The Majestic
71 Autumn 217, the morning after the sewers foray
Sav
“The best brothel in Dustown,” she’d reportedly said as conveyed by Astarael, but that could mean anything. Still, for a young woman to say that - a woman who wasn’t in the trade, moreover - that did narrow it down a tad.
Sav didn’t really keep track of the individual brothels and establishments of the night, as they were largely irrelevant to her, but she knew of the general spots and reputations. Here were the places where the lesser nobles went, or sometimes the young ones of the greater nobles when they fancied slumming it. There, the places that the well-off merchants frequented. The tradesmen generally didn’t have the coin to spend on a prostitute attached to a brothel, if at all. The grandest tended to keep their own mistresses in their own private places. It was possible the fanciest brothels were the kind of places Vanja might call the best, but it seemed unlikely they’d allow a country girl like Vanja to stay in her furs and leathers and not be an employee, particularly a pretty girl like her. So the likeliest is a mid-range place with a reputation for kindness.
Which one that might be, Sav has no inkling of. But she could at least scout out the areas where the painted ladies frequent, and try to figure out which of those might fit the criteria best.
Fortunately, it takes much less asking about than she’d feared - which is to say, none. The target herself stands outside of a building on some scaffolding, already hard at work on much-needed repairs for the Majestic.
“Need ye a hand wi’ that? I’ll work for a silver per hour or a half-day per meal,” she calls up at the Jorungun girl, pushing her voice a bit lower and gruffer than its normal pitch.
Once Vanja looks over, she’d see a slender youth looking up at her from the street. Dark brown hair spikes back from a short, square-jawed face with a snub nose that looks like it’s been broken once or twice, his skin swarthy in a way that speaks of one who’s spent much time outdoors rather than innate tone. His diminutive size suggests that he can’t be more than thirteen to fourteen years of age, if that, and his piping voice corroborates that. A tattered brown cloak with a deep hood swathes his frame, a gray inner lining suggesting that it’s at least warm, if not reputable-looking, and an orange scarf wraps around his throat. At this distance, anything more than the general paleness of his eyes is probably indistinguishable, but those eyes are probably the most distinctive thing about him: green on one side, gray on the other.
Vanja
Vanja pauses her work, hand on an upright, and lowers herself to sit on a crossbeam before glancing down at the youth calling up from the street below. It’s not so high - she’s checking the beam over the door, which should continue in one piece beneath the second-floor windows, but doesn’t - and Vanja trusts the scaffolding. She constructed it herself, with help from the half-orc girl Caoth, so she knows it’s sound, but the facade of the Majestic itself is in bad shape, the bricks blowing out beyond the timber frame like a coat too large for its wearer. Vanja could do some of this. Reframe the windows at least, add shutters to cut the wind, but they’d need a mason, too. She blows out her breath, a cloud of steam in the air. It’s already cold, even with the sun above the city.
Sitting more securely, now, Vanja looks down, studying the boy below her. She doesn’t recognize the hair, or the clothing, but the voice is familiar. There are a range of unfamiliar accents in this city, somehow all of them Isendelian, but Vanja knows this voice. It’s no boy at all, but Sav. The girl who saved her life.
Vanja hails her from her perch.
“Afraid it’s work for room and board here, and women only,” she says, “but I can ask the madam if we can get you a meal at least.”
Vanja lowers herself carefully. Knees, hips, hands. She hangs for a second and drops the last few feet, cushioning the shock of landing with bent knees.
She winces anyway. It had been a hard fight, in the sewer, and she’d burned through more riverlight than she was used to, using it in new ways. Attacking with it. Still, she’d been hurt. Badly. Without the River, and Sav’s defensive magic, and whatever healing spell Talith had used, she would have been beyond help.
She’d gone to fight afterward, anyway. To prove to herself that she could win something. That fighting trained soldiers and the brute of an inquisitor was one thing, but she could still win against a normal man. She’d lost, though, and found for the first time, the River had run dry for her. She’d healed her ribs, broken twice in three hours, but had to leave some things unmended. And so this morning she bound her ankle with a wood splint, and tied the leather straps of her boot more tightly.
Vanja smiles at Sav, though, brushing her hands on her hide leggings.
“What can I really help you with, Sav?” she asks, keeping her voice low. She looks the other girl up and down properly. Sav seemed well enough, “Are you alright?”
Sav
Sav watches Vanja descend carefully from the scaffolding, noting with a little surprise the wince as she drops and flexes on landing. “Be ye well?” she asks. One hand goes instinctively below her cloak to rest on a paper packet from a pouch, but she hesitates, then releases it without withdrawing. On the street, in full daylight, is not the wisest place for this. “I had thought you well-equipped to handle … bruises, and such.”
