Apartment above the Blind Baker
1 Autumn, 3 weeks after Bax and Vanja’s encounter
Bax
After their party had been separated nearly one year ago, Bax had not been able to confirm anyone’s whereabouts. This was made difficult by the fact he couldn’t do a proper search within the city. Sneaking in and out undetected was easy enough, however a true investigation would risk him being caught. Instead, after some months away from the city, he chose to reconnect with some of the orphaned street children he had helped. They could keep an eye out for any signs of his allies, and receive payment in copper coins or small furs and meats.
Their searches seemed fruitless. Bax imagined his friends were either deep in hiding, or in places where the children couldn’t or wouldn’t travel to. And he would never force the kids anywhere they weren’t comfortable getting to on their own.
One afternoon, the children returned to the alley Bax had perched himself in for the day. Their most recent search proving to be unsuccessful, they appeared to have returned with a handful of warm potatoes instead. The leader of the group, Dell, tossing one to Bax, with regret and annoyance on her face.
Catching the baked potato, Bax comments, “No luck huh? That what the potato’s for? Well that’s sweet of ya.”
“Shut up,” Dell retorted, aggressively hopping onto a barrel, opposite of Bax. The other boys, Pen and Simmy, followed behind and sat up against the wall of the alley near Dell.
“You’re wasting your money you know, ” she continued between nibbles of the warm food. “You throw change and furs at us but we aren’t going to find your people. This city is too big and your descriptions are too broad.”
“Maybe. But I like knowing that you guys are taken care of. And other options are too risky right now.”
“Whatever. It’s your money, you can spend it how you want.
“Wait… is that concern? Are you worried about me?” Bax held his hand to his chest and attempted to flutter his eye.
Dell’s cheeks and ears flushed at the sudden teasing. “No! Just shut up you are so annoying!” She jumped from her barrel and walked further into the alley, away from the rest of them.
Bax chuckled to himself and took a bite of potato. The shock of warmth from it sent goosebumps throughout his body. “Mm! That’s a good potato! Where’d you guys find these?”
Simmy perked up at the question, “We actually came across a stall on our way back here. It’s run by an old, blind guy. I think it was called ‘Small Potatoes’?”
Bax dropped his half eaten potato with a look a utter shock taking I’ve this face. He started giggling and that slowly turned to uproarious laughter. He couldn’t control himself, it was the best news he’d heard in ages!
“Pen!” He shouted in between breaths of laughter. “Go back to that stall. Buy more potatoes. But also tell the old man you have a friend that wants to return a hammer to him. Understood?”
The boy took off in a sprint as Bax held his breath. Some time later, Pen returned, confirming the man shared an address with him. “Why’d you steal that old man’s hammer though?”
“Ha! Because Pen,” Bax explained, “I an idiot!”
Vanja had expressed interest in meeting the other members of the group after he had shared their story with her. She seemed particularly interested in everyone’s connections to the stars. And through Ethan he knew that they would be able to find everyone else.
The two of them had snuck into Northgate in early evening, when the crowd of hunters and traders would be returning. As much as he wanted to see his friend again, Bax forced himself to move slowly so as to not draw any attention as they made their way through the alleys of the poor districts, in the direction of the aqueducts.
If he remembered right, The Blind Baker’s apartment was one of four in a small block. And Ethan kept the one above the Baker’s empty.
After circling the one he believed to be the right block, Bax moved in on the building. He found the entrance and headed up the stairs. The door to the apartment was unlocked, and the small space completely bare. So he and Vanja laid out some furs, and proceeded to make themselves comfy. Bax held his spear tight, his back against the wall so that we was opposite of the entrance. Ready for whatever might come through that door.
Vanja
By the time Bax told Vanja they’d be going back to Northgate, she was ready to leave the woods.
Vanja and Bax worked well enough together. Both of them knew the woods, though Bax was more surefooted. Vanja collected food as they went. Chaga mushrooms growing alongside edible lichens on the bark of new-growth pines. The pinewood itself, edible, though tough and fibrous. Bax was a skilled hunter, with his spear and his shortbow, though Vanja had good success herself with ground game - the occasional rabbit or ermine, cleaved by a thrown axe.
She managed. Told herself that her parents had lived like this, in Jorung. To Vanja, as a young girl, it had been interesting. Romantic. The thought of her parents as young people, brave and nomadic, working as parts of their tribe. Working together as a pack of wolves, as a flock of birds. Each person strong, but stronger together. Vanja’s parents had explored. They had ranged. In her father’s stories, they had hunted ice bears. Climbed mountains. Seen firbolg and giants. They had been moving constantly, flowing across the land, dispersing in moments.
Now, Vanja wondered if it had been like that. If it was true. If she had combined the jantelvon of Linjør with the imagined idea of her parent’s tribe. Her father had told stories of adventure, but now, to Vanja, it seemed the days would have been much like this. Endless travel. The constant cycle of breaking and remaking camp. Ranging north, then west, with no goal. Moving to move.
Bax was good to talk to, though, and they shared stories as they walked. Here, in the woods where he was comfortable, Bax had an easy laugh, and Vanja knew she’d made a good choice, going with him. They quickly became friends, bonding over shared skills. Staying up watching the River. Bax pointed out the star shapes his friends had discovered - showed her the one that matched the pattern in his eye, the one he called the Hunter. He told her of that, too. How he and his friends had once captured a Swan, and Bax had had to cut the man’s throat, and as if in response, how his eye had blackened and filled with stars. The way he told it, Vanja knew it had been a hard thing. Difficult even in the telling.
Bax told Vanja about his friends - most every one of them with magic like him, like Vanja. One day, Bax told her of the day the Swans came to Aelorean’s Crossing, and how he and his friends had fled. How they’d lived as bandits. Set ambushes. How when they had returned to their homes, months later, he’d been captured, tortured, eventually rescued. How he’d been on the run since, always barely surviving. His friends were gone now. Some smuggled to Jorung. Others finding safe, anonymous jobs. The rest scattered, in hiding.
Vanja listened. The more Bax spoke, the more she told herself to adjust. To adapt. This was her life now, too. This was how things were. The Swans were hunting her. The Inquisitor wanted her dead for a witch. In Northgate, even before she had met Bax, she had lived in fear - of Painted Swan patrols, of the risk of exposing herself, her magic. The constant dread that if she was discovered, some vindictive Swan would return to Linjør, and seek revenge on those who had protected her. Who had lied for her. If they weren’t dead already.
No. That was not a useful path to follow.
This was how it was, now. It was a simple thing.
Vanja was safe now, with Bax, and he was good company. Sometimes it felt like she was with one of her brothers, but she felt lost. She used to heal people. Used to thatch roofs. Plaster walls. Plant vegetables. She used to work alongside her mother. She used to fell trees, with her father. Train and fight with her brothers. Vanja used to be a healer, and she was helping no one now.
Now she just…survived. She felt hollow.
And so, when Bax had said they would be going back to Northgate, she had been relieved. She had told Bax as much. She wanted to feel like she was doing something worth doing. Northgate was dangerous, yes, but in the woods, she was wasting her gift as surely as if she had died fighting in Lignør. At least in Northgate she could do something. Maybe she’d find more work as a physician. She could do that again, if she were more careful. This idea she kept to herself though.
It took Vanja and Bax a few days to reach Northgate again, once he had decided that was where they were going. Time passed quickly, though. It was good to have a destination. At the South Gate they waited until the Swan guards changed shifts - twice as many soldiers, but no one sure who was still on duty - who should be searching faces and matching them with the ever-growing list of the Baroness’ enemies. Bax and Vanja moved through the crowd, but never so quickly as to draw attention. They smiled. Talked. There were hundreds of people pouring into the city at the end of the day, fleeing the cold and the dark of the night for the protection of the gate and canyon walls. In such a crowd, no one noticed two more, wrapped in cloaks and furs as all the others.
Inside the gate, Vanja sucked in her breath. She had thought she’d grown used to the sheer number of people here, during her earlier time in the city, but it was just as jarring now as it had been that first day. She had forgotten, perhaps, or become so used to the empty openness of the woods, of the sole companionship of Bax, and now the sudden crush of bodies, the clashing sounds of hundreds of voices, in all accents and dialects, in common and dwarvish and snatches of melodic elvish, the smell of bodies and street stalls, of sick and bad water…it was overwhelming.
Bax seemed uncomfortable, too. A subtle shift. His posture changed, no longer standing as tall, shrinking into himself. Even his step - so confident in the forest - was now less sure. Vanja tailed Bax through the city, a few steps back. Enough so that they didn’t appear to be together - a ripe target for a watchful Swan. Far enough apart that, if something happened to one, the other could fight. Or run.
She had never spent enough time here, before, to become used to the city. The way, once out of the shadows of the aqueducts, the alleys fed into one another, twisting back like a rabbit’s den, before suddenly spilling open into a larger street. She thought Bax even circled a few times, but she couldn’t be certain. To Vanja it looked much the same. If they did get separated, it would be a dangerous thing. She would be more lost here than in the woods.
Finally, Bax signaled to her. It was the place he had been looking for. He had said it belonged to a friend. A boy from his village, who he had traveled to Northgate with. Who had run, when Bax had run. Who he hadn’t seen these past nine months. Bax seemed sure, though. Sure of his friend. Vanja had grown to trust Bax, but even still, the uncertainty churned in Vanja’s stomach and filled her mouth with the sour taste of fear.
The apartment block was nondescript. There were a hundred like it in Northgate, a dozen on just this single street - this crowded, densely populated slum. She followed Bax up the stairs, up through the center of the building, along its spine - small doorways branching off at every level, as identical to Vanja as the streets of the city. Vanja counted the turns of the stair, listened to the creak of the dry wood beneath her wet boots, making her unsteady.
Bax stopped at one of the doors and opened it. It was unlocked, and inside the room was empty, lit by a shaft of cold light through a narrow window, shaded with vellum to cut the wind. Cold air stirred the room, coming down through a hole above a small cooking hearth. Vanja looked at Bax again, but he was already unpacking, laying out his furs on the floor. He seemed sure enough. Cautious, but not afraid.
Vanja echoed his action, laying out her own things. It was warm. Heat seeped through the cracks in the walls, bleeding through from the other rooms, and from all sides but below. Vanja shrugged off Olev’s cloak, laying it carefully on the floor, and took a moment to change into dry clothes. After so much time in the wild, her woolen knits had become heavy with snow and sweat and to be cold and wet was to become sick. Her feet were wet, still, and she knew she would be running a risk of wetrot. Still, she kept her boots for the time being, in case they needed to run. She would take them off when she felt safe, and now is not that time. Vanja uncorked her waterskin and wet a cloth, cleaning her hands and face, wiping off her eye black and washing off the layer of dust and pine sap that had settled on her skin.
