“What was that?” Venviel asked.
“I don’t know, but I should probably check it out.” Hope didn’t want to go anywhere without Venviel, yet it might be safer. “Keerla warned me that she would replace me, give your name to someone more veteran, if I don’t provide her with evidence by the end of the festival.”
“Should we have this conversation now?” Venviel glanced around them. Thick branches had broken off a few of the oaks, and cracks had appeared in the façade of the mansion, but nothing had sustained permanent damage. It could be fixed.
“I think we should have had it earlier, actually. I have a plan.” Hope shut her eyes to the destruction, relaxed in Venviel’s embrace. “If you tell me everything you’ve done, over the last five years, I’ll come up with lies the high priestess won’t be able to disprove. I—“
“Hope, I didn’t track my actions. I’m not the temple. I didn’t sit around and wait for a goddess to give me the best dates. I did what I had to, whenever I could.”
“Anything you remember will have to do then,” Hope said, but if Keerla knew more than she had revealed so far, she might only dig a deeper grave for herself if she gave the high priestess inaccurate intel. “You remember what you did, right? The gist of it?”
“Obviously.” Venviel snorted. “I, um… Well, give me some time to think and remember.”
Guards rushed by on the street outside, headed towards the origin of the earthquake. If people had gotten injured, Hope ought to go help. It was her duty.
“Should we meet later tonight?” She asked, grabbed her coat, and slipped her arms into its sleeves. “Will that be enough time?”
“More than enough.” Venviel nodded. “I’ll wait for you by the docks, where I saved you from that broker.”
“If I’m a no-show, you’ll save me from the temple, won’t you?”
Venviel didn’t even feign a smile at her joke. “I’ll have to rescue you from yourself first.”
Hope wasn’t sure how to respond. She needed to be somewhere else though, so she simply kissed Venviel on the forehead, jumped into her boots, and hurried out into the street. The guards disappeared around the corner farther down the street.
She ran after them to catch up, but soon met resistance in the form of terrified citizens. The wealthy elves looked too lost and confused for their own good. They muttered to themselves and bumped into her, even though they’d always kept their distance before. Whatever had happened must be serious indeed.
She found her way to the source of the earthquake by going against the stream of people. Her concerns grew the closer she got to the worst of the destruction, but when she arrived at the square and saw who the victims were, a weight lifted from her heart. The goddess must have killed the inquisitors because they’d failed her, but at least they’d been members of the temple. They’d not been defenseless innocents.
Hope didn’t recognize Keerla, right away, since the bodies were crushed into a pile that was too small to consist of six people. When she did, she froze. It had to be a joke. If the goddess smote her own high priestess, who could really claim to be safe in Lho Allanar? Who would lead the temple going forward? What would happen to her?
She supposed Venviel, Orchid Brave, could breathe easy for a while, but she didn’t get a chance to consider her own future long before a priestess barked orders to arrest her to two nearby inquisitors. The priestess clearly thought she was involved in this madness, but why?
While the inquisitors drew their maces, and forced her to kneel on the ground, Hope found herself helpless and shocked. So stupid and naïve. She didn’t resist when they bound her arms and blocked out the sun with a blindfold. She sort of timidly acknowledged that she’d lost the game the goddess had liked to play with her since her birth.
Forgotten
“I’ll talk with Hope,” Vaeri said when the guards unlocked the door to whatever dark, secret cell they’d tossed her in. “Leave us.”
The priestess brought a lantern into her prison, placed it on the floor by the entrance, and shuddered as they shut the door behind her. She looked upset, disheartened, like she’d not gotten a wink of sleep because of the terrible tragedy which had befallen the temple.
“I don’t know anything,” Hope said, grabbed her listless tails, and scooted up against the wall. The lantern gave her her first glimpse of the cell in hours. Straw had been strewn across the floor, but other than that, it was barren. The cell had no bed, bench, or window.
