by C S Vass
She wanted to tell him something, to get his act together, to not give up. But she couldn’t bring herself to. Nothing was going right anymore, and now she truly didn’t know where to turn.
“Goodbye Martin. I promise I’ll come see you again, and not because I need something.”
* * *
Later that evening Fiona was alone in her room contemplating her next move. Donyo had left to go gods knew where, and so she was by herself with her thoughts. If nothing else happened it seemed as though the Beast would return and show her how to use the manjeko, but the thought of returning to that strange world frightened her so badly that she could hardly even contemplate it.
She had almost told Donyo about the horrific experience, but decided against mentioning it at the last minute. For whatever reason she couldn’t bring herself to discuss the situation. At least not yet. The whole affair was a nightmare and she felt that if she talked about it then somehow that would make the Beast real and then she would be doomed.
A loud knocking tore her from her thoughts. She cracked open the door and was greeted by a cold gust of wind and a pair of golden teeth smiling in the darkness. “Greetings, Fiona. It’s good to see you.”
Smiley abruptly shoved his way inside without waiting for her to react. “What the hell?” she shouted. “Do you always just barge into people’s homes uninvited?”
“You should be very, very careful right now,” Smiley said in his breathless voice. “My friends in the Tellosian government are not happy with you at all.”
“Am I supposed to care?”
“You should if you want that passport,” Smiley said. “We can get you on a boat to go anywhere in the world you so desire, Fiona. Or we could get you on a boat that sails right off a waterfall, perhaps a nice rocky one like in the Ryango Pass. Have you ever seen a ship dashed against those stones? The sight is truly incredible.”
“I don’t know what you expect from me!” she said. “I’m doing the best I can. What progress have you made? We’re supposed to be working together, after all, aren’t we?”
“Oh no, little girl, don’t get this twisted,” Smiley said. There wasn’t the smallest hint of the usual playfulness about his voice. “You work for us. We’ve been following you to see just how hard you’ve been working, and so far all you’ve managed to do is fuck around with some of your old acquaintances and fall in with some gangsters in the Forgotten.”
She tried not to let it show how unsettled she was that Smiley already knew about the Forgotten. “You’ve been following me, and now you expect me to want to keep working with you?”
“Listen. I think we need to clear the air about some things. I don’t know what plans you have with that drunk Donyo Brownwater, or that loser guard captain, but know this. If you’re in cahoots with anyone at court looking for ways to push the Empire out of the city, then you’re making the wrong damn deal. You’re here to find Rodrick, and that’s it. Anything else and you might find yourself at the wrong end of a long noose.”
“Am I supposed to be intimidated?” Fiona asked. “You do this often? Come find young helpless girls and try to shake things up to scare them?”
“Helpless!” he laughed. “You do yourself a disservice, Fiona. But I’m not interested in shaking things up or scaring you. I’m interested in bringing criminals to justice.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” Fiona took a step forward. She did not feel very brave, but this wouldn’t be the first time she had to fake a tough face. “How many of Haygarden’s laws have you broken since arriving here? Who have you bribed? Who have you killed? If you’re going to be a thug, then fine, but don’t pretend that you’re any better than the Forgotten. At least they know what they are.”
She expected to get a rise out of him, but Smiley simply closed his eyes. His weatherbeaten face looked so tired, and Fiona realized she had no idea if he was a young man aged past his years or simply old.
“Kyia Resoumo Aiyk Foewaerun.” There was a rhythmic quality to the words as Smiley spoke.
“I’m sorry, am I supposed to understand that?”
Smiley’s eyes opened, pale blue and lifeless. “Bring order through divine justice. That is roughly what it translates to. It is the oath that every Tellosian agent engraves upon his or her heart as we take up the cause of our Empire.”
“Fascinating.” Fiona crossed her arms. She was not in the mood for a lesson on Tellosian politics.
“Now take it back.” There was death in his voice.
“What?”
Abruptly he grabbed her chair with both hands and flung it into the wall with all his strength, shattering it into a thousand splinters of cheap wood. “Take it back!” he roared. “I am not a thug!” In an instant his hand was around her throat and he was driving her back into the wall. He was strong, impossibly strong. Fiona couldn’t move. Before she could react there was a dagger pointed at her left eye.
