

 

Glimpsing the flight of his lost fingers, the Lalafell gasped before his head lolled to the side, lapsing from consciousness.

 

Qaeli spat once more to the side, the hoarse aspect of her voice lifting for the first time in days, “S… S’all i’ took t’shut ‘im up?” A scarce, coughing chuckle followed, her one good eye floating from the passed-out Monetarist to the hyur responsible for her capture. “Shoulda done tha’ days ago.”

 

Aetius absently brushed the back of his hand along his shoulder, where the finger had skipped before becoming lost amidst the detritus of the chamber. Standing, he reached down to pluck the unconscious Lalafell from the ground, as though he were no more than a satchel. He began to turn away from the girl, only to be halted by brazen words unbefitting the precariousness of her situation.

 

“Mayhap nex’ time… ye wipe th’cowardice offa ye face an’ dae ye own dirt.”

 

The rage bloomed inside the man once more. To be labeled a coward by this filth was more than he could accept. Like lead Zazuka’s body hit the ground, Aetius turned to face his accuser. “’Cowardice’? From the lips of the fiend that murdered non-combatants  for no—“

 

“Oh, nip i’, Ashes. ‘Non-combatant’ me perky tits.”

 

“She never bid anyone harm!”

 

“She were a scientis’ workin’ cereleum deposits, ye manky git. Which means she refined fuel fer ye magitek monsters.”

 

Aetius formed fists as he stepped toward the girl, bones crunching and clattering beneath his feet.

 

“Ye used those monsters t’turn women an’ children t’ash wiv impunity, an’ ye’ve th’cheek t’call ‘er a non-combatan’?” Her tongue clicked to the roof of her mouth, her fingers flexing in her bindings. “She an’ othahs like ‘er killed by th’thousands.” She leaned forward then, her ragged tone dripping with as much acrimony as her grinning lips dripped blood and saliva, “Ye said this were ‘bout justice? Sulpicia earned ‘er red smile many times o’er, ye lonely, impotent, pathetic fuck.” 

 

When that name—the name held more sacred in his heart than any other—passed from those irreverent lips, Aetius’ world deliquesced to red wrath. He bridged the remaining distance in two quick strides, roaring his fury while winding back a fist with aim for her already bruised face.

 

Only as his fist neared her face did he notice the sliver of bone that she had tucked inside her iron wristlets, which were now falling away from their prisoners. 

 

Dipping beneath the fist’s destination, both of Qaeli’s hands shot up to grip Aetius’ collar, implementing his own forward motion and her own downward slide to send his forehead crashing into the stone wall. His frame bunched like a hyur accordion before he collapsed atop her, already unconscious. 

 

Though it took several moments to regain her breath, she soon regained herself enough to shove him aside and join his wrists to the bindings that had recently held her. Quickly she searched his person for items of import: keys being tantamount among what she found, along with a small parchment that had been embroidered with what she guessed to be Sulpicia’s likeness. 

 

For a moment she looked to the unconscious face of this man who had been so decimated by the loss of his bride, briefly unable to decide if she hated or pitied him. Settling on the likelihood of straddling both sides, she kept the keys, claimed his sword and dropped the parchment on the ground beneath him and rushed to her feet.

 

The mistake in such sudden motion was immediate, and she nearly lost consciousness as the chamber spun laps around her. Tremulously her hand found the wall, and taking a few breaths to compose herself, she followed the wall—metal screeching over stone as she practically dragged the sword—around the chamber until she found the gate, where Zazuka laid.

 

Her grip tightened upon the hilt of the sword, her body briefly remembering its torment. Her face and unknown toes throbbed from the ballpeen smith’s hammer. The tips of her fingers screamed from the loss of fingernails, her chest, legs, arms, shoulders and stomach were all afire from the various tools that had cut and drilled into her flesh.  

 

Subconsciously, the tip of the blade had moved to the unconscious Lalafell’s throat, where blood had already begun to pool. Every grieved part of her body cried out for a simple push and twist of the blade. 

 

‘Too quick,’ she resolved before she turned away from him. She would revisit the matter later. Presently, it was a miracle that she was able to move at all. 

Her stumbling in the lowlight of the torch-lined corridor seemed to carry on for hours, though the reality might have been a mere few minutes. She soon found the end of the ascending hallway around a corner, where only a cellar door separated her from the scant light that peeked through the cracks in the wood. 

 

So shaky was her hand that it took several passes with each key until she found the one that would grant her freedom. As the lock gave way and she used the pommel of the sword to steadily push the door up, she gasped as the blinding light of the morning poured in. Clinching her eyes, she forced the door open until it finally slammed deafeningly to the side.

 

Feeling her way up the steps, she soon found stony ground, slowly blinking her eyes open in order to filter the light and acclimate herself to the gloomy morn. Once she could bear to prop one eye open, she saw to the closing and locking of the door, and flung the keys into a well a few yalms away.

 

A cursory glance suggested that she was likely in the outcrop of a farmstead, though she would retain little of the information she took in for the next several dozen steps; until at last whatever was spurring her forward expended its final drop of strength. She collapsed face-first into a stretch of tall, dew-crested grass, quickly fading from consciousness with naught but the sound of gulls, sheep and laughing children serenading in the distance.