Northgate
76th Winter, the day after the Chance House grift
Early Morning
Vanja
Vanja doesn’t remember walking back to the inn.
She had spent most of the night at the gallows - her back pressed against the uneven brick of some unlucky tenement house. She’d stood there until she couldn’t stand. Until her heart was in her ears. Her breath coming so quickly it wouldn’t fill her lungs. Until she felt like she was above herself, watching her own legs give way. Then, she’d slid to the ground, into snow that was undisturbed by passing foot traffic but still stained gray by dust.
The first few times she’d gone to the gallows, she had prayed. Lips moving silently, giving the words breath if not voice. This time, she hadn’t done anything.
It had been cold.
She’d stayed there until someone had spoken to her. A man’s voice, slurring slightly, and a comment about a warm bed and, “puttin’ a smile back on that pretty face a’ yours.”
Vanja had looked up, had said something. Or she had probably said something. It hardly mattered. He hadn’t bothered her, further, at least.
And now it was light. And she was here, at the street in front of the Red-Door Inn.
She should go inside. Wash her face and hone her weapons.
Instead she hesitates. Scans the streets, suddenly alert. It’s quiet, for this part of the city. Late enough that revelers have abandoned the street. Still too early for the miners to be heading out of the city gates. There’s only one other person out. A man, sitting on a bench across the street.
Vanja studies him for a moment. Glances back at the inn. Then, with sudden determination, she tosses her hair and crosses the street.
“Hei, Ethan,” she says. Then, with a scoff, glancing at his whitened hair, “Or are you still pretending to be Luke?”
Ethan
Ethan sat on the bench slowly sipping from a cup of spiced tea held steaming between his seemingly naked hands. His eyes stared unwaveringly across the mostly empty streets, fixed on some point a thousand feet below the ground, unfocused on the world around him. The remnants of Luke Bastion’s makeup belied the fatigue of a night spent without sleep.
By the time he parted ways from the company of men who stayed to celebrate their newly won/stolen tickets to Galoring, Ethan was understandably exhausted. Still, his mind too restless for sleep and he spent the early hours before dawn sneaking into Grammy’s Orphanage looking for Lumotu, a concern that was getting harder to ignore as the days passed.
After finding Roux and the schizophrenic thing that lived with Bax’s face, Ethan expected his small friend to similarly be reunited and returned to the fold. Naïve and baseless, perhaps, but those were his expectations. Yet their smallest member was still missing…
The events of the night before, its successes and failures, along with his little friend’s absence occupied Ethan’s sluggish mind as he heard Vanja approach.
It took effort to drag his eyes away from their fixed point, and seconds more to focus properly on Vanja, his mind offering an unconscious resistance to being pulled away from his internal reveries back to the world around him.
Her words settled over him and she looked like she was about to speak again, perhaps even repeat herself, so long was the pause before he spoke.
“Hello,” he greeted her finally. His face held an odd, patient smile. “Awfully early to be out on the streets,” he noted. “Care for a sit? There’s plenty of bench to share…”
Vanja
Vanja looks down at Ethan, for a moment, trying to read his face. It’s as inscrutable as always beneath the layer of faded makeup. The carefully-measured expression he wore like a mask.
“Could say the same thing about you,” Vanja says, at last. “Out early, and alone.” She gestures to him, indicating his outfit. His white-stained hair. “That Luke Bastion’s quite a mark.”
Vanja sits on the bench next to him, and shakes her head. “Or do you not care about that sort of thing anymore? You used to be more cautious.” She looks up at him through a curtain of loose red hair, “Where was that, last night? At the Chance House? Because the more I think about it, the more it was just…” she lets out a small, dry laugh, “it was so needlessly reckless.”
Vanja stops, and looks up, scanning the street before she continues. There’s the rattle of a food cart at the corner, where the vendor is setting up his stall in the shadow of an aqueduct, but the street is otherwise empty. Still, Vanja keeps her voice low, when she speaks.
“I know we’ve outrun the news about the death of the Inquisitor,” She glances over at Ethan again, “and the Wolf. Or at least it seems so. For now.” In the quiet of the early morning, her words are barely audible. “But we used…magic in that battle, against the Swans, right outside the Northern gate, not five days ago. It would have taken one person to have seen, to have heard that whistle but stayed hidden in the treeline to—”
Vanja’s voice falters. Her breath is coming more quickly, and she fights against it. Determined to stay in the moment. She looks down at her hands. They’re white. Shaking. Cold and bloodless. She flexes her fingers, balling her hands into fists.