Bax took up a post at the back wall, spear in hand. Vanja, satisfied that her friend was on guard, sat with her back to one of the warm interior walls. Her mind was on her family again, and so she filled the quiet with stories of them, sharing her life like one of her father’s stories of Jorung, like the stories Bax shared of his journey to Northgate from the South.
The stories Vanja tells are not grand adventures, though. They are small, true things. The way her eldest brother laughed as he knocked her down with his halberd, not realizing until later that he’d broken her rib, and how he’d taken special care of Vanja with their mother until she had healed, then as soon as she was well, tried to knock her down again, making sure this time she knew to catch the halberd with the crook of her axe blade. How they’d trained until she could twist the pole-axe out of his hand. How once her younger brother had eaten biscuits made to help purge one of their mother’s patients, and he’d spent the next two days suddenly going white in the face, and running from the room to the yard. Bax laughed at the story, and Vanja laughed at the memory, at herself, and so at first, she didn’t hear the steps on the stairs.
She heard the noise outside the door, though, and she cut her voice, stopping the story. There was the groan of dry wood under a wet boot, the same sound Vanja made as she waited for Bax to open the door. Vanja looked at Bax, but his eye was on the door as it swung into the room.
**Ethan**
It was a typical day for Ethan. He rose, spent half an hour applying the false skin resin that made his face appear decades older than his own. He checked to ensure the roots of his hair – naturally brown – were still dyed a convincing shade of grey and white. The months he spent working for alchemists (a few in Last Harbor; a few more in Northgate) were well spent – the dye would hold up against water. He had to be careful of highly concentrated alcohol, which would cause the colors to run. He kept a bottle in his apartment for this purpose. Thankfully, concentrated alcohol was expensive, which meant the odds of someone else drenching Ethan’s head were relatively low.
He left the apartment, wheeling the bakery cart through the streets in the early morning hours before the day began for most. It was beginning of a new week, the day he sold to the miners.
Most miners began the day very early, which meant that Ethan had to set up his stand even earlier. He had to pass a couple of checkpoints but by now he knew the Swan guards by name. He had a plate prepared for each of them – more potatoes for Enrich; more eggs for Peter; more sweet bread for William… this was price of admission for passing through and, as The Baker, he’d long since stopped considering the plates as bribes (although that was exactly what they were).
This was the reason Ethan had chosen to settle into this particular cover: He’d established a routine. He was, week after week, month after month, the old blind man who benignly shuffled his way across town.
In the early months, the inspections were more thorough, of course. The guards even removed his blindfold, seeing if the old man really was blind. Once removed, the soldiers looked into two inky black iris, glassy and reflective – his eyes were disturbing to look upon and no one questioned his lack of sight after seeing the black holes where an iris should be.
This had been Garbon’s final gift to Ethan.
Ethan had asked Garbon to make a weapon – a hand crossbow that was easily hidden. Instead, his brilliant but wildly unfocused friend had created two lenses that blocked out light almost completely.
“Garbon… what the hell am I supposed to do with those?” Ethan had asked, staring at his friend. At the time, Garbon was blindly walking around the room, hands outstretched, mouth agape, his eyes black as night. A stupid grin spread across his face each time he ran into some unseen object; ‘They really work!’ that smile had said.
Ethan rarely wore the lenses these days. The blindfold was enough. No one checked his eyes anymore. They didn’t check his body for weapons and barely checked his cart for contraband. Some of the Swan soldiers were even affectionate towards the old man.
Ethan hoped he would never have to kill those men.
It was almost noon and Ethan’s day was drawing to a close. One benefit of starting the day so early was that he was able to get back home before the sun set. Heading back after dark was more dangerous. The Blind Baker was occasionally robbed (which Ethan disliked) although the robbers usually only claimed a fraction of the coin he’d earned. It was one of the benefits of dealing mostly in copper – Ethan would take home almost 200-600 copper a day, depending on where he was selling. Street thugs usually only bothered to grab a few handfuls. Even when they took more, they rarely bothered attempting to collect all of it; it literally wasn’t worth their time.
So, being robbed was something akin to the bribes The Baker paid to the Swan guards – just the cost of doing business in the city. Still, sometimes the robbers got physical and being beaten was never fun. Going back early helped avoid these unpleasant events.
As he finished selling the last of his food, a young man ran up to Baker.
“Hey mister!” the boy cried. The blindfold effectively prevented Ethan from seeing but, from the sound, he judged the boy to be about nine or ten; he also estimated the boy’s height, weight, distance and which hand was dominant. Nine months without the luxury of relying on his eyes had helped to strengthen his ears.
“I got a friend who said he wants to return a hammer…”
For a moment Ethan was confused. He could tell the boy was speaking to him (or rather The Baker) but he didn’t understand… And then it dawned on him.
There was only one person who owed him a hammer. In fact, there was only one hammer Ethan had ever owned in his life; he’d won it during a competition when he was fifteen – a different boy, in a different life.
“Tell your friend it’s about gods damned time!” he said. He gave the boy his address and instructed him where to meet him.
Ethan could hardly restrain his smile.
There were two main entrances to the apartment block where The Baker lived. The pathway that most tenants used was off the main road. This required two separate flights of stairs and a winding path that passed many doors.
Ethan preferred the back entrance. His cart was stowed slightly further up a hill in a small, guarded lot. The lot had once housed horses, but that was many years ago; no one in this neighborhood could afford a horse. The lot mostly served to stow rickshaws and the carts for vendors when not in use. The cost was reasonable and the security was adequate, for while the contents were invaluable to their owners, they were worth next to nothing to anyone else.
After stowing his cart, Ethan made his way to the apartments. It was not unusual for larger apartment blocks to have multiple landlords who owned a handful of rooms around their own. Such was the case for this small block of four apartments at the very back of the larger complex.
The back entrance to his apartment was located at the end of a very dark and rather foreboding alley. A single half broken door opened onto the small corridor containing the hallway and a narrow set of dilapidated stairs that led to the second floor. The first door on the ground level was the Baker’s apartment. The room above was permanently kept empty. The room beside the Baker’s belonged to the reclusive landlord who mysteriously never left the apartment. And the room above this was available for rent, although few potential tenants showed interest and those who inquired found the landlord surprisingly difficult to reach.
The walls to each apartment were paper thin, the floorboards were warped and creaky, and any nails that remained were half rusted to dust.
The place was a very average dump.
Yet, the room above the Baker’s was surprisingly clean. If it were furnished, it may have even passed as respectable.
As Ethan made his way to his room, he heard the sound of two people from the room above. He had not expected Bax to bring company.
Stowing his dagger for quick access under his robe, Ethan made his way up the half-rotten stairwell, shuffling and huffing like the old man he appeared to be. He could smell Bax even before he reached the door. It was the smell of the woods. The smell of hunter. But mostly, it was the smell of his old friend.
The other smell was harder to pinpoint. He thought it was a woman, but if Ethan was being honest that seemed to be a wild guess. He didn’t trust his nose that much. Not yet anyway…
He cursed as he opened the door without knocking. “It’s about time that hammer was returned! Do you think they just toss hammers into crowds for whoever might want one…?” he said, stepping into the room.
The Baker stood in the doorway, his medium length grey-white hair and beard highlighting a deeply lined face. A white cloth wrapped around his eyes. He wore a long brown robe almost entirely covered in flour and various spices. He smelled of freshly baked bread and cinnamon.
Thinned with age, his back hunched, the old man appeared only a couple inches taller than Bax… although a very perceptive person may estimate some more inches would be revealed if he were to assume a better posture.
Not knowing who the other party was, Ethan decided to stay in character as The Baker. He wanted to know who he was dealing with before he revealed a more natural version of himself. He would wait for Bax to give him some indication of who this person was and how much they should trust her. And he did think it was a her at this point… although he wasn’t sure exactly why.
Vanja
The door swung open with a curse, and Vanja was on her feet, back still pressed against the wall. From where she had been sitting against the wall, the old man - stooped and wizened and covered in flour - was only steps from her, but he was blocking the only exit. The window was too small, too high. Vanja heard her pulse, quick and panicked in her own ears. Her pack was near the hearth, not within reach. She’d removed her axes when she’d changed, hadn’t bothered to put them back through her belt. Still he was old. Blind maybe - a bandage over his eyes, but she’d misjudged that kind of thing before, when she had met Bax. She couldn’t assume he didn’t see her. She could push past him. Make a break for the door, but that would mean abandoning Bax.
Vanja took a breath, sharp and audible. Why was the old man even still standing? Hadn’t Bax been ready? Why wasn’t this man dead? He should be in the hall, over the stair rail, with a spear through his chest. Vanja looked at Bax.
Bax
An old, flour covered man had burst into the room. He appeared to be blind but aware of his surroundings. For a moment, Bax’s grip tightened on his spear, and his legs tensed to pounce.
“Do you think they just toss hammers into crowds for whoever might want one…?” the old man cursed. Bax could feel a weight lift off his shoulders as the muscles of his body eased. He had finally found one of his friends…
He popped up and walked over to throw an arm over the man’s shoulders. “So what’s this? You tryin to copy me or somethin?” Bax asked, tugging at the cloth covering the geezer’s eyes?
He threw his other arm around his friend’s neck and squeezed in a tight embrace. He pulled back from the hug after a moment and clapped both shoulders in frivolity, a wide smile across his face. “I’m so glad to see you again…”
Bax turned to see a stunned and confused Vanja standing against the wall. She looked about ready to tackle the old man and make an escape. Why’d she seem so worried? He had told her they were going to meet his friend—
“Oh shit I forgot to say somethin about the disguise didn’t I?
“Uuuhhh…Vanja meet Ethan?”
Ethan
This was not exactly what Ethan had in mind when he cleared out this wing of the apartment complex, but it certainly fell under the general umbrella – Ethan needed a degree of privacy just in case. Most of the remaining residents occupied the front half of the greater complex. The back end which consisted of his wing was filled with fictional tenants and a fictional landlord. This allowed the back entrance to be used almost exclusively by Ethan, allowing him to come and go without others seeing him.
All this to say that Ethan’s joy at finally seeing his friend was tempered only slightly by the loud use of his real name; he hadn’t spent close to a year meticulously crafting a false identity (which included learning to bake, count coins and navigate an entire city while completely blinded) only to have the work undone by a careless mistake.