To the question, she nods, once. “I’m fine. I came by to see if ye’d need a hand. ‘Star told me a bit about where you stay and I figured I’d walk around and see if I could find you. I fancy a trip home might do some good.” Her voice drops lower, nearly inaudible. “I’m thinkin’ you were right, perhaps, about heading south first. City’s feeling a bit… stifling, as of yesterday.” She looks up at the wood-crossed façade of the building and says at a normal volume, “And if ye need a hand with this I’d be happy to lend it. Been a snake’s tail since I’ve sawed and joined some timber, it’d be a nice change.” A thought occurs to her, and she adds, “Happy to do it in exchange for any leftover wood. Could use some furniture.”
Vanja
Vanja glances away from Sav, down the uneven, muddy streets of Dustown. Her instinct is to walk, to stretch her legs, or to take Sav up on her offer of work, but she can’t. She likes Sav, on first impression, and even more now, after everything the girl had done last night, but climbing the scaffolding again, or even walking the uneven street to a food cart might further betray her own injuries. Vanja doesn’t need others getting word of that, when she already feels foolish for it.
“I’m fine,” says Vanja, “only an awkward landing.” It’s untrue. She’s kept secrets before, of course. Protected herself and others. Chosen not to say things. She wonders, absently, though, if this is her first outright lie.
“Not much we can do with this right now, anyway,” Vanja says, gesturing up at the scaffolding, “just getting my bearings for now. At home we don’t build them so high, and it seems like here they don’t build them well.” She shrugs, “A job for another day.”
This street of Dustown is usually busy, but few people go to brothels in the light of day. Vanja rolls her shoulders back, her body already resisting her suggestion.
“We can go inside, if you like. Talk properly. It’s,” Vanja searches for a good word, before settling on one she doesn’t like, “discreet.”
Sav
Sav squints at the transparent lie, but lets it pass for now. The Jorungun wants to say that’s all it is, then that’s all it is. At least in public.
Wryness shades her expression at the statement that they don’t build them well, here. “Quality takes money, and money’s usual hard come by here in the slums,” she says. “Ye might be the first one who’s laid a caring hand to that poor building.” She takes a longer look at the leaning brick edifice. She’s not studied stonework, per se, but it’s not hard for even a layman’s eyes to see that the building isn’t the best - and she’s spent years picking apart immaculately-constructed ruins and working in wood and steel. “Well. My offer stands. Can always use food and wood.”
She shrugs at the offer to go inside. “If it suits ye, or if ye have more you’d like to ask me. I only came by to check up on ye and make mah own offer.” She hesitates, realizing, and more than a little surprised at herself. Had last night really shaken her so that she would take the idea of another magic-user so lightly? She had never gotten a chance to really sit down with Vanja to grill her on how her witchcraft works, and here she was just offering it up like a roast pig on a platter. “But…” she says slowly, suddenly a little diffident, “I’d pure love to hear more about the River and your home, if ye’re willing.”
Vanja
Vanja smiles. “Well, considering that sort of talk is…illegal now, it’s best we go in.” She leads the way, pulling the door open with a satisfying instant of difficulty. This repair was good. Vanja had recently reset and reframed the door. Replaced the rotten wood at the base, where years of snow melt had made it soft. It would be strong through the winter.
During the day, the lobby of the Majestic was almost entirely empty. There are several chairs and small couches, paired intimately with delicate tables, designed for drinks and not much else. At the foot of the stairs, there is a small desk, where a bored human girl sits, flipping through a leatherbound book. At the sound of the door, the girl, Kalie, looks up and frowns at Vanja, and at Sav following behind.
“He’s a little young, don’t you think?” says Kalie.
“Medical consultation,” says Vanja, “We’ll just talk here, though, so I can watch the desk if you want to—”
Kalie doesn’t wait for Vanja to finish speaking before she’s swept a cloak over her shoulders and is out the door.
Vanja laughs a little, and sits down on one of the couches in the entrance area. She props her foot up on a small velvet pouf - it’s a casual, relaxed gesture, that she hopes will be enough to reduce the throbbing in her ankle.
Vanja gestures to the collection of seats around her, “Make yourself at home,” she says. She smiles again, small and pained. “It’s private at least, sort of the nature of these places.” Vanja looks around, trying to see the space through fresh eyes. Lovelace and the girls had worked hard to make it a place of comfort, and in that they’d succeeded. “Did our friend Ethan set you up anywhere decent?” Vanja had intended a light tone, but failed, her words coming out sour and short.