“I’d like to believe you. Trust me, I would.” Vaeri slid a hand behind her back. She might have hidden a dagger in her robe to protect herself. “But they claim the assassin, Orchid Brave, mentioned you by name.”
“You sure she didn’t mean hope as in hope? Or is that such a foreign concept to you that you’re forced to assume I’m involved in crushing six people? Really, Vaeri? How would I even have done it? I’m a nobody. I don’t possess divine power.”
“True enough, Hope.” Vaeri offered a sympathetic smile. “But the temple isn’t stupid, and we have to pursue every lead. If anyone would have helped Venviel Amicier keep her identity secret, it would be her former maid, wouldn’t it? You shed many tears over that family, didn’t you?”
“How would you know?”
“I wouldn’t know much about you, at all, if Keerla hadn’t died. But she did keep extensive notes of everyone. You, especially. I’m not sure why yet.”
“Then why have you locked me in?”
“It wasn’t my decision, Hope. I’m on your side.” Vaeri sighed. “It’s difficult to defend someone who looks like you, during times when everyone is looking for a scapegoat, but I’m doing my best. I’d like to think of us as friends, even if you turned down my advances.”
“I…” Hope stroked her tails. What had happened to Venviel? Had she been captured too, or did she remain at large? Venviel couldn’t possibly have killed the high priestess. The earthquake had happened while they’d been together, and the elf didn’t possess divine power either. She doubted any mortal could have killed six people in the way Keerla and the inquisitors had been crushed. It must have been the goddess.
“Hope, how much are you willing to tell me about the elf you spent that night with?” Vaeri took a couple of steps across the straw on the floor, but stopped in the middle of the cell. “How well do you know Venviel? Do you believe she would save you?”
“Yes, she…” Hope trailed off. She didn’t know if Venviel would do anything of the sort. If the elf thought of her as a lost cause, she might devote herself to others instead. She’d not lacked lovers. And now that Hope found herself imprisoned at a secret location, Venviel might convince herself to stop thinking of her.
“How do you think we would find her?” Vaeri asked. “It seems unthinkable that she would have the power to call down logs out of the skies, but it’s not the first time the temple has heard of divine weapons. This Venviel, could she have consorted with other gods?”
“I don’t…” Hope shrugged. “I don’t know. She mentioned the goddess of love, a couple of times, as if she’d talked with her personally.”
“Blasphemy!” Vaeri exclaimed. “The goddess would not have sided with someone consumed by hatred, nor would she have sided against her own high priestess.”
“I didn’t claim she had.”
“Would you help me find Venviel Amicier, if only so we can provide the people with the answers they seek?” Vaeri knelt in front of Hope and laid a hand on her knee. The priestess’s concern seemed genuine.
“No, I can’t. She—“
“Hope, you’re going to be in here for a long time if you don’t help me. It might be years before you see the sun again, and by then, the temple will have found their culprit with or without your assistance.” Vaeri squeezed her knee hard. “Do you understand? I’ll help you in return. You shouldn’t have to rely on outsiders, blasphemers, for the love the goddess promises everyone.”
“I can’t help you, I don’t know where she is.”
Vaeri rose
to her feet, wiped her hand on her robe, and grimaced. “I’ll see what I can do. I doubt the others will realize your usefulness, but if you’re lucky, they might use you as bait to draw her out. How do you feel about playing the part of the helpless victim?”
“If you know the temple is wrong, why are you doing this?” Hope asked. “I can’t be your victim if you’re good and upstanding, can I?”
“Hope, I’m sorry to tell you this, but Keerla kept notes about your lover too. It seems Venviel wasn’t quite as fond of you as you were of her.” Vaeri looked down at her with a frown. “Orchid Brave loved to spend nights with women far above her status. I fear she might have only thought of you as an exotic lay.”
“Exactly like you?”
Vaeri chuckled. “It’s what you are.”
Hope kicked her leg out at the priestess’ shin, but missed when Vaeri took a quick step backward.