“Alright, you’re not a thug. I take it back.”
Smiley did not relent. Instead he squeezed harder. Fiona’s eyes grew wide with fear. “This whole city is a criminal enterprise,” Smiley said. His eyes were unblinking. “Haygarden and the ingrates who run it have overturned centuries of peaceful order, defying the greatest society the world has ever known, and disrupting the rule of the Emperor, a man hand-picked by the gods themselves. Even worse, the warmongers who rebelled all those years ago inspired their counterparts in Laquath to do the same.”
Fiona wondered desperately if Smiley was on something. His eyes were shaking in his head.
“So don’t tell me about breaking the laws. There is only one law, the law of divine justice. Haygarden has defied that law for some thirty years. So if you’re looking for a cause to the misery you see around you in this shithole of a city, look to your leaders. The ones who led the people here off the cliff of chaos like so many sheep following a mad shepherd. It is Haygarden that caused this. I’m simply here to restore order.”
Panic was creeping into Fiona’s chest. She truly couldn’t breath now, and Smiley still wasn’t letting go. There was an implacable rage carved into his face. Fiona had always assumed that if he ever tried to hurt her she would be able to take him in a fight and run, but he had overpowered her so easily.
When tears were streaming down her face he finally relented. She dropped to the floor like a rag-doll, choking and sputtering.
“I’m glad that we have an understanding now,” Smiley said coldly. The emotion that had swept over him passed as quickly as a sudden storm. “We need results from you, Fiona. Your brother is a master at evading our agents. He’s been doing it for so long. The simple truth is you stand a better chance of finding him than we do. Perhaps you haven’t been inspired in the right way. Maybe you don’t care about gold. Maybe you don’t care about getting a passport and leaving Tellos. That’s your business.”
“I’’m doing the best I—”
“I wasn’t finished!” Smiley snapped. “It’s time to make sure that you’re properly motivated to see the success of our endeavor. If we don’t see some results from you soon then it’s not just going to be your neck on the line. Maybe you’ll find the drunk dead in the streets, his body covered in weeping wounds. Or maybe that guard captain will hang from a tree. Who knows, there are so many possibilities. I’ve even heard whispers of a fine young woman you used to be acquainted with named Sasha Rains. She’s no fighter, from what I heard. It would be so simple if she just…disappeared.”
“You’re a monster,” Fiona said. She looked at him with pure hatred, and hated herself even more for ever agreeing to work with him.
“Monsters are sometimes necessary to restore order when the land is plagued with chaos. You would be wise to remember that, Fiona. You may find that one day you yourself have to do something monstrous. However, I understand that Rodrick Sacrosin is going to be a difficult fish to net, even for you. As such, if you’d like to buy yourself and your friends a little more time, there is another way you can be useful.”
Fiona rose to her feet and massaged her throat. She wondered if she should try to kill him then and there and just flee. But he was so much stronger than she had expected, and she was scared of him.
“Your new friends in the Forgotten are of interest to some of my comrades. Among the Forgotten there is a woman, a vicious killer, who goes by the name of Aiyana. Bring me her head, and perhaps we can work out a way for us to…shake hands and part ways.”
“You’re lying,” Fiona said at once. “You want me for Rodrick. What’s to keep you from going back on the deal if I really go through and kill this woman?”
Smiley laughed. “Nothing at all. But because you don’t get to make the rules, you’re really in more of a place where you simply have to choose among your best potential options. We’ll be seeing each other soon, Fiona. Don’t forget. Her name is Aiyana.”
Hours later Fiona still could not find sleep. She had paced around her house at a ten dozen times, and debated going outside but didn’t want to make herself vulnerable to the Tellosian agents that were following her. She was mad enough to scream. She never should have returned to Haygarden, and now that she had the few people she still cared about were in danger because of her.
A soft knocking on her door tore her from her thoughts. Who would be coming at this hour of the night? Nobody she wanted to see, that was for sure. She slid the demon-pommel blade from its sheath and slowly approached. Fiona cracked the door open, and gasped.