Sav
The girl has seen truer luxury, but never in full daylight - only the homes of the grand in the dead of night, when she’d sneak through after catching wind of a rare manuscript some noble was hoarding. It’s far beyond anything she sees in the ordinary run of things. Even though much of the ornamentation is clever paint and plaster, the soft scents and warmth, the velvet and delicate furniture and shining brass fixtures leave her trying not to stare about and reveal the depths of how much she feels out of place. A plain mouse, in truth.
In her scarf, Aloysius snorts (mentally; the gesture is a mere wriggle of the nose physically) and pokes his nose against the dip of her collarbone. She starts, wrinkles her nose at him (to all appearances, she looks like she’s displeased at the state of her own toes) and follows Vanja to the circle of seats, perching nervously on the edge of a velvet-upholstered chaise longue.
She looks down at the leg Vanja propped up, then around, leaving her question unanswered for a moment. Seeing the central room empty, she pulls the packet of powder from her pouch, flicking the tab that releases it open with her thumb, and blows a lightweight powder directly into Vanja’s face with a sung note. It glitters as it flies through the air, an iridescent sheen enveloping the grains as the note races through and imbues the alchemical mixture.
Vanja
Vanja sputters as the powder hits her face, blinking it from her eyes, bitter in her mouth and nose. She swipes at her face, trying to brush it away with an open hand.
“Fane!” she says, “What—”
Then, a rush of warmth, spreading through her body like drink, and a more familiar feeling - of bones knitting together, the snap of a tendon tightening back into readiness. Vanja feels the pressure release in her boot as the swelling fades, the blood flowing back into her own body. The warmth spreads to her chest too, filling the cracks in her ribs, that Vanja had tried to repair the night before. She had thought the River had done enough, but now Vanja takes a deep breath, and even the dull pain of a healed injury is gone.
Vanja drops her leg from the footstool. “You could warn me,” she says, wiping the dust from her face, bushing it from where it’s settled in her braid. “And be careful with that. You don’t want to waste it on little things, if it’s anything like runemaking,” she gestures to her leg. “With the River at least, there’s only so much you can draw from it in a day-span.”
She smiles at Sav, though. It was clear that the girl hadn’t been fooled by Vanja’s acting. She’d known Vanja was injured. But the healing powder seemed to be intended as a kindness. Not a trick.
Vanja stands, testing the ankle, “Thank you,” she says. She leans forward on her toes, then back on her heels. It was as sound a repair as Vanja could do herself, and she’s impressed. “Where did you learn any of this? Healing? And earlier, when you said you could fly, I thought it must be a joke or an…” she pauses, “exaggeration. But then in the sewer, it’s as if you could shift the nature of things. Making the soldiers heavy or slow, setting fires from nothing.”
“Thank you for that, too,” she adds, “For slowing the soldiers, and shielding me,” Vanja lets out a breath, her chest rising without pain now, thanks to Sav’s magic. “I’ve got my own healing magic, you’ve seen that, but I’m a physician, too. My mother trained me, back in my village, so last night…”
Vanja presses on her sternum, where the inquisitor’s warhammer had slammed into her chest, sending her ribs lacerating through her own abdomen, tearing into her liver and lungs, then the matching crack through her back, where she had hit the stone sewer wall. She had felt it, last night. That promise of death. The thrum of a crossbow bolt, intended for her head, missing her by a handspan. The swords slashing through tendons and muscle, across her shoulder, through the back of her knee as she ran, desperate to stay alive. How she’d collapsed on the floor, her life bleeding out across the River, her blood pooling on the sewer floor. She’d begged Ethan to lower the rope, to let her into the safe space in the air that Sav had created from nothing, to give her a moment to heal herself, to call on the River to save her life. And he’d done nothing.
But Sav had stepped in front of her, had cast her incredible world-altering magic, had given Vanja the desperate minutes she needed to keep herself alive.
“Last night I knew I was going to die,” says Vanja, simply, directly. “And because of you, I didn’t.” She nods to Sav, “You were frelsir…a person who…” she tries to interpret the meaning, “who does more than what is expected or asked, because it is right, not because they must do it,” she laughs, “It’s better in Dwarven.”
Sav
At the warning not to overextend herself, Sav snorts - maybe the largest expression of humor she’s evinced in front of Vanja yet. “An would ye teach me granny to suck eggs, then?” She doesn’t seem truly angry, though, only offended in the overproud way of a youth being told something they already know and feel is too basic to even bother saying. “Ye seemed unwilling to even admit to being injured still, but ‘tis a simple enough craft to take the edge off. If it took care of all of what ails ye, I’m pleased.”