And, he reflected, whoever this other new person was she had better be trustworthy. Otherwise…
He briefly returned Bax’s embrace as well as his sentiment. It was hard to put into words how pleased he was to finally see Bax again. Their communication started a few months ago when a street urchin managed to pass the name of The Baker’s traveling cart to Bax. Since then, they had a handful of mostly innocuous thinly coded messages – they amounted to little more than the understanding that Bax was safe, but unable to meet yet. Now here he was. Finally.
The cloth covering his face was now askew from Bax’s playful tug. Ethan removed it rather thoughtfully, revealing his bright green eyes. He took in the sight of Bax and Vanja for the first time. Bax looked fairly rough, even more so than usual. There were dark bags under his eyes and his equipment looked heavily mended from repeated breaks and splinters, so much so it looked almost unreliable. Ethan knew it would be next to impossible to drag the truth out of Bax if he wasn’t doing well, but he still made a note to himself to ask after how his friend was doing – really doing – given a solitary moment alone.
Vanja was clearly from outside the walls of the city as well. Only slightly shorter than Bax, her body was strong and her eyes clear. He saw the signs of being startled from The Baker’s unannounced entrance, but the fear was slowly fading – her pulse slowing, her hands, once readying to strike, now relaxing. His disguise was obviously still a point of confusion, but she was taking in the new information, adjusting.
Good, Ethan thought. She has some idea as to how much danger she’s in and she’s not stupid. A very good start.
Folding the long white strip of fabric of his blindfold and placing it into his pocket, he closed the door behind them and spoke a little softly cueing that, even here in the relative privacy of their secluded room, caution should be taken as they speak.
“Hello. My name is Ethan. It’s a pleasure to meet you miss….?”
Vanja
Vanja watched, bemused, as Bax embraced the old man. When the two separated, the old man’s posture changed. Now he was tall, straight-backed, and seemed strong. His limbs suddenly seemed lean, rather than thin. Bax joked with the man, pulling at the bandage covering the old man’s eyes. As Vanja watched, the old man removed the bandage altogether, revealing green eyes, unlined by age.
Not an old man at all, then, but a boy in a disguise.
Oh. This was the friend.
Vanja shot a look at Bax. It would have been a helpful thing to have known. Bax was distracted by his friend, though, and so for now she stayed quiet. This was Bax’s moment to reunite with this other man, with his friend. She gave him the space for this connection.
Now that the threat had passed, Vanja felt relief wash over her, felt the floor more firmly beneath her boots as the tension left her legs, no longer ready to run.
Bax clasped the other man by the shoulders, telling him how glad he was to see him. Vanja found herself suppressing a laugh. She’d never seen Bax so happy. The grin that lit his face made him seem young, and for an instant she could picture these two young men as boys in the village Bax had described for her, in the small town that crossed a Southern river.
Bax caught her gaze, and read her expression.
“Oh shit.” said Bax, “I forgot to say somethin’ about the disguise didn’t I? Uuuhhh…Vanja meet Ethan?”
The disguised young man looked over at Vanja now, but he shut the door of the room before introducing himself. He spoke quietly, and his voice was different too, now, than the creaking rasp of the man who had initially entered the room.
“Hello,” said the young man, “My name is Ethan. It’s a pleasure to meet you miss….?”
Vanja stopped herself from responding family-name first, the way she had her entire life. She reminded herself that this was Isendel.
Suddenly, another rush of adrenaline. That constant reminder that, in Isendel, she was not safe. That in Isendel she was a witch. A target. In Isendel, in cities like this, there were posters with drawings of her face. A reward for her capture, and the constant, aching dread that, yes, she was guilty of this crime. Of magic.
But Bax had said the same was true of him, of all his friends. That all of them had magic. Then, it must be true for this Ethan, too. And they were both still alive, Bax and Ethan, and more than that, coping well. Smiling and embracing, as if no time had been lost between them. They were all in danger, here, but safer together, it seemed. Better for it.
Vanja extended her hand to the young man in the costume, “Vanja Skau,” she said, personal name first, in Isendelian style.
She studied the young man who, moments earlier, had been an old man. Now that she had seen past the disguise, it was funny. This young man, a boy Bax’s age, perhaps, with a gray beard plastered to his face, hair somehow whitened. Age lines drawn on his face.
Vanja cracked, then, a laugh bursting out of her. She covered her mouth, quickly, with the hand not extended in greeting. The disguised man seemed to be encouraging quiet. Subtlety.
Vanja couldn’t help it, though - the sudden switch from fear, to relief, to her own constant low-level dread, and then to the absurdity of the young man’s costume - even as she looked, knowing now that it was a young man, her eyes kept telling her it was untrue, that the lines on the face and the gray of the beard meant it was impossible - it’s as if she had been knocked from a cart. As if she’d had a blow to the head. She tried her best to stifle her laugh, but there were tears in her eyes now, blurring her vision.
“Bax,” she said, between fits, barely getting the word out, “you could have warned me!”
Bax
Bax looked over to see Vanja in a fit of laughter. She was clearly trying to hold her snickers back but was failing terribly. Turning back, he could see Ethan’s young green eyes amongst the old man makeup, looking particularly annoyed. Ethan probably wanted this meeting to have happened more quietly.
This isn’t exactly how I imagined this going…
Placing a hand on Ethan’s shoulder, Bax started, “Alright this is getting out of hand.” Looking closely, Bax failed at suppressing his own smirk as he was beginning to see what Vanja thought was so hilarious.
“I’m sorry I didn’t send word before bringing a stranger here. But I swear to you that she’s trustworthy. And there’s a lot that we need to discuss. If you go change we’ll get settled down.”
He lowered his voice and pulled himself towards the side of Ethan’s head, “She’s like us Ethan…”
Ethan
Ethan was not as annoyed as his face suggested. The resin on his forehead kept the brow of the old man relatively furrowed even with Ethan’s face fully relaxed. It took an exaggerated amount of effort for the Baker to appear cheerful.
This serious-or-worse demeanor was an intentional part of the disguise since the poorest in Northgate rarely smiled and mistrusted those who did. Life was hard for the poor and any face that didn’t reflect this was selling something, hiding something or both.
As Vanja continued to fight against her fits of laughter, Ethan was equally confused and amused. But, mixed with his persistent awareness of risks, his bemusement was muddled through enough makeup for a nonplussed response to read as mild irritation.
The truth was, he was so happy to finally see Bax again (alive and free!) that Vanja registered as little more than a human variable.
She remained as such until Bax bent his ear with just how special Vanja really was.
“She’s like us Ethan…” he whispered.
By “like us,” Bax of course meant she had magic. It was generous of him to include Ethan in that description as the gods had felt it best to skip the Fairchild when handing out magical talent… unless baking counted, and Ethan was certain that it didn’t.
If Ethan attempted to smile naturally the way he contorted his face to smile as the Baker, his expression would look mildly insane. He forced such an expression now so that the Baker’s face might communicate to Bax some portion of his happiness.
“Yes, yes…” he said, using the Bakers words but his own voice. “I will change and we will speak. We have some privacy here - there are no neighbors to this room. My room is below and the room next door is vacant… and will always be vacant. But, the walls are thin and the rear entrance and hallway are sometimes used, so we’ll still need to keep quiet.”
“I’ll be back shortly…” he said, moving towards the door. He paused for a moment, a thought occurring to him. There had been others with magic. Captain Kelwin had magic. Sara Fasstrel had magic…
Ethan had spent the better part of a year establishing a safe existence for himself. Even the soldiers in the city didn’t know Ethan’s face - if he was brought in as a bounty, they would take one look at his strikingly dissimilar Wanted poster and refuse payment.
Taking Bax by the shoulder, straining to convey the weight of his question, he asked his friend to confirm again “…you’re sure we can trust her?”
Bax
Bax could be a little thick-headed when it came to reading social cues. But as Ethan pulled him in, the severity of his question, “…you’re sure we can trust her?” hit him like a punch to the gut. And his mind began racing at the sudden implications.
He’s not telling me something. But why…? Another time…
He pulled himself free of his friend’s grasp. Ethan had claimed they had privacy here. Hopefully that statement held true.
Bax reached up and pulled the cloth covering his right eye down, so it sat around his neck. He looked at Ethan with both eyes and turned to see Vanja slowly recovering from her laughing fit. She seemed to sense the sudden intensity of their whispering, a tinge of curiosity on her face seeing him remove his eye covering.
He turned back to Ethan, a small smirk creasing his face. “Yeah I’m pretty sure. Now go change man. You smell like bread and I can feel my stomach shriveling away!”
Ethan
The Baker notes the sign of trust, nods once to Vanja, then slips out of the room.
When he returns about twenty minutes later, there is virtually no sound as he opens the door and rejoins them. He is wearing very common clothing (but free of flour) and a weathered looking cloak. His hair is its natural color, a brown as simple as his clothes, but his face is smooth and completely without wrinkles. He is handsome but just barely so. Aside from his smile, it’s a face that’s easy to forget.
As he steps inside, he offers a faint glimpse of that smile as he meets Vanja properly for the first time.
Not wanting to waste any time, he takes a seat opposite the pair, the third part of a triangle. “If there’s much to discuss, then let’s get to it. Tell me what I need to hear…”
He sits, ready to listen for whatever they have prepared to share.
He hands a small basket to Bax. Inside is a generous meal of flavorful breads and bottle of wine and flask of water.
Vanja
By the time Ethan returns, there is a small fire in the cooking hearth - brought to life from a small, neat bundle of kindling retrieved from Vanja’s pack. Vanja looks up at the door opening, at the young man entering the room, armed with a basket of fresh bread. Good. Better than mushrooms and pine tea, at least, which was all they had left from foraging.
Ethan smiles at Vanja as he takes a seat. Vanja can see no sign of the old, blind baker, now. Instead a handsome young man sits on the floor across from her. For the first time, Vanja notices his ears - hidden before, by his disguise. Subtly pointed, the peaks poking through the dark waves of his hair. The old man disguise had been a good one. And clever. It seemed to allow Ethan the freedom to move around the city undetected. And this building too, a safehouse, full of empty rooms. Layers of lies upon lies to create this level of protection.
And Bax had brought her, a stranger, into this safe place.
Ethan had asked Bax if they could trust her, asked him if he was sure. In the moment, Vanja had been bothered by the question. Of course she could be trusted.
Bax didn’t spend three weeks in the woods with me for lack of trust. He’s told me all about their magic, and about the Swans they’ve fought. He’s trusted me enough to bring me here, to meet his friends…
Fane, thought Vanja. It didn’t matter now but she turned it over in her mind again, anyway. Of course Bax trusted her. He’d told Ethan as much, too. Proven it when he took down his eye covering, revealing Vanja’s lack of surprise. Still, he and Ethan were old friends, and Vanja was suddenly self conscious of how new all of this was to her.