“And there were so many people at the Chance House. And we were there anyway, in these…” Vanja lifts the edge of her skirt, heavy and damp with dirty snow, and lets it crumple back down to cover her boots, “Ridiculous costumes. All of us there together, in the open.
“What if…what if someone had noticed Sav? Caught her or Warbler while she was trying to do that spell? Or what if Roux had broken his limit - had one too many - taken a swing?” Vanja’s words are spilling out quickly, now, and though she is still quiet, there is a nervous, anxious edge to her voice. “Bax was there. What if someone had asked him a question he couldn’t answer? He’s better, more and more these days, when he stays calm. More stable, I think, but he’s still so easily confused and what if something had triggered him, if he’d gotten upset and…”
Vanja catches herself before her panic rises too high, and falls quiet.
Ethan
Ethan’s eyes gravitate back towards the familiar empty space he was studying moments ago. He sighed, slowly breathing in the steam rising from the cup resting in his hands, the spiced scents surprising him and preventing his mind from wandering too far into his own thoughts. He cleared some sleep from his eyes with his thumb before looking around at the empty streets. The air was relatively still, but the sounds of the city as it was waking were enough to drown most of their words. Still, there seemed little reason to abandon all caution. Clearing his throat, he moved slightly closer to Vanja on the bench. If someone besides Vanja wanted to hear his half of their conversation, he was going to make sure they would need to be hiding in his tea cup to do it.
“Did you ever play with dominos? The little wooden blocks that you set up and knock down, one crashing into the other? I used to really like those when I was a kid. It was one of the few toys I remember having – they were pretty cheap, just bits of planks too splintered for anything besides dominos and firewood. Each of them were only about a foot tall,” he said holding his hands apart to estimate something about the width of a standard plank, but the length of the board, measured by the distance of his hands, wavered as he struggled to remember height.
“… or maybe less, I don’t know. I was pretty young so maybe they just seemed bigger.
“If you never had them, they’re just these wooden blocks – you stand them on their side and, when you were ready (or sometimes even if you weren’t) you’d tip one over and let them cascade down, each one crashing into the next.” Not knowing how universal such toys were, he tried to think of a northern equivalent. “Like an avalanche without the accumulation.
“Anyway, I always liked them when I was growing up because it was so exciting to see all the different ways you could set them up. And when you did it just right you’d simply tip over the first one and all the others would fall in line, one after the other. I found it… immensely satisfying.”
He turned to Vanja making eye contact for the first time since speaking.
“I just don’t think that other people quite see the world as a series of dominos the way that I do. Setting them all up takes a lot of time and patience and, when you get it wrong, you can lose all of that time in a heartbeat.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that, it’s all gone. And you just have to start over.”
He knew he was wondering from the point; of what she was here to talk about. He signed inward. Danica had always been good about understanding these things. He’d missed having her around to talk to.
“Never mind. Look, Vanja, there’s no such thing as no risks, and this was a calculated risk. Even if Swan soldiers are already on the lookout for us, they weren’t exactly thick inside the Chance house, because Sebastian Chance has created a lot of freedom for himself, maybe even more than the other Great Noble Houses. And if - if - anyone was officially looking for us, they sure as hell weren’t looking to find us at one of the most exclusive clubs during one of the highest profile card matches likely to take place this entire year! People were there for a show, to rub elbows with others, to make deals, to get laid… people were there for a whole lot of reasons, but they weren’t testing faces against their memory of wanted posters.
“It was risky to take you all, but it got us a first-class ticket to Galoring complete with an official shipping manifest and legitimate cargo, a First Mate eager to see us to the destination and an entire crew to manage the ship – half of whom want as little to do with the Painted Swans as we do, a lot of them probably with faces found on posters like ours in one city or another. And it’s not just a ride – that ship is ours. I’m holding the captain’s hat and provided we play nice with the First Mate we have a lot of influence on what happens on that ship while we’re aboard.
“That’s the outcome. That’s the results from three days. We trimmed two years down to five months!
“So yes, Vanja, it was dangerous. And no, I can’t control Roux’s drinking, or the thing that is inside Bax from getting confused, or Sav from being spotted… that’s why none of you were included in what the plan really was. Because when it comes to a fight, I know each of you will have my back. But when it comes to setting up dominos… sometimes I just have to do it myself… because I know how things will play out.”
He had no idea how the words would be received but something inside him felt they needed to share. And so, after a moment, he continue. “…which is why I would never have let those guards live if it was my family who was hiding out at the bandit camp – because I knew how those dominos were likely to fall…”
Vanja
At the mention of the Red Bandana camp - of her brothers - the breath leaves Vanja’s lungs, so sharp and suddenly it’s as if Ethan has struck her. She recoils, flinching away from him. Her voice is unsteady when she speaks, but she doesn’t break his gaze.