This rune or River stuff, though, now that’s something she doesn’t know. Tucking away the now-empty scrap of paper, she leans forward, eyes lighting up with eagerness. “‘Tis true, though, there is only a certain amount of - of will that I can expend to twist the Stuff into what I want. You say you draw upon the River. Those are the rippling lights in the sky, aye? What does it feel like? How did ye learn to do it?”
As for her own studies, well. She takes another, involuntary glance around. Stupid, she scolds herself; if anyone was here then it’d be obvious that she was about to say something she didn’t want anyone to hear. Fortunately, there still remains no one about. “Those ruins we were tae reach,” she says slowly. “It taught me the foundations of everythin’ I know. They had — these glyphs that lit up, some of which still worked. Witchcraft woven into every shining fleck of every stone. Other carvings that explained or hinted at some of how things were done. I fiddled with and took apart and studied everything I could there, an’ it was enough to tell me that when you know what the world looks like - true looks like, I mean, not just the surface appearance - and you can feel the Stuff what surrounds and flows through and makes everything, you can take it apart and spindle it how ye will.
“After that, it was just months, maybe years of huntin’ down more information, more secrets that people held or tucked away in old books and scrolls and stories. But the ruins is where it started. It’s why I wanted tae go back. It’s why I want it back.” Her face goes fierce and dark, the hunger shining out for the first place she’d felt like she belonged, that she’d truly made hers. The place that had made her, turned her from a frightened, powerless runaway to a being who could control the very light around her, like the mystical heroes from the plays she’d lapped up as a child.
The hunger and ferocity dissipates into discomfort at Vanja’s words. Much like with Astarael’s gratitude earlier, Sav simply ignores the bits she doesn’t know what to do with. She squirms a little in her seat and says, “Well. At least ye had the sense to turn an’ run shortly thereafter, even if ye did tumble right out of the nest like a stunned chick still in pinfeathers.” She squints at Vanja’s clothes, and adds, “If you plan to take on any more tin soldiers, might behoove ye to pick up some tin of your own.”
Vanja
Vanja sits back down, putting her feet once again on the pouf, but this time without the arc of pain lancing up from her ankle.
“A stupid injury,” she says, indicating her foot, “I went to fight after the sewer, and only hurt myself again. And I’d used too much riverlight already.” It’s not worth the energy to lie to Sav, and Vanja doesn’t like to do it anyway. “My mother taught me medicine, and how to make runes, but she’s not blessed by the River - the aurora - like I am. Before last night, though, I thought all I could do with it was use the light to heal. The rest was all new to me.”
“As to tumbling from the nest,” she leans back against the couch, absently tracing a seam’s edge with a finger. “It’s different here, than in my village. In Linjør. It’s a lesson I keep having to learn.”
Vanja settles into the corner of the couch, allowing the cushions to envelop her as tension finally leaves her muscles. She folds her arms behind her head, closes her eyes, and starts to tell a story about Linjør.
“Two winters past,” Vanja says, “there was an owl bear. The River flowed through the sky, and it was a good thing for it, because the snow was driving down then, and we could barely see this beast - it was white on white on white, and then there would be a flash of that black beak, and a splash of red and it would seem gone again. It was fast, faster than a man, or even a horse. It had killed the goats, and the boy who tended them, and the first two who ran to stop it. But all of us fought it. Me with my axes, my brothers, with longsword and halberd, and even my sister-by-law, who was then pregnant and armed with a greataxe and a mother’s rage.”
She pauses, “My village is small. There are ten families, maybe. More then, but not by much. And some of us are blisterkere - trained fighters, but not all. Most are farmers, goatherds, woodsmen. And that was before I realized I was River-blessed. So it wasn’t like that battle in the sewer last night. No magic. It was just men and women and steel and iron and a slow fight to save our town from this beast. But we did. Some died - torn by the owl bear’s claws or beak, beyond the point where even my mother could help them, already crossed the River by the time she got to them, but the town survived. The community survived. And we survived because we fought. All of us who could fight did fight. And it was enough.”
Vanja opens her eyes again, blinking rapidly. The more she talks of her home and her family the harder it is to speak. She nods to Sav, “it’s different here, it seems. In Jorungun tradition, no one person is more important than the community. Than the tribe. So when the decision was made to go to the sewers, that was what we all would do, even though I couldn’t see. When Talith jumped down into battle, I had thought it was the same - that was what we all would do.” Vanja laughs, “even though some of us had stronger magic than others. Or better armor. Jantevøn means we all do the same. Anyone who can must. And that was not true.”
