32 Autumn, after Pashat
Tide’s Song - Bow - late night, mid-planning session
Carter
It was late in the evening. The party had already been planning for hours, and still had much to do. They had to get to Galoring, had to get to the Cathedral, had to kill the Baroness…at this Carter had balked - leaving a Barony with no monarch would lead to the nearest Barics playing for power while the borders were invaded by Morathi Blood-Magicians and Jorungun savages. Carter had glanced around the long table at that, at faces half in shadow, thrown into relief by the guttering torchlight. There were a few nods. Acknowledgement of the additional problem, at least. The discussion had dried up then, though, and Athelia had ordered everyone away from the table for a quarter candle. With luck, at least some of the party would return with clearer heads and fresher eyes.
Now, Carter stands at the ship’s bow, her foot propped up on the rail, retrieving something from the top of her boot. Her fingertips feel something wet, and as Carter brings her hand back to her face, she realizes it’s blood.
Carter begins unlacing her boot, carefully at first but then more quickly, less gracefully. When she removes her boot, and turns it over on the deck, two small items fall from it. One is the small gilded case she was looking for. A snuffbox, only the size of the palm of her hand. The other is the source of the blood - her dagger, come loose from its boot-sheath.
“Oh,” says Carter, softly, to herself.
Her stocking is streaked with blood, but it isn’t her own. In her haste the day before, she’d tucked the dagger away without securing it. Without even wiping it down, it seemed. Carter shakes her head. It was a stupid little thing. The stocking could be washed. The blade was fine. She was unhurt.
As Carter laces her boot back up, she realizes she’s no longer alone at the bow of the ship. She smiles at the polite throat clearing that announces Ethan’s presence.
Carter takes her time before acknowledging him properly. Her hands are shaking, so lacing her boot over her bloody stocking takes more time than usual, and Carter spends an extra moment to ensure her blade is secure.
She straightens, though, eventually, and opens the snuffbox with unsteady fingers. There is a slight smell of something herbal, yet harsh. As she removes a single cigarillo from the snuffbox, she laughs a little, and speaks generally to the shadow by the forecastle.
“Nerves,” she explains. Even as she says the word, her hand becomes steady. “Something my father used to do.” She rolls the cigarillo between her thumb and forefinger, and places it behind her ear while she closes the case. A gentle click. “For him it was a way to play for time,” Carter continues, “to give him a moment to think about his answer, when one of our vassals or another Baric had some grievance.” She shrugs and leans on the rail, finally bringing the cigarillo to her lips.
A snap of fingers and a low whisper and the tip of the cigarillo glows orange. Carter takes a long, deep breath, and lets it out slowly, the smoke dissipating into the evening fog.
“Would you like any?” Carter asks. She’s no longer directing her words to the shadow she assumes is Ethan, but speaking out into the lake beyond. “I like the ritual of it,” she says by way of explanation, “but it’s too harsh for some.” Still looking out over the rail, she smirks again, waiting for a response to come from the shadows.
Ethan
Ethan stared at the cigarette.
“…too harsh for some,” she’d said.
There was a sad chortle that echoed inside his head, dying before it reached the surface of his face. She wasn’t wrong. Rose petals mixed with tobacco may give off a disarmingly gentle scent but the combination burned harsher than tobacco alone. Without cloves added to the mix, the smoke tasted similar to the flaming tip on the opposing end.
Still, Ethan had grown up stealing sips of refined alcohol as a child - the cruelty of the burn was what passed for quality in his father’s eyes and Danica’s fathers were very capable at providing an impressively potent cocktail. Sharing shots of the liquid fire had been a point of pride between Marcus and Ethan’s brothers; Roland eventually managed to go shot-for-shot with the old man, eventually.
Ethan tried to build up a tolerance but never could down a shot without tears leaking out from his ten year old face. But the ensuing years had provided plenty of practice at ingesting pain.
He’d swallowed mushrooms that burned like acid (a misadventure with Bax), smoked sawdust on the docs of Last Harbor, and even won a few games of willpower against Roux, the pair seeing who could sit with molten peppers in their mouths the longest. None of this dampened his senses - it just taught him how to ignore them when needed.
Still, as he stared at the noble girl offering her little dark polished snuff box - laden with golden oak leaves tastefully wrapping its contents with the trappings of wealth - all he could see was Leon Silverun |offering him a toast.
He politely declined.
“I have to cook in the morning,” he said, gently holding up a hand. “The smoke always throws off my taste for a bit; makes me add too much salt.”
He joined her at the side of the rails. “I doubt he lit his habit quite the same way…” he said, nodding his head towards the hands that magically produced flames.