Ethan was smart to be suspicious, really. It was good. She could use more of that caution herself.
If I had been more careful about the River magic, though, I’d never have met Bax, she thought. And I’d still be alone.
Sometimes the River turned in unpredictable ways. Vanja didn’t question fate.
And now, Ethan was looking for something more. Some further proof, perhaps. “If there’s much to discuss, then let’s get to it. Tell me what I need to hear…”
As Ethan passed the basket of bread to Bax, Vanja leaned back on her heels. She let out her breath through pursed lips, with a soft ‘pah’ sound, trying to think of how to explain herself. How to prove that she was worth knowing, worth trusting.
“In my town,” she said, “I was a healer. I learned medicine from my mother, but I can also…” she hesitated. It was one thing to admit this to Bax, who had seen her heal with River light before, who had helped her save a life with his own magic. She glanced at Bax. She did trust him, and so she could trust Ethan too. “The healing I do isn’t just medicine. It’s River magic. From the aurora.”
Before Ethan could say anything in response, more of Vanja’s fears spilled out, in a quick rush of words, as she tried to explain herself.
“I can heal with a touch of my hands. I can mend things. Broken bones, cut skin, but more, too. I can bring someone back even when they’re at the edge of death. I can cure diseases, even when I don’t know what they are. I can just…” with this, she moved her hand through the air, in a quick, fluid motion. A small green light trailed behind her fingers. She shut her hand. “I can just pull it from someone. Infection or sickness…”
Vanja paused, looking down at the floor now. “And one day a man came to my village. An Isendelian man. An inquisitor.” She swallowed. Her mouth was dry from the memory of the fear. “So I had to run away.”
Vanja took a breath, and looked up at Ethan, now that her story was finished. Studying those sharp, green eyes.
“Bax says that you and your friends, you can do the same sort of thing. That you all can do magic, too.”
Ethan
Ethan watched. Listened. He saw the magic. It was incredible… but it’s amazing the things you can get used to.
“Nice,” he said. “Pretty,” he added, trying to appreciate the splendor of the colors.
Magic seemed to be somewhat unique to its caster. Vanja’s magic was bright, colorful and possessed a comforting presence. At least, that’s how Ethan perceived it. He wondered if magic might look different to the observer as well. He’d never thought to ask if others saw the same things he did, he took for granted that it should appear the same way to everyone. Maybe that wasn’t the case…
But that would be a discussion for another time.
“Lumotu’s got some healing in him. Danica was that way too, she patched me up more than once.”
“But me? Nah, I’m not special like that. I mean… I have a few tricks but they’re from things I own, not things I can do. If you took my things, you could do the tricks too.”
He leans back. “So an inquisitor came up north when they heard about your gifts? Hm… Swans sure seem to have a unhealthy fixation about magic.”
“There’s a Grand Inquisitor in the city. She came here about… eight, nine months ago? Just before they got Garbon…” He trails off for a moment. That one still stung. And the books haven’t been properly balanced for it yet.
“Anyway, the city has its share of dangers too.”
He turned to Bax. “But you already knew that. Coming back is always a risk - the biggest risk, as far as Swans are concerned. ‘Least, far as I can tell.”
“They have a few places they run a tight ship within the city. Some check points, patrols, maybe a few random searches. But if you steer clear of those, with any luck, inside the city’s not too bad.”
“It’s about the same outside the walls, I suppose. They may check villages, but they don’t aimlessly wander the depths of the northern wilderness looking for fugitives. If you skip into the woods, and can stay there, you’re more or less safe from the Painted soldiers.”
“But coming into the city itself? Or leaving?”
“There are only two roads built on open fields surrounding the city. Watchmen have clear sight from their posts for at least a couple miles. Getting in and out of the city’s definitely risky.”
“So what brings you back now, Bax?”
Bax
Bax was taken aback at Ethan’s seemingly uninterested attitude towards Vanja and her abilities, narrowing his eyes towards his friend as he spoke. All the children from Aelorean’s Crossing attained magic randomly one day. But as far as Bax was aware, they were the only ones with these powers. So why did Ethan seem so indifferent? Whether Ethan suspected of magic appearing elsewhere in the world or not, finding someone else with any magic should have been incredibly surprising.
“Wha—I’m back so you could meet Vanja,” he held out his hand, gesturing towards Vanja. “She wants to return to the city. She wants to help people! And I knew that if anyone could help her stay hidden, it’d be you.
“But I didn’t want you to just meet her. Ethan, we found each other!” Bax quickly motioned between himself and Vanja. “I dunno if that was fate or whatever, but we did. And not long after that, you and me were able to connect! So I say we find everyone else. And once we find them, we start planning our next moves!”
Vanja
Vanja leaned over Bax and helped herself to one of the bread rolls, still in the basket in Bax’s hand.
She had been surprised, and not a little disappointed by Ethan’s lukewarm response to the River light. Although, she reasoned, it had been a smaller demonstration than the one she’d given Bax, weeks ago now, when the triage of her magic had filled the cabin with green light. Now that had been a show.
As she sat back in her place, she caught Bax’s eye and grinned at her friend, dropping him a wink. Something had pulled them together, that day. Fate, maybe, or the guidance of the runes, or branches of the River converging, or something new and foreign. The stars, maybe, that seemed so connected to Bax’s magic, or something of the gods of Isendel. Either way, it had been a good thing.
Vanja tore off a piece of the bread. It was still warm.
She looked up at Ethan, then, at the boy who-had-been the-Baker, and smirked. Whatever he thought of her and her magic, whatever he said in response to Bax, it didn’t matter. It was dunjasånd. They were all in this together now, whether they liked it or not, whatever they decided to do.
Ethan
“I see…” Ethan says. He studies Vanja in silence for a few moments. He reads their faces. This was not the reunion any of them had expected.
Ethan took a deep breath and asked for the wine bottle. He took a few drinks, allowing the pleasant, bitter taste to fill his mouth as their silence filled the room. The quiet may have felt awkward, but Ethan was attempting a feat he hadn’t practiced for the better part of a year: he was going to be honest.
“I…” he started, and then paused. His safety, survival and profession all depended upon lies. Deep lies. Complicated and compounding lies. Speaking truth from his own mouth while wearing his own face required an uncomfortable dismantling of what had become a very natural process.
He tried again, settling on a compromise. He would tell them the truth. But he would not begin with the whole truth.
“I am tired, Bax.” He looked to his friend. “Not as tired as I was some months ago, but still tired.”
“For the first six months after Garbon’s death, I didn’t really sleep. There was too much work to be done and the dreams I had made sleeping… unpleasant. I am tired because I have been living the lives of several men while making preparations for what will come next.”
He settled his back against the wall, speaking just loud enough so that anyone from outside would need to have their ear against the door if they hoped to hear the words as he spoke.
“As a result, I have learned an enormous amount about this city. I know the streets, the alleys, the people, the culture. I know the names of guards, nobles, soldiers and peasants…
I am not an expert on all of these things - I don’t know all the codes, signals, ranks or territories of the changing sea of street gangs. I don’t know every battle fought or the hometown of every Swan soldier. And I don’t know the deep secrets closely held by all the Great Houses.
But I know something of all these things. And I have some access to many of them.”
“I sleep better these days. The dreams are better. And I’ve been able to adjust the schedule for the different lives so that I have some time where the only face I wear is my own.”
“I’m telling you all of this because it’s true. And because I want you to understand why our reunion may feel a bit… muted. It’s not that I’m not happy - I am. But I have many things already in motion and many more things yet to do before I will be done with this city.”
He turned to Vanja. “Yes, I can hide you. I can even put you somewhere that you can help people… but…” He studies her again. She was very young. Even if the age difference was only a few years, Ethan felt substantially older.
“Ok… I’m going to tell you what you need to do to be safe, to keep everyone else safe. I don’t know you, but if you’re from a small town, then what I’m going to say may feel like a lot. You might not like it, but the closer you stick to what I tell you, the safer you’re going to be. Got it….?”
He didn’t wait for her to respond. She would either listen or she wouldn’t.
“First off, you’re too fat…” Ethan giggles at this. He obviously knew a better way to phrase it, but when you spend your life ensuring that you say all the right things at all the right times, it was a pleasant release to cast off those obligations and lean into being a bit of an ass.
“What I mean is, you’re healthy. Strong. You look like someone from outside the city. You need to lose weight. The most invisible people in the city are the ones just rich enough to feed themselves and nothing more. You need to be thin enough that you’re hungry, but not so thin that you’re starving. Any fatter and you’re a mark for merchants, thieves and beggars; any thinner and you draw long looks from guards and soldiers - desperate people break the law more than those who can afford not to.”
It was a lot of information, but it wasn’t advanced alchemy. Ethan hoped she was following.
“Once you look the part, I can set you up in a room a couple blocks away. It’s… a brothel.” He held up his hand to interrupt any offense that might be taken. “You wouldn’t do their work… unless you want to, which is completely your choice. But you would be an invaluable asset to them. Having a trusted physician on site would more than earn your keep. And the ladies there know how to keep secrets…”
This was going to be a tough sell without context but he also didn’t want to dump too much information on the poor girl.
“The place is run by a woman, Madam Lovelace. She’s…” what was the short version of the story?
“Ok… ok. The place is called The Majestic. A big hotel that was fancy sometime last century, but for decades was a dump run by various men - the place changed hands from one gangster to another. The guy who owned it took all the money, left the women and building to rot.”
“Needless to say, it wasn’t the happiest place in the world.”
“A few months back, the current owner found himself dead. Another small time, kingpin-wannabe tried to move in, and wouldn’t you know it, he ends up dead too.” Ethan would skip over how these men encountered death - it seemed irrelevant at the moment.
“Since then, Madam Lovelace has run the place. She was a working girl there before, but now the place is hers and she runs the ship a lot different. The girls keep what they earn. Everyone volunteers to chip in and make the Majestic a little better.
Unlike other brothels, the only men allowed in this one are the clients. Women do all the work there, including security now. They got a taste of freedom and they’re not risking anyone coming along and taking that away again.”
“But, bottom line, the ladies aren’t interested in keeping any men around unless they’re paying. And they could use a good doctor. And, so long as your smart - make’em where blindfolds as part of your ritual or something, cover their heads with a blank, whatever, just don’t let them see you cast magic. But so long as you’re smart, you could help keep them healthy. You’d earn their trust, and they’d do a lot to keep you safe.
“I know it’s not ideal. And it won’t be forever. But for now, doing this will make sure you can have a place to sleep where you’re safe and you can help some people who… don’t always get the help they need.”
“After you’re settled… we can start to try to bring everyone back together.”