“My…the camp?” she starts, “I didn’t…”
She blinks, then narrows her eyes. “You were there, too, at the Red Bandana camp. If you saw how those…dominoes were going to fall, if you predicted that the guards would…that they would bring the Swans then you should have told me. It would have been an easy thing to give me that information. To warn me. I didn’t think of it, but I’m not stupid. I never would have risked them if I’d realized—”
Vanja is shaking, now, but she isn’t crying. She shifts her seat on the bench, turning away from the street to better face Ethan.
“That’s the problem,” she says. Her voice is still low, but in her anger and exhaustion the cadence is shifting slightly toward Jorungun. “You don’t tell us things. Me or the others. You’re clever. You make these plans, see these connections but then you don’t share them with us.
“You take us for granted - all of us, but especially those that didn’t come with you from your hometown. Assuming we’ll do what you ask when you don’t tell us the whole plan. That our loyalty is unquestioning. That we’ll trust you when you don’t trust us.
“But the Chance House was dangerous,” Vanja presses her finger into Ethan’s chest, emphasizing her words, “It was a ‘calculated risk’, yes, but it was one you made without giving us the information to decide for ourselves. If we had known about the deal you’d made with the Lady Lace, we might have decided differently. We probably would have still gone with you. ‘Had your back’, as you said. But you took that choice away from us.”
Vanja’s voice is rising, now, slightly, and she lets out a string of Dwarven curses.
“I don’t care if you think it’s tedious, if it’s easier for you to set up the plans - those dominoes - on your own, or if you think it’s best we don’t know for whatever bullshit reason. We’re not your soldiers, Ethan, we’re your friends and we deserve to know!”
Ethan
“Vanja, stop.
“You have to stop doing this. The problem isn’t with me not telling you – it’s your unwillingness to accept.
“I told you we needed to kill those guardsmen; Astarael told you we needed to kill those guards. That keeping them alive was a risk. You wanted to keep them alive. It was your choice, your vote, not ours.
“I told you those people in the fort were beyond saving, that death was the only help we could offer. But you wanted to try something else. So I let you… and I don’t remember anyone besides Sav and you leaving that room.
“And I told you,” at this, his expression changes. Genuine anger brims through his teeth and bleeds from his eyes as speaks. “Bax. Is. Gone.
“Yet you insisted that he was still alive. For weeks now, I’ve had to suffer through someone or something walking around in my friends’ body, speaking with his voice, looking through one eye I will always recognize…”
Momentum builds as he continues, speaking faster with each sentence.
“How would you feel if I cut down one of your brothers from the gallows and filled his body with a stranger? Every day, you would have to look into the face of your dead family and watch as stranger uses their limbs to feed themselves and used your brother’s voice to speak, yet each time you looked into his eyes, there was no hint of recognition; they don’t remember your parents or your village; they don’t recognize your face or their friends; they don’t carry any memories that you shared together… and they never will.”
There is a glimpse now behind the familiar, placid face of inscrutable calculation is a sea of emotions seldom revealed to the world. And in this moment, there is a tsunami of bitter resentment.
“And yet there’s some girl – a girl who’s known your brother less than half a year. And she’s laughing and smiling and using his name. She insists that she knows he’s still alive somehow, inside that body. You can’t see it, but she knows.
“Imagine, you can’t even mourn your brother’s passing. Always there is this girl, who knew your brother a few scant months, refusing to see the truth because it’s easier for her to hold onto false hope than accept a bitter reality.”
“This girl who you constantly have to fight to accept the things you tell her. Who ignores the likely and the inevitable in favor of the unexpected. This girl who can be told ‘these men are dangerous and we must kill them to protect ourselves,’ who will then later complain that she ‘wasn’t warned.’ If only you had made the threat more clear to me; if only you had argued differently, had made the risk more explicit… If only you… not my decision. Not my fault. Not the consequences of my own choices.
“A girl who fights and fights and fights… and then resents that you stopped before convincing her to change her mind.”
Venom spews forth from each syllable, unrecognized and unintended yet unleashed just the same.
“This girl… this girl who would insist that she is capable and worthy of being trusted and included in the most secretive of plans. This girl who would then approach me on the street and, in a single breath, make the explicit connection between the lives of two men I spent more than a year keeping hidden!”
He looks away, staring at the street as he continues.