Carter
“My father?” Carter smiles, and raises her brows in Ethan’s direction, “No. He had a matching tinderbox, but I haven’t seen that in years,” Carter is quiet for a moment, but then she shakes her head and just takes another long pull of her cigarillo. “Not since he passed, torch light his way.”
“And yes, seems like I’m the first ‘witch’ in the family, but if Sav is right, and anyone can learn, who knows how long that might be true for.” She scoffs. “Next time I see Holland I wouldn’t be surprised if he had some new tricks of his own.
“That’s family though,” Carter says, sighing with a level of dramatic panache that clarifies her ironic tone. “Always trying to one up one another. Who can shoot farthest, run fastest, who’s more clever…” She looks at Ethan, “I’m sure you know - you and the others from your town, Talith and Roux and Danica…” Carter stops herself before adding Sylas to the list. “…I’m sure there’s some competition there, at least when you all were children.”
Ethan
On most days, Aelorean’s Crossing felt like the memory of a dream. It was incredible to think that such a tiny place had once been his entire world.
He never wanted to return - to see whatever ashes might remain - but some part of him wished he could, somehow, step back in time and see the faces that were young and happy; faces that were already starting to fade. Most days he barely thought of Tolan or Emma or even Rowen. Some days he could hardly remember their faces.
Maybe it wasn’t the Fade Beast’s poison that infected his uncle’s mind, maybe it wasn’t some disease that ate his memories; maybe that was just the result of time. Maybe, one day, it would happen to Ethan as well, and this too would seem like a dream that was fading…
Maybe… Bishop said. But not now. Now it’s the present and you don’t have the luxury of wasting time on idle speculation about a future that may never come. Odds are you’ll die well before your mind goes. I certainly did…
How grim… Ethan thought back.
Just practical, my boy. Just practical. Now get out of your own head! Bishop shouted. It was true, Ethan realized, he had been wrapped up in his own thoughts since stepping outside the meeting. He needed to focus on what was in front of him…
“Carter, why are you here?” Ethan asked abruptly, surprising even himself. “You are - or at least were - a noble. You had some of the best this life has to offer: Wealth. Status. Safety… Why would give that up?”
His eyes appeared to settle on hers but he stared past them. He was watching everything, waiting to see when she would lie and how much.
Everybody lied. But no one lied more (or better) than a noble. Leon taught him that.
Carter
Carter raised a brow at Ethan’s outburst, and the corner of her mouth turned up in a sardonic little smile. “I just realized,” she says, “that this is why they sent me on the Harrington. The Briarbirds. Go to Ven. Find this ‘important’ mark,” she gestures with the hand holding the cigarillo, leaving a trail of gray blue smoke.
“I only knew my immediate teammates. Never even saw our commander. I was always told my part in a plan but never the rest…I thought it was strange, but it was a rebellion, so an abundance of caution made sense but, now I wonder if it wasn’t caution of me specifically.”
She lets out a breath of air, and takes another drag of the cigarillo.
“Which makes sense. You’re smart to be suspicious too,” She looks at Ethan, then, for any reaction but he is still only staring at her. Bright green eyes seeming to cut through the brown of her own. “Because you’re right,” Carter adds, “It is suspicious. In a world like this. That a girl would abandon her safety and status for some…nebulous greater good.”
“It’s what happened, though,” says Carter. “It was a slow thing. My father was…finding some of his duties as Baric very challenging. So I started taking on more. Holland was already Inquisitor by that point, so he was often away and so as…” Carter takes a moment. She goes to take another drag, but the cigarillo has gone out. She examines it, and then puts it behind her ear, tucked beneath the edge of her oak leaf brooch.
Carter sighs. “My father was…mad isn’t the right word, because he wasn’t mad. He started losing something of himself, though, near the end of his life. Forgetting things. Calling people by the wrong names. Acting as if something happened yesterday that happened years ago…” Carter shifts, her arms folded on the rail of the ship.
“It isn’t safe to show that kind of weakness. Not to the other Barics.”
Ethan still hasn’t said much, but Carter can feel his gaze on her. It’s something she’s done before, herself, keeping a target perfectly aligned with the bolt of her crossbow, and the feeling of being studied, of being hunted, makes her uneasy.
She understands it though, uncomfortable though it is. And when Ethan doesn’t respond, Carter continues
“He was a good man, my father. A more loyal Isendelian you’d never find. I always thought he probably preferred the old Baron - an old man likes an old man, you know? But he never said anything negative about the young Baroness. It was our duty, as one of the noble houses, to support the Isendel family, and their legitimate rule of the Barony.”