Vanja leans forward now, resting her elbows on her knees. She gestures to the door, to the outside. “This place. Northgate. Isendel. It doesn’t make sense to me. No one says what they mean. There are so many liars, with so many secrets. And everyone is alone.
“It’s kind of you to offer to come to Linjør with me. But Ethan was right about that. If those soldiers were headed to Linjør, they would have too much time ahead,” she stops, hesitating before saying the rest. Sometimes, speaking something was enough to make it true, “and what the Town Cryer said the other day… It was not a good thing, to see Linjør written out, to hear the name spoken. It’s so small, no one should even know it exists. Which means if something has happened, to my town, or to my family, it has happened already.” She laughs, a dry, humorless noise, at her own expense. “Going to see will not undo what has been done.
“One day though, maybe. And when I do, you can come with me. I’d be glad for your help. Before that, though, you’re right. I need better armor than what I had last night,” she gestures down to her clothes, not wearing any armor at all now, just a quilted jacket over her knit woolen shirt. “But I don’t have much, in terms of armor or coin. I win most of my fights - but the work I do here is not paid.” She starts to unplait her hair, combing the remnants of the powder from it, avoiding looking at Sav, “It’s part of whatever agreement Ethan must have made with the madam, I think, so that I have the…chance to live here.”
Sav
The admission that Vanja went to fight - again - nets her a long, flat stare of disbelief, but Sav says nothing further on that. People did what they did, even if what they did lacked any sense by her book.
Instead, she pursues, “But what is the River? How do you use it when you heal - or otherwise?” That had been a nasty bit of craft, that, the greenish light pulling vitality from the man’s husk. Likely no more painful than superheating the air about him and burning him alive, to be sure - inasmuch as she could hazard a guess when not being subjected to it herself - but certainly different.
She quiets as Vanja tells her story (Ah, a morality play, a part of her can’t help but think, hearing the voice of Porik shouting about “the themes aren’t coming through!” in her memory), chewing slowly on her lower lip. “If no one person is more important than the community,” she says, after a thoughtful pause, “who decides who is the person and who is the community? What made Talith more the community, making the decision on his own t’ get involved, than Ethan, making the decision on his own t’ not get involved?” It seems a genuine question, not a rhetorical one; nothing in her speech indicates her being particularly pleased with one or the other.
She shrugs, just a little, more of a flutter to move on from the question than a gesture of indifference. “Something happening doesnae mean the town or your family was destroyed. Just that somethin happened.” There is, in a part she won’t quite admit to herself, the fascination of a person with a real family - the idea of a still-living, still-caring unit, the urge to see it with her own eyes, to actually talk to a family like that. It seems most mythical. “As far as your equip goes, I cannae remove all cost from it, but if the coin and the time is there I can make ye a set.” She cracks a quick smile, a ghost that curves her lips and flees in the next breath. “Keep you ‘live a little longer to see if your family is.”
The light shimmer of iridescence on Vanja’s face and braid gleam and wink out as she combs it out, the reaction of magic and alchemy combined finally consuming the base ingredient. At least it removes any awkward questions that might arise from the sight of a suspicious powder all over the couch.
Vanja
Vanja doesn’t have a good answer for Sav, about her questions of community. It’s not something Vanja’s thought on before. It has never been a question she’s asked herself. It had always seemed clear. Obvious. One fights, so do they all.
It’s not that way here, with these people, though, and that was a lesson learned. Vanja could support them. Their cause. But she couldn’t trust them, really. Not the same way she could her own family. Not all of them, at least.
Vanja could trust Sav, though. She was smart. Cleverer than Vanja, by far. And she made sense, explaining herself in a way that was clear, but not demeaning or unkind. And for all her logic about how foolish it had been to follow Talith and Astarael into battle, Sav had done it too. She had leapt down from her safe-room and fought with them, and protected them. Vanja studies the smaller girl, still in disguise, sitting at the edge of her seat, still seeming uncomfortable in the space, seeming like she was ready to run.
But she hadn’t. She’d come to talk to Vanja. To see that she was well. To offer her help in discovering what may or may not have happened in Linjør. Sav may not know jantevøn - the obligation to community, but she knew dunjasånd. Camaraderie. Togetherness.
Vanja sits forward now, in a better storytelling posture, and allows a thin ribbon of green riverlight to flow over her hand, weaving in and out of her fingers. She tells Sav of the River.
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