As he met her eyes, Ethan saw the flicker of anger; a flame that appeared to be kindling from within.
Perhaps, he realized too late, this was not the best time to fully set aside the armor of dishonesty.
Gentle lies sometimes make harsh truths more palatable.
Vanja
Vanja sat quietly, eating her bread, while Ethan took a swig of wine, and shared his worries with Bax. They had been through a lot, these two boys. The loss of their friend was only the most recent devastation to lives that were already difficult. And Vanja recognized, too, Ethan’s particular expertise - that while Bax had fled the city, ranged through the wilderness, Ethan had stayed. Adapted. Become jaded, perhaps, but he had learned from it all. Built this net of lies to support him if he fell. Vanja understood this. Respected it.
But then, he spoke of Vanja.
“First off,” said Ethan, “you’re too fat.”
Next to her, Bax choked on his bread roll. Vanja slapped him on the back.
Ethan didn’t seem to notice, instead laughing at his own insult, and clarifying. “What I mean is you’re healthy. You’re strong. You look like someone from outside the city.” He went on to say that, if Vanja starved herself for long enough, perhaps he could find her a place at a local brothel.
Vanja let Ethan speak. She shifted her position slightly, ensuring neither of her legs had gone numb from being crossed. Her boots were still wet, so while Ethan spoke about the brothel’s rich history - about how it was truly unique of all brothels, because it was slightly less bleak - Vanja untied the fur wrappings around her legs and laid them in front of the cooking hearth. Far enough away that they wouldn’t singe. The leather laces were next, then the boots themselves, and the woolen socks. Vanja looked down at her bare feet, slightly pale from too long in the wet socks, but not cold or numb.
Good. Wet boots would slip on the wooden floor of the room. Could catch on the furs that she and Bax had laid out. Bare feet would give her better grip for this fight.
She looked back up at Ethan. Now he was talking about how, if only she was smart enough, she could work at the brothel as a physician, instead of a whore. But, of course, she could also do ‘their work’ if she was so inclined.
Vanja pushed her braids over her shoulder, and started to weave them into one thick plait, incorporating the loose hair at the back of her head as well. When she was done, she secured her hair with a leather cord she kept wrapped around her wrist.
Ethan was done speaking now, and looking down at her. He met her eyes and she smiled at him.
“So,” she said, “I’m almost pretty enough to pass for an Isendel whore?” She laughed, but it was a different sound than earlier, when she’d fallen into fits at the ridiculous boy in front of her. Who suddenly seemed to think he was so world-wise, because he’d learned to be a good liar.
“You realize that I was fine on my own, before I met up with Bax?” she gestured to her friend, who seemed stunned into silence. “I left my village, where I was doing good work, where I saved lives because the inquisitor came, and I knew if I stayed they were in danger. I hiked through the winter woods on my own for a fortnight before I got to Northgate, the first time. And you may think that I’m some idiot girl from some nowhere village, but I had never once had trouble getting in and out of the city gates before I met Bax, because I was working as a faned physician.”
Vanja stood up. She flexed her legs, feeling the warm wood beneath her feet. She felt sturdy. Strong. Blisterkere.
“And you claim I’d be a mark for thieves and beggars? I defy any thief to try to take what’s mine. As you seem to have noticed, I’m no slip of a girl from Isendel, who’s going to faint if she sees a man come too close. I’m not going to trip over my skirt while running away.” She laughs again, pushing air through her teeth. Her axes were still on the floor near her pack, but she didn’t want to kill Ethan. He was Bax’s friend, still.
“But, not to worry. I don’t have to make work on my back? You can arrange it so that I’ll be a physician still? Doing women’s work. Treating menstrual cramps and curing syphilis? Providing new sheaths for the clients? And I’d have a place to sleep, too?” She looked at Bax again, “Your friend is too kind, that he seems to own this entire complex, these three empty rooms, and yet he can find me a nice safe bed at the whorehouse.”
She shook her head. “If you knew anything at all about me, you’d know I was treating women like this already. That I took on the desperate, helpless cases, because the River could help me succeed where other healers failed. Gods, when Bax found me, I was fighting a fever that was burning its way through a village. In three days, I saved twenty lives.”
In a moment, Vanja was standing over Ethan, himself still seated on the floor. “But of course, you know best. Because you know all the ins and out of this city, in all your clever disguises, and what do I know, being so obviously stupid, fat and foreign.”
“If this is the best advice you have for me,” Vanja said, looking down at Ethan, “you can go to that brothel yourself and get fucked.”
She smiled at him. She was a healer, yes.
But she was also a fighter.
Ethan
Ethan remains seated. The girl appeared ready for a fight. Ethan was not interested in this for several reasons: for one, it was very likely he would lose. Ethan was not a fighter; Ethan was a killer. Fighting was a much more useful skill - few situations were improved by having an professional death dealer on hand; the phrase ‘if only we had an expert murderer around!’ was not a popular one.
This was yet another situation where exchanging life for death was an altogether useless skill set.
He was also good at lying, cheating and stealing. Possibly useful, possibly not.
Finally, Ethan had become an expert at taking a beating. He literally had a lifetime of experience with it. Even now, the Baker was robbed, beaten or manhandled not infrequently. Ethan learned very early in life that there is skill to mitigating an entirely one-sided ass kicking.
He was hoping not to employ this last one because having your teeth kicked in was unpleasant no matter how skilled you became at taking one on the chin.
Welp… already picked a direction. Too late to turn back. Let’s see where this hole goes…
He opens his mouth as if to speak. Closes it. He takes another long drink from the wine bottle. Setting the bottle aside he climbs to his feet, his face only a few inches away from the powerful young woman before him. Most of that distance came from the difference of his own height over hers.
Yeah, Bishop speaks to Ethan’s mind. She can definitely kick your ass…
Ethan agreed but ignored him.
“I seem to have offended you. My apologies. That was not my intent. But I also seemed to have failed to communicate several points. Allow me to correct myself…”
“First, you are not ‘almost pretty enough to be an Isendel whore.’ If anything, you’ll find that you’re much too pretty to be working at the establishment I spoke of.
“Second, you can’t stay here because last time we all stayed together it was simple dumb luck that we weren’t all captured. We have to be smarter this time. Close, but not too close. We have to look like we’re all separate, because they will expect for us to be together. So not in the same place this time - close, but separate. And the more we can appear separate, the safer we will be.”
Now came the tricky parts…
“I believe that you did very well on your own. Everything about you suggests that you are more than capable taking care of yourself. And nothing about my suggestion was meant to dismiss the aid you can provide or the healing you already have provided to others.”
“The Majestic is a brothel but it is also… something more. And the people there need help. You won’t be able to pat yourself on the back because you save lives on a daily basis, but you will be able to help people.
“My suggestions, unpleasant or unflattering as they may have appeared, were nothing less than truthful. I am an expert in this city. You do need my help. Great as your accomplishments may be, they led you here under these circumstances. And if you continued on your own, following your same path, they will be the reason you will be captured and you will be killed.”
“The path you chose is the reason I knew your face before we ever met…” Ethan draws a piece of weathered parchment. He holds the paper open beside his head with his left hand for her to see. The Wanted poster displays Vanja’s face, a sketch that is strikingly accurate.
Her eyes flick to the page for a moment to confirm what her mind already knows. They return their focus to his face quickly though. Ethan can see the wheels of he mind turning behind the determined blue eyes - he did not believe they were pleasant thoughts.
The look she gave him reminded Ethan of his sister; her eyes held the same look when she was angry. Between Victoria and his brothers, Ethan had plenty of experience starring into the eyes of a fight he was predetermined to lose.
“If you go into the city (or anywhere else) and help people as you have before, they will find you.” He shook the paper gently.
“The place - the community - I’m suggesting, is different. They mind their own business and take care of those that help them.”
“And lastly… you should listen because you do appear as a mark. And you should want to avoid the attention of thieves - not because you are weak or slow or simple.”
Might as well get it over with…
“But because the thieves in this city are very, very good…”
He holds up his right hand, grasping a necklace with runes carved on it, shaped like a bear. It is Vanja’s necklace.
Vanja
Vanja looked at her mother’s talisman, held in Ethan’s hand, the bone swaying slightly. She narrowed her eyes and snatched it back. Ethan didn’t attempt to stop her.
In another instant, Vanja’s hands were fists, one closed around the cord of the necklace. Her bare feet firm on the floor. She wanted to hit him. He’d insulted her. Made a fool of her. A swift blow to the jaw would knock the smile off his face. Another, up and into the abdomen would send him reeling. She’d have to do short, quick jabs, backed as he was against the wall.
She flexed her hand, pulling the talisman into her palm. She looked up at Ethan’s face again picking her target, but there wasn’t a smirk as she expected. He’s kept his hands up, at shoulder level, one still holding the poster of Vanja’s face, the other empty and open. He wasn’t protecting his face. His eyes were open, too, but Vanja could see the muscles in his jaw contract as he clenched his teeth together, bracing for a blow.
He’d been in fights before, she realized, but he was used to losing. He was just going to let her hit him.
She shoved him, instead. Pushing him into the wall with an open palm. She wasn’t going to properly fight someone who wouldn’t fight back. Ethan hit the wall with a gentle thud, and stayed leaning against it.
It was the sort of thing her eldest brother would do, to break up fights when someone was losing badly. Ethan’s calm, rational explanation of his earlier remarks had that effect now. He didn’t even have the grace to be smug about it, so she had somewhere to direct her frustration.
Vanja took a step to the side and leaned against the wall, too. In a moment of pique she checked her hip into Ethan’s leg. But it was a playful thing this time. Not designed to hurt him, just to express her annoyance. He had been right. He was still right. The fact that she had been offended didn’t make his words less true.
Vanja felt at a loss.
She let her muscles relax and she slid down the wall, collapsing in on herself.
“You’re right,” she said, to Ethan. She gestured up at the drawing of herself. “I’m in danger.”
She opened her hand and traced the runes her mother had carved, after Vanja had survived her first winter. Berkn - healing, urz - strength, dunjasånd - togetherness. As she ran her fingers over the lines, etched deep in the bone of the ice bear, she could see River light, subtle this time, wash over the surface of the talisman and settle in the etching. She breathed deeply. Calming herself.
“But I don’t want to start over somewhere new, either,” she said, softly. “I don’t want to be…hiding out again. Alone.”
She gestured toward Bax, “Ranging through the woods, with Bax, was the most fun I’ve had since leaving home. The only time I felt truly safe, too.” She paused, closed her eyes for a moment. “But I can do more good here.” She sighed, and opened her eyes, fighting against her sudden exhaustion. The adrenalin of the unresolved fight crashing through her system, tiring her. “If I go to this place, this brothel, that’s it then? Ethan, you said there are no men allowed, so what about Bax?” She leaned over her knees, bringing them to her chest, and looked over at her friend, “What are you going to do?”