Carter pauses, fiddling again with her cigarillo and chewing her lip briefly before a quick series of rapid muttering and another snap re-lights her smoke. She’s stalling for time, as her father would do.
“I could go on. About the complexities of the house. About the sort of games my father taught us to play. But my father did his best. He taught Holland and me all that he knew, got us the best tutors for what he couldn’t teach himself…and the only issue is that eventually, he did die.” Carter hesitates. She doesn’t want to speak unkindly about her father, to anyone, and Ethan was little more than a stranger. “Well, not the only issue. As his mind started failing I…I took over much of the day to day things for the estate. Holland wasn’t often there - he’d already been made Inquisitor, so he was always off to some border or another.
“And I managed things until my father died. Took his meetings. Read his letters. Brought papers to his bed for a signature and a seal.”
She laughs a little, “I felt confident. It was something I could do. Something I was good at. Better than Holland, even. But I also felt like it wasn’t enough. I could learn more. Not just maintain the estate but improve it. So I started inviting more tutors - scholars, minds from the universities. Strategists too - Swans who had served under the old Baron…and then writers and artists and theologians and it was fascinating—” Carter’s voice is rising in her excitement, but she catches herself and becomes calm again.
“And then, one day my father died. Holland came home for the ceremony.”
Carter takes another deep breath of smoke. The memory of the conversation, of her father’s death, of the smell of ash and incense at the Church and her brother’s low, calm voice has made her mouth dry, but her fingers are still steady. She lets the smoke out her nose and mouth. For a moment her entire face is obscured.
Carter chooses her words carefully.
“We had a conversation, Holland and I. He told me he’d heard of my salons, which had grown by that point, and become popular enough that he was ‘concerned about the association with the family name’.” Carter deepens her voice to imitate her brother, but then scoffs at herself, “And I knew what he meant. He wasn’t only an Inquisitor. He was Baric now, too, and I would no longer have the carte blanche I had under our father.”
“And then, as if it was a separate thought, as if it was a completely different conversation, Holland went on to tell me a story. Something he’d done in a village on the border of Moreath. An Isendelian village.” Carter closes her eyes for a moment, blocking out Ethan’s stare. “I knew it was a threat. A warning that if I kept doing even what little I was - even just…meeting and talking and theorizing…”
“And so I stopped. I was good. I was the doting, dutiful second-in-line. Eventually, Holland went away, again - Kharakhan this time. I knew it was likely another long assignment. And so I waited and planned and played Baric. And then, one day, my maid and I just left. She, Poppy, knew some people who knew some people and…” Carter waves her hand dismissively, trailing off. Ethan knew the rest.
“What about you?” she says, then, turning the question on Ethan, “You rescued Danica. I know you all can’t go back home, but why keep fighting? Why is this your responsibility?”
Ethan
Ethan continues to stare for several seconds, his eyes studying hers.
“Have you ever been on a fox hunt?” he asks. “Historically, they were once quite popular among nobles in the North. Substantially less frequent nowadays, reserved for special occasions - mostly to denote the transition for when a child has become an adult.
“The Hunt is intended to demonstrate the lad’s cunning and perseverance - the foxes up North are just as clever as they are anywhere else, but Bax would sometimes go on and on about them: they were ‘twice as resilient as anything down south - dense, flexible muscle on a nimble frame. They can survive the harsh conditions and they do it mostly on their own…’”
“I was able to attend one - a Hunt. Just one. Some nephew or something. The experience was… revolting.” His eyes fix on the side of Carter’s face as his mind looks into his past.
“Nobles don’t like to fail, see, so the game is rigged. Maybe it’s always been that way, who’s to say? I wasn’t around a hundred years ago - maybe something inside Sylas was, and you can ask him. All I know is that now the fox doesn’t stand a chance. The nobles ride out on horseback with two or three days worth of supplies and a whole liter of hunting dogs - the well trained kind who won’t eat or slaughter something even when their blood’s up or a fight breaks out. And over the course of those days the dogs give chase to the fox. It never gets to sleep or eat or rest…”
“By the second day - the third at the latest - after sprinting away from one wave of dogs after another, climbing trees, swimming across frigid rivers, hoping through tall banks of snow… the fox is so worn out that it’s not really a hunt at all. Just a bolt to head when it’s too weak to go on…”
He pauses as if remembering the execution.
“I think you misunderstand our situation, Ms. Blackwood. This is not a ‘responsibility,’ as responsibilities may be shirked. This is a necessity…” his eyes find hers once again, “…because running is no longer an option. We tried that and still they came for us. So now we’re going to end the threat by eliminating it.