“Vanja, I don’t tell you things because clearly you lack the understanding that some secrets are never prudent to disclose aloud, even on an empty street when you think no one will hear! I don’t tell you because of the way you laugh off using my real name in front of people who are later captured and killed by soldiers – it’s no big deal, these slips. Oops, you giggle.
“You treat secrets like they’re gossip, not the difference between life and death.
“So no, I don’t tell you. I don’t tell you for one very simple reason: You. Are. Not. Me.
“And while you, nor anyone else, should ever want to have the unfortunate combination of characteristics that makes me who I am, you need to recognize that your limitations will only stop being a danger to the people you care about once you start to recognize them in yourself.
“Until then, I will keep secrets.” He turns to face her once again.
“And the day that you can accept this as a necessary precaution, rather than a slight against you or indictment of your character, is the first day I will need to reconsider that decision.”
Vanja
Vanja shrinks away from Ethan as he speaks. By the time he turns toward her again, she is as far away as the bench will allow, putting as much air as she can between them. Ethan’s voice has never risen, but it’s grown sharp and cuts deeply.
“I…” Vanja blinks. Starts again, “I didn’t…”
She stops. Ethan hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true. And she is suddenly worse for it. Her own guilt and grief hitting her like a wave, threatening to knock her down. She tries to steady herself. Takes a deep, shuddering breath that seems to do nothing to fill her lungs. She looks away from Ethan, unwilling to meet that cold green gaze, and tucks her hair behind her ear. A too-short piece falls forward and she rakes it back again.
“You’re right,” she says, at last. “I’m sorry.”
Vanja swallows hard. Her hands are in her lap, closed into tight fists. She can feel her fingernails digging into her palms, but it’s a dull, distant pain. She focuses on it, though, trying to keep herself grounded.
“I’m sorry. For everything. For all the mistakes. I’ve really been—” Vanja is shaking again, her voice catching. “I’m trying.
“And with Bax…” Vanja chokes on the name, and it’s then that she feels tears start to fall. “You weren’t there. In the Land Beyond the River. Bax said that there would be a way for us…for me to bring him back. I have to try. Otherwise what did I do? What did I turn him into? I didn’t even mean to I was only trying to—”
Vanja closes her eyes, trying to shut out the memory of the longship. The pale lands. The woman with the gray hood and the trees of black birds, now mixing unhelpfully, chaotically with more familiar things. The pines her father planted. A stake in Linjør that she has never seen, but that still exists in her mind. The hanging trees in the Dustown square. The gallows heavy with two dozen bodies. Her brothers. Strangers. All of them there for her.
“I never meant to hurt you. Or Bax. Or anyone.”
Vanja looks up at Ethan again. “I want to go home.”
Ethan
Ethan sighed and shook his head. His words, though caustic and angry, had somehow managed to hit their target and some of the points he wanted to communicate appeared to find resonance.
He sat quietly for a moment, careful not to undermine anything constructive this heated exchange may have achieved. In the end, the best he could manage was continued honesty. When he spoke again, it was with a tone now tempered with consideration for someone who was brave enough to offer an honest apology for harm caused entirely by accident.
And although he did not much feel like it, he fished for any amount of empathy he could grasp when he finally answered, “You can’t go home…” his voice is even quieter than before. “Home is the space where family retreats from the rest of the world. And the Swans have taken that… from you, from me… all of us. They’ve left nothing to go back to. You may have a village and that village may have a name, but the houses will be empty and the streets filled with ghosts.”
“But if home is what you want and it’s not something that you have when you look at any of us, then just stick around until you find your chance to create a new one for yourself somewhere. Somewhere out of the reach of the Inquisition and their insatiable quest for witches.
“And if during our travels, you ever start to wonder why you’re doing any of the things this fight may call upon you to do, just remember that place – your new home. And know that the people we’re fighting are the thing that stands between you and reaching it.
“I don’t know if all that means anything to you. Or if it may mean only the wrong things.” His hands massage his brow; he is depleted but the anger has also receded. What remains is simply a person who is very tired. Resting the now empty cup on the bench beside him, he stands, brushing away bits of snow from his pants.
“Because for me, it’s very simple. They took my friend. And I’m going to get her back. And that’s all the reason I need to keep going… until the end.”
He yawns, ready to finally seek a few hours of rest before he continues with the work still needing to be done. Scratching his head, he looks at the girl on the bench one more time.
“You’re a good person, Vanja. I’m glad to have known you. And any harm you’ve done has already been absolved by the River light you channeled into healing wounds caused by others a hundred times over.” At this, he forces a weak and weary smile.
He heads inside the red door of the inn down the street and goes inside.
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