Bax
During their entire altercation, neither of his friends had seemed to notice Bax coughing terribly from choking on bread after Ethan had called Vanja “fat.” He wanted to intervene and calm them both but was too preoccupied with his breathing issue. Fortunately, by the time he had managed to recover, Ethan too had succeeded in clearing the misunderstanding.
Ethan I swear you make even me look respectful with how thoughtless you can be with your words sometimes…
Slouched against the wall, Vanja showed concern for Bax and his next moves as she came around to accepting Ethan’s proposal. But he could see the distress in her eyes, and wanted to help her feel better. He crawled over and took a knee across from her and started, “Hey don’t worry about me. I’ll be dandy!” He had hoped that using some goofy lingo he’d heard some of the wealthier citizens use would bring levity to the conversation.
“Look, I know what it’s like to wind up in a new place where you need to meet new people,” he continued. “But you’re gonna go to this place, and they’re gonna love ya. You’re kind, helpful, and they’ll probably appreciate a hand when someone breaks a rule and an ass kicking is asked for.
“And y’know, despite talking like an absolute dickhead, he knows what he’s doing. If he claims that these are good people, and will do right by you, I believe him.” Bax steals a glance up to Ethan and says to him, “Seriously man. I know you were relaxed, but like, wow was that bad.”
Bax hadn’t been looking forward to saying goodbye. Despite traveling more quickly and efficiently on his own, he always enjoys the company of others. But this next part requires him to keep away from others. Alone…
He pushes himself up to his feet as he sighs heavily. “I’m gonna return to the wilds, coming back to the city rarely. Maybe once a month? Me and Ethan can pass messages along to each other using the street children. They’re good kids, and just as good as avoiding attention.
“The Swans are forcing the smaller Jorungun tribes off their lands so that they can mine the surrounding area. I’m not sure if they’re after anything specific or if they just want the gold and other minerals. But I’ll keep an eye on them and also cause a lil bit of trouble for them when I can.
“Once you and Ethan are able to find the rest of the group again, I’ll come back to the city and we can begin planning our next move in earnest.”
Vanja
Vanja stood, taking a step away from the wall. She shifted her weight back onto her heels and took a moment to stretch her arms and back, rolling her shoulders. She may not have needed to fight Ethan, but she wanted to be loose. To shrug off the desperate unhelpful thoughts running through her mind now.
Bax was leaving. Off to scout Painted Swan activity across the border in Jorung. Vanja suspected that he’d allow her to come along, too - she’d proven useful in the woods, before, with her own experience in the northern forests - but she didn’t want to ask. This seemed to be something Bax felt he needed to do on his own. Working as a pair had its benefits, yes, but it wasn’t always safer. They had proven that earlier, when the Blind Baker had surprised them, when Vanja had been joking with Bax, laughing, distracting the both of them.
Had that only been a few hours earlier? It seemed like so much had changed since then. That they had been in this empty room, smelling of bread, for a fortnight.
Vanja nodded to Bax, “You need to get word to me, too, so I know you’re safe.” She didn’t want to rely solely on Ethan for news of Bax. To be left waiting. Not knowing if he was alive or dead. Her thoughts were already so preoccupied with fear, for her town. Her family. She couldn’t add another person to that list. Another brother who might be dead. It was too hard, already.
She took Bax by the shoulders, looking up into his eye, “And you can’t just eat game, or you’ll get rabbit poisoning. You have to eat greens too, or at least pine tea, to stay balanced,” She pulled Bax into an embrace, wrapping her arms around him. It was a moment before he returned the hug - the surprise of her affection briefly turning him into the awkward boy she’d first met, weeks before. She released him. “You get any skinnier and Ethan will send you to a brothel.”
Vanja smiled at Ethan, then, so he would know the comment was made in jest, and grabbed the bottle of wine from him. She wiped the bottle with her sleeve and took a generous swig. It was weak Isendelian stuff. Red and sweet.
“So what’s next then?” she asked Ethan, “Right to the whorehouse? Or are you going to take me shopping first? So I can look the part of a real Isendelian girl? So I’m safe from all you dangerous thieves?” Vanja tossed her hair over her shoulder, and batted her eyes, play-acting the part. She laughed, a real, genuine laugh, and took another drink.
Vanja handed the wine bottle back to Ethan, pushing it into his hands a bit harder than was necessary.
Ethan did know this city, that was true enough. Vanja would follow his guidance, for now, at least about the place to stay, and the work she could do. She wasn’t about to starve herself, though, despite his helpful suggestion.
With a comment like that, it’s no wonder he’s alone in this place, yet seems to know so much about the local brothel, Vanja thought. She smirked, but she had enough common sense to keep her observation to herself.
Ethan
Ethan looks at both of them a bit perplexed.
“Well… next is we all go to sleep. You two can settle in here for the night. It’s too risky for all of us to live in the same place, but spending one night here should be fine.” He notes again the bags under his friend’s eyes. “And it should be a nice change of pace to sleep somewhere without one of you having to keep watch, crowded around a tiny flame, trying to balance the risk of the fire’s light against the prospect of losing body parts to frostbite…”
He turns to each of them in kind as he speaks. “I’ll take you to the Majestic tomorrow. And Bax, I’ll bring a parting gift for your next outing.”
He stretches his neck from side to side. He was very pleased to find that Vanja was as smart as her eyes suggested; she was passionate but she could see reason, even when she was worked up. That was a rare combination.
“Now, unless there is anything dire left for the evening, I’m going to retire…” He looks to see if either Bax or Vanja have any further need of him for the moment.
Bax
Bax had planned on leaving right after their meeting. Returning to the woods. But the prospect of staying somewhere relatively warm and protected for the evening was tantalizing.
I still have a few days I think…I should be okay for one night…
“Well I’m convinced. Let’s crash for the night.” Bax gently taps a fist against Vanja’s shoulder in a sign of solidarity. “I’ll be heading out before dawn though. Before you wake up most likely. I dunno when I’ll see you again, but I fully plan on seeing you again! Understand? So till then, listen to Ethan and keep your head down.”
A wave of exhaustion suddenly washes over Bax. Perhaps the promise of a decent night’s sleep for the first time in months was more gripping to his tired body than he’d initially realized? He went to grab one last piece of bread, but loses consciousness only as he reached the basket.
The Next Morning
Bax awoke with an awful crick in his neck. With a groan, he pushes himself up from the floor, cracking open his eyes to see it is still dark out. Beyond the window he could barely make out the sounds of hunters and workers starting their days as well. Quietly yawning, he looks over to see Vanja breathing steadily, noting to himself how peaceful she seemed.
He stands and gathers his few items together, also feeling around his neck for his cloth and tugging it up to cover his eye. Bax quietly steps through the door, and turns one last time to look to Vanja.
You’re safer here than you would be with me. Hope I’ll see ya again.
Closing the door behind him, Bax sneaks down the staircase to Ethan’s door. He jostles the handle and creaks it open, “Hey Ethan, you up yet?” Peering further inside, Bax finds his friend sitting at a small table, a small bundle tied up next to him.
Ethan
“Yeah!” He said. He may have planned to respond with more but for the moment a yawn interrupted his reply.
Ethan was awake but just barely. He’d roused himself more than an hour ago, but his mind was still negotiating hard for more rest. It appeared to be losing the debate, however, as Ethan sat preparing the makeup, resins and fake skin that was needed to paint the Baker’s face across his own. The persistent yawns were signs of his mind’s continued protest.
Ethan added a sleepy yell to the end of his latest yawn for good measure before speaking.
“Oof! Sorry about that. This is the worst day of the week for me. The Baker sells to the miners today, so it’s a late night followed by an early morning.” Ethan was smiling despite the complaints. He was in good spirits.
“You look a little better. I think the sleep did you some good. A few more nights like that and you‘d almost look like you were back among the living…” he didn’t expect Bax to stay longer, although Ethan wasn’t entirely certain why he seemed so anxious to leave. His friend had (quite literally) passed out from exhaustion right in front of him not more than eight hours ago. Resting further to recover his strength seemed prudent. But, Bax wasn’t a child and Ethan wasn’t his mother; he trusted that his friend knew what he was doing… well, he was trying to trust his judgement, at least. This was the same kid who tossed a fucking hammer into a crowd of people, after all.
Ethan picked up the small, dense pack from beside the table. “Here,” he said. “I picked this up from the Hunter’s Guild this morning. They charged me too much for it but it’s packed by men in your profession. It’s for extended hunts. Rations inside should last you a few weeks or so.”
The leather backpack was dyed white, grey, and black in disruptive patterns. It looked like a wintered forest or rocky mountainside covered in snow. There were additional straps in different directions on the outside of the pack, useful for storing tools or weapons. The man Ethan had purchased it from had removed some metal traps that were hanging from the back. Ethan had paid extra for the man to leave a white bear skin blanket that was coiled tightly at the top.
The whole pack was clearly broken in from hardy use but far from the end of its life.
Ethan knew little about hunting or Bax’s particular needs, but he hoped it was serviceable - it was why he’d gone directly to the Hunter’s Guild. He figured their needs should at least be somewhat similar to Bax’s.
“Also, I’ve got a weird request… could you try to figure out how snakes inject their venom? Maybe there are books on it, but that doesn’t exactly do me any good,.” the request was sounding just as bizarre as he feared it might.
“I was hearing some people debate the most dangerous animals and one guy made a good argument for snakes. Snakes are dangerous to things that are a lot bigger than them. And… long story short, some of the things we’re up against are a lot bigger than we are. So I was thinking, maybe, we could learn to make weapons that work like snake’s…?”
“Like I said, it’s a weird request. And maybe it’s pointless. Birds fly but I don’t expect you to come back with the secrets of flight after studying some canaries.”
He handed the pack to his friend and, gripping him by the shoulders, wished him goodbye.
“I’ll keep an ear out for messages from those little hooligans. Til then… good hunting, buddy.”
Bax
Pulling open the leather pack, Bax finds a few weeks worth of rations within. The bag itself was designed to blend into a snowy mountain terrain, and a bear skin blanket to serve as a means of warmth and sealing in the sent of the rations. This small pack was going to save Bax massive amounts of trouble in the immediate future, and he felt truly grateful towards his friend.
Ethan clapped Bax’s shoulders, “Good hunting buddy.”