“I’m your only friend,” Vaeri said, pulled a knife out of a hidden pocket, and held it at her side. “Don’t make me regret trying to show my love to someone like you. You can become more than you were born to be with me.”
“You can’t…” Hope’s heart sank in her chest when she realized that Vaeri was likely right. She would never become an elf. She’d always be an anomaly. A monster. And Venviel might sooner save others than her. “I’d like to be alone.”
“In this horrible cell? I can get you out of here, if you only give me something to go on.”
“Leave ,Vaeri.” Hope pulled her knees up to her chest, hugged her legs, and rested her chin on top of them. “I know what I am to you, and everyone. Unlike you, though, I can handle the darkness. I grew up in the shadows of Lho Allanar.”
“Suit yourself.” Vaeri knocked on the door for the guard to let her out, and left Hope alone with the lantern. It stayed lit for a long while.
She watched the lantern’s wick flicker, half-awake, right before it went out. Venviel would forget her, over the coming days, and find someone else if the temple didn’t put an end to her life. No one could love Hope, not when the goddess herself held a grudge against her, so she best get used to a solitary existence.
No Light, No Light
Time lost its meaning during the first day. Faced with constant darkness, Hope had nothing to count the hours with. No sun, no moon. If she hadn’t fallen asleep, sporadically, she might have been able to guess how many hours had passed based on the rhythm of a regular day. But she didn’t even have that.
Vaeri didn’t return. Venviel didn’t come to save her. At least not when Hope was awake. Both the priestess and the vigilante visited her, over and over, and urged her to pick a side in her dreams. She couldn’t recall what they’d told her afterwards. She only remembered how they’d made her feel, how they’d tortured her with their caring, soft voices, and how they reminded her that she’d failed.
When she refused to make choices, she amounted to no more than a single grain of sand. She’d been given considerable authority by Keerla, but she’d squandered it and would never reclaim it now.
The temple would forget her. Years into the future, they’d discover the skeleton of someone who’d starved to death in one of their cells. By then, Venviel would have escaped Lho Allanar.
She supposed she couldn’t blame the guards for forgetting her already, or neglecting to bring her food, or just leaving her life up to fate. Truly, she ought to blame herself for expecting a different outcome. She’d been born hungry, and when starvation returned in full force, she’d die to that awful, mind-numbing hunger.
She’d accomplished nothing in her time. She’d rebelled against none of the injustices she’d endured. Venviel might go down as a hero to the people, but Hope would forever remain insignificant. It was sort of fitting for someone like her to wither away in darkness, like a hidden little cave rose that no one ever laid eyes on before it decayed.
In dreams, or in reality, she couldn’t tell which when her waking hours flowed into her sleepless nights, she saw Venviel together with a dozen beautiful elves which all fawned over her because she’d saved them instead of Hope.
Why had she been naïve enough to think Venviel would pick her? She may have left scars on Venviel’s heart, when she’d betrayed her family through sheer idiocy, but it should only serve as further proof that she didn’t deserve the attention the elf had lavished her with. She should have given Venviel permission to slit her throat, kill her, to fulfill her need for revenge. A quick death would have beat starvation. It would have been a pleasant mercy to die by Venviel’s hand.
If she’d known that was all she would get out of their romance, she would have tempered her expectations. Pariahs couldn’t earn love. She’d not stopped being one when she’d become an inquisitor. Not in the eyes’ of the goddess. Not by the rules of any priestess. Maybe Keerla had been killed because she’d dared promote Hope to a position of privilege. It wouldn’t surprise her.
If the goddess resembled the elf statues, she must resent Hope and think of her like the monster everyone else saw. A monster born out of hate. Why would the goddess be different from the rest of Lho Allanar? She’d rebuilt the city in her image, hadn’t she?
Even though she lost track of time, and days must have gone by, the guards brought her food before she succumbed to starvation. She stuffed her face, with bread which tasted of mold, and focused on survival yet again. If she had nothing else than her life, she ought to value it till the moment someone cut it short. Be they elf or deity.