“Our motivations are primal: Vengeance for some, justice for most, survival for almost all. The choice to move against the Baroness is an easy one when you consider that her continued existence is a death sentence for most of the people on this ship.”
“Her dogs would eventually run most of us down. It’s just a matter of time.”
He shrugs.
“So we’re going to kill her instead.”
He looks out over the dark waters, at the white, churning waves glistening in the moonlight as the Tide’s Song carved along the river with impressive speed. Without consideration for the normal pace or transition of conversation he turned back to the woman who joined their crew only a few days ago and asked, “How many people have you killed…?”
Carter
The question gives Carter pause. She had always shot to kill, and maybe she had, from a distance. Her targets had been far away. She couldn’t distinguish the faces, couldn’t hear their cries so it really…
But the guard - her guard - had been different.
Carter had been close. Had felt her bodyguard’s weight counterbalancing her own, his hand clasping her wrist to pull her up and how easily her dagger had slipped into his armpit. He hadn’t even seemed to notice at first. And as Carter had felt the blood spurt from the wound, covering her hand, making the blade slip slightly, she’d realized he was still alive. That of course she hadn’t done anything but injured him. And instead of panicking, instead of screaming, she had gripped the dagger, twisting it. Digging it deeper. Spilling enough blood that he couldn’t stand any longer, that he could barely speak. And he had spoken. Carter can’t remember what he said. She couldn’t even remember his name, though she’s sure she asked it.
“I’m not so naive as to think that revolution will be bloodless,” she says. She nods to Ethan and taps the ash from her cigarillo before drawing in another breath. The smoke escapes slowly as she speaks.
“I have no love for Tyr Isendel. I used to think she was making change to distinguish herself from Hein. The new Church. The border wars. The torch-cursed Inquisition. But I’d always assumed that she was doing what was best for the people of the Barony. Because that’s what ‘nobles’ are supposed to do.
“I’m better educated now, about the Baroness,” says Carter. “Whatever her grand plans might be, she doesn’t care about the safety of the Isendelian people. She doesn’t care about the soldiers dying in border wars that gain no land, and she doesn’t care when these same soldiers turn around and raze a village to the ground. And for what? Fear of witches?” Carter lets out the rest of her breath. “Now I know it was always a lie. That Tyr’s rule has never been about helping the Barony. It’s about keeping the average Isendelian so afraid of witches and foreign invasion that they are easy to control. She’s set up this country to collapse without her.
“Think of how it will go, if witches kill the Baroness. People loyal to her will turn on those members of their communities who are odd, who they have always been a little afraid of, and there will be mass death. And that’s if we prevent the Swans from taking the throne and creating a junta of high level military officers.
“And that, that is what I worry about. That when Tyr is killed,” Carter makes a sharp movement, bringing her hand down on the rail. “And she should be killed. Beyond your and your friends’ reasons of vengeance and justice and survival…she should be executed for crimes against the people of Isendel. For the cruelty of knowingly forcing us to live in fear. For capturing and brainwashing those who are witches, and using their exceptional talents to create more fear…” Carter stops, and takes a breath of the night air. It’s heavy and wet, but it’s cooling in her lungs.
“It’s why my brother needs to die, too,” she says.
Carter is quiet for a moment. She finishes her cigarillo, watching the smoke stop rising as the last of the tobacco and rose burn away. She discards the end, flicking it into the lake.
“I have so many ideas, Ethan,” Carter says, and her tone is once again that of an eager schoolgirl. Excited. Almost hungry. “That once this is over, if we can prevent immediate collapse…we could educate people. And over time, they can learn, like I did.
“Do you know,” she says, conspiratorially, “that something like half of Isendelians can’t even read? Think about the ideas we could be missing out on because they’re only in the brain of some small-village cook.” She shrugs and leans back on the railing, no longer attempting to keep Ethan’s eye contact, but instead allowing herself to study the lines on his brow - small marks of his stress - and his sweep of dark hair, which Carter just likes the look of.
“I’m rambling,” she says, “Going on about politics…it’s just something I think we should plan for, if we can. It would be a shame if the death of a tyrant and the satisfaction of your vengeance was spoiled by immediate war.”
Carter looks up at Ethan - at the green eyes still waiting on a direct answer. Waiting to pass judgment.
“Probably four. Definitely one,” says Carter, at last. Her tone is casual, factual, but she can still feel the stiffness in her sock where the blood has dried. “To answer your question.”
She smirks at him.
“But I’ve killed dozens of foxes.”
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