“Thanks. This’ll last me a long while,” Bax responded, holding up the pack Ethan offered him. “Kind of a weird request about the poison weapons. Garbon was always the one with the mind to… But I’ll see what I can find out. Maybe some of the tribes in Jorung have an idea.” He slapped Ethan’s shoulder and slings the pack across his back turning towards the door, but stopped a few paces away.
“Actually, I’ve got a request for you too. Vanja proves that our group wasn’t the only one that was affected by the stars returning. And that means somethin. So I think we need to adopt the strategy of the Swans. We need to start looking for other people with magic. The priority right now should be finding our friends, but I think it’s important we start actively looking for others like us. Maybe tell Vanja to keep an ear out at the brothel for any rumors.
“Also… I can’t think of another way to say this, but I know that you’re hiding somethin from us. Or at least you haven’t told us the whole truth. About what you do or what you know. The way that you weren’t more shocked at meeting Vanja says plenty. So not now, not when we meet up again, but at some point. I expect you to tell us all the truth. We deserve to know.”
Bax continued to the door, quietly pulling it open and walking out. He pokes his head in one last time to say, “So till we have a chance to talk, stay safe. Oh, and you should try to come up with other bread recipes. Try somethin with mushrooms. There’s plenty of wild ones in the southern forest. Just be careful to not confuse the dark brown ones and the scary looking ones. The dark brown ones are poisonous but the scary looking ones, which are also dark brown, are not. Alright see ya!”
Bax shut the door behind him and jogged to join the crowd of miners. Braking off to dive down an alley as they approached the southern gate. He stuck to the alleys and quickly began making his way north, back to the Jorungun wilds.
Vanja
By the time Vanja woke, Bax was gone, and the hearthfire had gone out. Vanja stretched before standing, working warmth into cold muscles. This was something she would have to get used to, again. On her own there would be no one to keep a fire going - or to keep watch - while she slept. Vanja felt safe enough here, in the moment, though. The smell of cinnamon and aniseed wafting up through the floorboards from the morning’s bread reminded her that, aside from the Baker, this part of the building was empty.
Vanja washed quickly, the water developing a thin skin of ice even as she dipped her cloth into it, and dressed in clothes that were dry if not warm. She broke camp, much the same way as she and Bax had done dozens of times in the woods - repacking her day-pack, stirring the ashes of the fire, rerolling the furs - hide-side in, as Bax had shown her, to prevent the cold from cracking the leather.
Within minutes, the room was exactly the way it had been when Vanja and Bax had arrived. Cold and empty.
Vanja was still, listening for movement in the apartment below. Nothing. Ethan must be gone, then. Off doing some task for some other version of himself.
As the old man, perhaps, the Baker he had been when he’d burst into the room yesterday. Or someone else. He had told Bax that he was tired. That he had been living the lives of “several men”. That he had many things in motion.
Vanja understood the need to lie - It was for protection. To keep Ethan and his friends safe, as her own town had lied to the inquisitor, to the Swan soldiers who had come looking for her. But the layers of lies…of different identities…
Which version did I meet? she thought.
Last night Ethan had been many things, had worn many faces even when it appeared to be his own. Old friend. Pragmatist. Expert. Con artist. Trickster. Each flowing into one another, each a mask on a mask. How he had gone so effortlessly from a young man joking with an old comrade, to his tactless assessment of Vanja, then switching voices, switching roles when that hadn’t worked, when he’d read the threat from her. How he’d become rational, calming. How he’d expertly deescalated.
Vanja thought that even Bax had seemed thrown by some of what Ethan had said - by his nonplussed reaction to magic, and by his quick efficient plan to hide Vanja away, in a place where she would be safe and also unseen. Vanja knew the plan was a good one, as much as it left a bad taste in her own mouth. She didn’t like the idea of hiding, forced to pretend to be someone she wasn’t. Of the isolation of it.
And they were each alone, now. Last night, Vanja had thought that this meeting was building toward something else, something greater - that once Bax had found Ethan, there would be some larger, greater network. A community that she could join. People she could help, without hiding herself or the River light. But that hadn’t been the way. Instead they were splintering. Bax was already gone. And Ethan…
She couldn’t read Ethan Fairchild.
She had to trust him, though. With Bax gone, he was the only connection she had in the city. She was uneasy.
Vanja tried to clear her mind, tried to focus on the River. She cast her rune stones, but for the first time, the results were confusing. Unclear. She cast again, and a third time. Nothing. The blank rune coming up again and again.
She was anxious. Distracted. The flow of fate that had seemed so clear the night before, sitting with Ethan and Bax, seemed to have spread and shallowed. Unpredictable now. Diffused as the River light was by the dawn.
Still, the blank rune bothered her. It meant change. A shift. But it was unknowable.
Often, it meant death.
Ethan had knocked on the door, this time, and waited for Vanja to answer rather than entering the room unannounced as he had before. Under the hood of his cloak, Ethan wore his own face - the young half-elf with those inscrutable green eyes.
As they moved from the apartment block onto the street, Vanja pulled up the hood of her own cloak. The fur around the collar was white now, the cloak itself a deep plum, almost the color of a Swan tabard. The wind twisted the hem of the cloak around Vanja’s knees, and over the next few seconds, the plum had become a deep wine red, then shifting into crimson. Vanja’s hair flew in front of her face, her own reddish color for only a moment before lightening into a dusty blond, then so light it was almost white. Vanja knew the rest of her would be subtly shifting too, ensuring that she was a different girl moment to moment.
Vanja pulled down the hood, becoming herself again for just a moment, while she braided back her hair. She looked up at Ethan and smirked, while she looked like herself. He wasn’t the only one who could disguise himself. Who could wear another face.
Ethan led the way through the streets of the city, walking with a practiced, cautious step. Vanja followed a few paces behind.
After what seemed to Vanja to be only a few minutes, Ethan stopped. The Majestic, the hotel-turned-brothel stood across the street, and a few buildings away. The walls had settled in such a way that the brothel seemed bloated. Leaning slightly into the building next to it, like a woman deep in drink.
Vanja pushed out her breath. It was how it was. She would do this thing, at least for now. She could wait here. Hide here, until she found another place to be. She looked back at Ethan, to nod to him before crossing the road, but he gestured for her to wait. Indicated the alley near where he stood, a narrow passage between two shops. He waited until a group of people passed and disappeared into the alley. Vanja followed.
Ethan
Vanja heads back to the narrow alley. Ethan is leaning against a wall at the ledge of a narrow, stone stairwell that leads down to a tiny landing in front of a basement door. There is no guardrail to prevent accidental falls into the ten-foot pit. Such stairwells are a common hazard for drunks and those not paying careful attention, day or night. The locals call them ‘suicide stairs.’
Vanja takes up a position opposite Ethan and mimics his stance, casually leaning against the wall behind her. Her hood is up, but her face is her own. There is no deadly staircase on her side.
“First off, your illusion magic? Excellent. I knew a girl who had the same trick. Just be smart about it. Always think of it as your way to get out of trouble. My old friend went the opposite direction and it eventually made life hard on others. I don’t think you’re built that way (and that’s a good thing) but I had to throw that cautionary tale your way just the same.
“Second, this place,” he nods his head in the direction of the Majestic, hidden behind the faded brick wall Vanja leaned against. “It’s temporary. Don’t ask me what that means, because right now I don’t know. There are a few missing pieces that I need to find and few more items I need to get squared away before everyone can get back together.”
“Third, for the love of gods, keep your fucking head down. Do not, under any circumstance, call attention to yourself. Look simple. Act simple. Live simple. Plain and boring are your new best friends, got it? I don’t want to hear any rumors about a ’girl who can work miracles,’ floating their way back into the community again…”
From her soured expression, Ethan could tell he was both boring her and belaboring points she felt she already understood.
“Look… you’re special. You have gifts. But if you want to help people, you have to be alive. And, I’m telling you, things can go to…”
A pair of horses quickly pulled alongside the alleyway and drew to an abrupt halt. The boots of a soldier and the sleeves of his uniform could be seen of the man sitting on the bench, holding the reins. A whistle blew and the pair heard as men poured out from the back of the unseen paddy wagon.
“…shit.” Ethan finished dryly.
It was a random search. Ethan pulled his cloak to help further obscure his face. Through a harsh whisper that sounded like stage acting, he barked out orders to Vanja.
“Change your face!”
Vanja was confused, unclear what was happening. “Wha—…?”
“Change your face! Change how you look and play along!” Her eyes looked scared but the magic began to take hold. Her hair changed color, the freckles on her face disappeared. Ethan wanted to say more but there wasn’t time. Soldiers began rounding up small groups of people on the streets.
One in three soldiers carried a leather binder with copies of the Wanted posters. The raids showed up everywhere, seemingly at random. They checked the faces on the streets against the people they were looking for. Some searches were done with more earnest than others. Mostly the Swans were just making their presence known and maybe, just maybe, hoping to get lucky.
Ethan leaned one arm against the wall beside Vanja’s head, hiding her face from the street, acting as though he was just a young man flirting in the overly aggressive style that was commonplace for the streets.
The hands holding the reins of the carriage disappeared, replaced by a puff of smoke. Soon after, the man dismounted, the carriage visibly swaying from his weight.
If he had exited on the street side, Ethan and Vanja would have been able to walk away unseen. But, as fate would have it, the man dismounted and stepped into the alleyway. Evidently, the officer had assumed the alley would be empty, allowing him a chance to smoke his pipe and read from a small book he carried with him while his enlisted men hassled the locals on the streets.
As the officer stepped into the alley, he noted the long, (now blonde) hair of the girl leaning against the building. Her face was obscured by a young man’s arm, but he wondered if the rest of her was as pretty as the hair…
A wry smile formed on his face as he crossed the alley to intrude on the young buck clearly trying too hard to win the lady over. Hello, hello… the lieutenant thought to himself, drawing his baton. Batons were becoming more common for soldiers in the city. They allowed soldiers to control with bruises and breaks, but with less risk of outright killing the commoners they were charged with policing.
“What have we here?” The soldier said, approaching slowly. “An alley like this is no place to find a nice girl, son. For what you’re after, there’s a perfectly good brothel just down the road. I think you should move yourself that direction…”
“Can’t you see we’re having a moment here? I’m sure you have other more important… soldier stuff to do. You should see to that!” Ethan said, lamely. He remained with his arm against the wall, to hide Vanja as much as possible. He forced his body to tense up and his voice to give the faintest hints of apprehension – it was about what the man would expect to hear from a teen trying to sound tougher than he was.
The soldier held the baton up between the pair and calmly used it to push Ethan back several paces.