Hope had no clue how long she may live, but she didn’t want to consider how terrible the afterlife might be for her. She didn’t believe for a second that it would be better than the disappointing existence called life. Not if she would meet the goddess in person and face her relentless scorn.
Run
Venviel fled the second she stumbled upon three guards in front of the tunnel to her hideout. They drew their swords, shouted, and gave pursuit. She ducked into alley after alley in a futile attempt to shake her tail, leapt over barrels and crates, yet the guards always appeared. They didn’t give her a chance to catch her breath. If it hadn’t been for their clunky armours weighing them down, they would have caught her.
After a week, she’d grown tired to her bones. Ever since the earthquake, the tunnels no longer constituted a safe haven. She could only guess at who had blabbered about where she lived, but since no more than a couple of individuals knew about it, and one of them served as an inquisitor, it seemed a safe bet. Hope had sold her out.
Venviel should have resisted those mesmerizing eyes. If she’d ended Hope after she’d destroyed her bow, they could have been done with each other once and for all. Instead she’d let her run off like a love-struck fool, and paid the price every single day since then.
She stopped to catch her breath, in the shadows of another alley, next to the broad road leading up to the palace. The giant unfinished structures beckoned her closer. Horses pulled carts with marble, and planks, and trotted up towards the spires of the ancient beast alongside muscular builders. The reconstruction set before them may not be finished in her lifetime, if they didn’t receive divine assistance.
“Venviel Amicier!” A redheaded inquisitor shouted from the other end of the alley, bared her teeth in a grin, and drew her mace.
“What?” Venviel said. Her lungs would give out along with her legs, if she didn’t get a chance to rest soon. “Sorry to disappoint, but I didn’t kill your high priestess. Wish I had though!”
“Run, rabbit,” the inquisitor said, dragged her mace along the stone wall, and shattered the top of a crate by striking it into splinters. “Run.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice…” Venviel sighed and wondered if she should just ditch Orchid Brave’s mask at this point, since Hope had told everyone her true identity anyway.
She didn’t move until the redhead did. Then she ran across the street, ducked horses and angry men, and jumped up onto one of the carts on the road. She scaled the planks and the stones, waved at her pursue
r, and threw herself on top of a ruined wall which encircled the palace. Once it may have served as a defensive measure, but now she used it as a quick means of escape.
She would always be outmatched by the insanity of the temple’s battle-ready servants, but none of them could match her in a competition of acrobatics. None.
At least that’s what she thought until she heard the inquisitor scale the wall behind her, laugh, and look up at her from under her red hair. This woman might actually kill her. Inquisitors should stay on the ground where they belonged.
Venviel freed her grappling hook from her belt, fled along the wall, skipped across the top of pillars, and searched for an elevated spot to swing the hook at.
“I’m not so bad once you get to know me, rabbit!”
If Hope had had the guts to face her in person again, Venviel would have loved to demonstrate how bad she could be once they crossed her. But no, she found herself pursued across the structures of the palace by a fanatic.
And unfortunately, she gained on her, despite how they shouldn’t be evenly matched. She’d always had the advantage in Lho Allanar, because she’d learnt how to move better than everyone. She couldn’t suddenly lose it.
“I hear you love the goddess’ faithful, so why don’t you stop and dance!” The inquisitor shouted so loud that Venviel almost tripped.
“You told me to run!” Venviel swung the grappling hook at one of the tallest pillars of the nearest scaffolding, and breathed out in relief when it got caught in the wood. She pulled herself up and out of reach of the agile inquisitor.
“Would you have given me a kiss if I’d told you to?” The inquisitor balanced precariously on top of a pillar, and searched for a way up or down, but she didn’t have any available to her. “Or do you only follow orders you like?”
“What’s your name?” Venviel wrapped the rope dangling below her around her leg to prevent the inquisitor from reaching it.
“Faraine! But you can call me death!”
Never Enough Page 10