“This is an official search,” the soldier said with mock seriousness. “We’re looking for dangerous criminals. Wouldn’t be doing my duty if I didn’t check everyone.” He marched Ethan back to the opposite side of the alley, right to the edge of the suicide stairs.
“Now you be a good boy and stay right, here.” The soldier punctuated the command by giving Ethan an intimidating poke with his baton. Ethan allowed a look of fear twinged with anger to show across his face.
“Got it?”
“Y… Yeah.” Ethan stammered. The man wasn’t going away, so Ethan needed the soldier to feel completely in control.
The soldier cocked a domineering smirk and turned his attention back Vanja. He twirled the baton in his hand as he sauntered back towards her. The name on his armor read, “Peters.”
Tucking the short stick under his arm, Peters stowed the little book he was carrying in a satchel worn across his chest, exchanging it for a slightly larger one. The thin leather binder held loose copies of the Wanted posters. He began thumbing through them as he approached, his eyes examining parts of Vanja that weren’t on any part of the pages.
He stopped less than an arm’s length away and continued thumbing through the pages. “Let’s see…” he said, holding up a page with a dark-skinned man with a thick scar running across his face.
“Is that you?” he said, “playfully.”
“Mmmm… nope.”
He repeated this several times before eventually giving up on the mock investigation. “Problem with these pictures is they don’t got no color. If you was on one of these, we’d know right away from those pretty blue eyes…” the man reached up with his free hand and took hold of Vanja’s braid.
As he toyed with the braid in his fingers, the malicious smile dropped from his face, replaced with a quizzical stare. He forced his eyes to focus on what, at first, appeared to be a trick of the light. The girl’s hair wasn’t blonde at all… and yet it was? He squinted and leaned still closer, tilting his head slightly to the left favoring his good eye – the one that could still see the feathers on a hawk at dusk on a cloudy day. The hair was red. There was just a transparent coating of color that covered the girl’s whole body. Her face, her hair… this was no trick of the light—this was magic. He’d found a witch…
Vanja
Ethan had been lecturing her for a few moments in the alley when, in an instant, Ethan’s voice had changed, his advice becoming an order: “Change your face! Change how you look and play along!”
Vanja hadn’t known if she could - the cloak’s magic seemed to happen automatically, when it was pulled close around her face, but just then, while looking across the alley at Ethan, her face had been her own.
She had focused on the disguise, channeling the power of the cloak like she did with the River. Redirecting it. She had looked down at her braid - much the same, but blonde. It was better than nothing.
Then, suddenly, Ethan was on her side of the alley, and close. As close as he had been in the apartment the night before, when she had decided not to hit him.
In a calm, natural movement, Ethan leaned over her, bracing his arm on the wall next to her head, his body shielding her from the street. He was close enough that Vanja could see the frayed threads at the edge of his hood, and could smell the cinnamon left over from his morning as the baker. Vanja’s pulse quickened, and her body tensed, bracing for a fight. Ethan’s body language was casual though, confident, even flirtatious, the way boys in her village sometimes were. For an instant, Vanja felt color rising in her face, and she looked away, refocusing on the cloak, on maintaining the illusion.
This wasn’t real - Ethan had created another disguise - this one for the both of them. They were less suspicious here if they seemed to be doing what young couples do in alleys.
The ruse hadn’t worked though. And now Vanja looked up at the Swan’s eyes, instead, and at the hungry, predatory expression. Vanja was trapped, and the Swan knew it. He was toying with her - holding up the posters and reveling in the excuse to look Vanja over. She wanted to hit him - to start with a blow to the abdomen, to send him staggering, and to give herself a moment to loose an axe from the straps at her waist. Instead, she waited. A fight might draw additional attention, and that would be a bad thing.
She willed the illusion to hold, as the Swan moved even closer. She could feel his breath on her skin, the smell of pipe smoke invading her nose. “If you was on one of these, we’d know right away from those pretty blue eyes…”
The soldier reached toward Vanja, and for an instant, Vanja thought he was going to touch her face - to sweep her hood back and expose her. Instead, he took the end of her braid in his hand, running it through his fingers. He paused, and brought her braid closer to his face. As the soldier looked up at her, meeting her eyes - still as blue as they had always been - she saw the realization cross his face. He knew.
She was in danger.
Ethan
Ethan read his body language. He knew the score even before the solider put all the pieces together. He’d seen this magic literally hundreds of times before when Sireli cast it on a daily basis. It had a single flaw – a weak heel. Once someone saw past the illusion, no matter how, they saw what was behind the magic. And the cover became nothing more than a shimmering transparent front. The soldier had caught a glimpse of what the magic was trying to hide and now things were about to go very, very badly.
Vanja looked in the man’s eyes as the emotions rolled across them in waves: confusion, surprise, fear, anger…
Everything that happened next, happened quickly.
The baton under the man’s arm fell to the ground as he took a step back. The thin book was discarded as he reached to draw his sword. He turned his head towards the horses he rode in on and the streets beyond where his men were conducting their own investigations. He opened his mouth to call out.
“Hey!” he started to shout, but a hand covered his mouth, capturing everything but the almost soundless “h.” An obsidian blade appeared at this throat and tore across it. Blood sprayed in an arch, covering Vanja’s face and parts of the wall behind her. Peters released the grip of his sword – his weapon all but forgotten – instinctively clutching his throat. Blood pooled through his fingers and soaked the front of his armor, painting over the man’s name.
Ethan kicked the soldier’s knees out from under him and caught the man’s weight under his arms. He dragged the soldier across the narrow alley and down the stone stairwell, Peters’ feet kicking wildly, desperately trying to find their balance the entire time. Aside from the scraping of his boots on packed earth, he hardly made a sound.
A dull explosion came from the bottom of the stairs, wood splintering as Ethan broke open the door. The sound was muffled by the depth of the stairwell and was barely audible in the alley above. Ethan was taking a chance by assuming the basement to be as abandoned as the storefront above it. This time luck was on his side.
Dragging him inside, he rolled the man - ghost white and already barely conscious - onto his face. He cut away a short piece of fabric from the tail of the man’s shirt as life leaked out of him, blood pooling across the empty, dusty floor.
Returning to the streets, he collected the pages that scattered to the ground and placed them back inside the thin leather book. Some of the pages were spotted with blood but thankfully (and intentionally) most of it was caught by the front of the man’s shirt and pants.
Ethan tossed the closed book on the ground beside Vanja for the time as he unscrewed his water skin and began wetting the fabric from the dead man’s shirt.
Vanja
The soldier had stepped back, dropped his baton, turned to the street. He opened his mouth to call out, to bring reinforcements crashing into the alley. Vanja was a fighter, but she wasn’t trained for this - for this close, real danger. In the moment, she was prey, and she froze - no longer pinned against the wall, but unable to move.
She needed to run. To move. To send an elbow into the Swan’s stomach, a boot heel down onto his instep. But she didn’t. She just stood - the spell of the magic broken, but her own fear keeping her feet solid to the ground, her back against the brick.
Then a hand wrapped in cloth - Ethan’s makeshift gloves. A flash of black glass. A gout of blood. The edge of the black knife was sharp, the artery severed cleanly. As the soldier’s heart pumped, his pulse panicked and racing, the blood sprayed out in a cascade. A curtain of red over Vanja’s face, her hair, the hood of her cloak, the wall behind her.
Then the soldier was down, and Vanja could see Ethan - the knife blade black against the light gray of his cloak. In a continuation of the same fluid movement, Ethan caught the Swan as he fell, knees bent to bear the additional weight. The Swan was still alive, pawing at his own throat, gasping for air. Vanja could see pink foam forming at the edges of the man’s hands. Ethan had cut the windpipe, too.
The soldier was still moving, struggling - his legs kicking against the ground as Ethan pulled him the few steps toward the black of the stairwell. Fighting for his life.
Vanja knew he was already dead, though. She had known the moment the blood had sprayed across her own face, with the force of the severed arteries. Then the soldier had lost more blood, struggling, and now it was likely flooding down his throat, filling his lungs.
From the bottom of the stairwell, there was a soft crash. A flash of Ethan’s light cloak in the darkness, and then both men were gone.
For a few moments, Vanja was alone in the alley.
It had been very quick.
Ethan had a practiced hand. Even reaching around the soldier from behind, even with the man struggling, the cords of his neck taut, prepared to yell, Ethan’s single slice had been efficient. Surgical.
Then Ethan was back. There was no sign of the soldier, but Vanja hadn’t expected there to be. Ethan hadn’t dragged the dying man into a basement to save his life. He’d done it to discard a corpse.
Vanja watched as Ethan scanned the alley, and retrieved the papers that the soldier had dropped. He returned them carefully to their leather folder, and dropped the folder on the ground near Vanja’s feet. She studied him - his clothes were as clean as they had been. With his handwraps gone - discarded along with the swan, somewhere beneath their feet - there was no trace of blood on him. If not for the blood on her own face, soaking into her hair, staining her cloak, it would seem like nothing had happened here at all.
Ethan took a moment to uncork his waterskin, and wet a cloth. He looked at her, then, and Vanja wondered if this was another mask, or if this killer, this assassin, was the real Ethan.
Ethan
Vanja was still standing as she had been when the blood had sprayed against her.
Ethan shoved the wetted cloth into her hands. “Drop the magic. Clean your face,” he instructed as he moved to the corner of the building. Most of the soldiers had spread out away from the carriage. It looked like there was a clear path to the Majestic but that window was likely to close at any second.
When he looked back, Vanja was absently wiping her eyes clean. She appeared to be in shock.
Ethan took the cloth from her and began cleaning the blood off her face himself.
“Ok, you have to go now. Walk, do not run… Walk straight across the street and then straight into the hotel. Got it?” He spun Vanja towards the corner, pausing for a moment to pick up the thin leather book and stuffing it into her backpack; he didn’t have any pack to carry it himself.
“No time for anything else. You have to go now!”
“I…” she started.
“I’ll take care of it.” He didn’t know what she was going to say, but he would. Murder was his profession, after all.
“Go. Now.”
Vanja walked around the corner of the building and made her way down the street to the hotel. She was composed for the entire stretch and went unnoticed by the soldiers who were preoccupied with others.
Ethan activated his cloak and began sprinting. He hadn’t used any of his black-market contacts for months, not while his face could still be found on flyers around the city (no honor among thieves and all that), but now he needed a body moved quickly, quietly; there could be no trace left of the man. For all intents and purposes, this soldier had to disappear.
Ethan couldn’t do this by himself. Not under these conditions. Not with this little time.
No. For the first time in almost a year, he would need to call on the services of the Cleaners. They charged triple for moving bodies like this one, but Ethan would pay it.
He just hoped they wouldn’t be too offended being paid almost entirely in copper…
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