Sasha Rains was standing outside, tears streaming down her face and a black bruise enveloping the left side of her head.
Chapter Ten
“Sasha!”
Fiona was utterly stunned. She could not have been more caught off guard if the old dead Duke Redfire had strut into her living room juggling dragon-skulls and tap-dancing.
“What happened to you?”
“May I come in?” Sasha asked meekly.
“Of course,” Fiona said. Her instinct was to embrace Sasha, but she stopped herself. After everything that had happened, how could she? But then the moment passed and Fiona felt ashamed that she hadn’t hugged her old friend, especially in the condition she was in.
“Here, sit down,” Fiona said. “I have some hot water. You like green teas—oh, I only have black.”
“It’s fine,” Sasha said, sniffling. “Whatever you have is fine.”
Fiona poured the boiling water into two clay cups and sat down next to Sasha while a storm of emotions churned within her. The girl she had known was completely stripped away. Sasha had grown a lot in two years. She was still very beautiful, with the same heart-shaped face. She still had curly auburn hair, though now it was much shorter than when she had last seen her. But her hazel eyes were different. The seemed so much older, and held none of the brightness that they had two years ago.
“Thank you,” Sasha said in a voice so low it was almost a whisper. She sniffled as she sipped her tea.
There was an awkward pause. Fiona felt bizarrely as if she were watching herself and Sasha from above.
“Well, this certainly isn’t the way I thought we’d have our reunion,” Sasha said with a sad smile.
“No, it’s not. Are you going to tell me what happened? Or did you just come here an hour before dawn to sip tea with me in silence.” Fiona gestured to the bruise across Sasha’s face.
A pained look crossed Sasha’s face. “Well, I don’t know how quite to say it so I suppose I’ll just say it. I left.”
“You left?”
“I left Reggie.”
“He did this to you because you left him!”
“Well….no, actually this was from a few days ago. I had hoped it would be a bit better, but circumstances really forced me to act a little earlier than I would have liked to.”
“Sasha, tell me everything.”
Sasha nodded. The steam from her tea floated into her tear-stained face. “It’s been a bit of a rough two years. You see, after everything that happened Reggie just—he changed.”
Fiona nodded, understanding dawning on her. “He didn’t take well to his father’s exile, did he?”
“No. No, he didn’t. He was such an ambitious man. We were still allowed to stay in Haygarden of course, Sandra never blamed him for the actions of his father. But he become politically insignificant. We weren’t welcome in Sun Circle, and so he took up meaningless post after meaningless post in the Leaf District. I thought it was going to be okay. We were comfortable, after all.”
Sasha’s eyes were almost closed as she talked, and Fiona couldn’t help but notice the dead monotone voice she spoke in.
“It started with the small things. He was just so nit-picky. So critical of everything I did. The food. My clothes. My friends. He started insulting my friends a lot. He would tell me terrible things about them. In hindsight I suppose he was trying to keep me isolated from them. Of course I didn’t see any of it at the time. I just said that it was a temporary lull, after all the poor man had essentially lost his father.”
“Sasha there’s never an excuse—”
“I know,” she said quickly. “I know, Fiona. Trust me. I know.”
“I’m sorry. Of course you do. Go on.”
“The first time he hit me was about a year ago. Honestly I think he was more hurt by it than I was. He apologized so profusely, said he didn’t know what came over him, he had been drinking. Surely it would never happen again. You know, I really hate to admit this because it’s so embarrassing. But truthfully, I was happy that he did it. He turned into a new man afterwards, or rather, he turned back into his old kind self. For a little while anyway.”
“It didn’t last.”
“No, it didn’t. About six months after that, just when I was starting to feel sure the ugly days were behind us, there was some bit of bad business. I don’t even know, something about a caravan being lost in the Lordless Lands. In any case, he blamed my father, and then blamed me.”
“Couldn’t your father have helped you?”
Sasha sighed. “He was just blind to it all. My father was furious when Lawrence Downcastle’s treachery was revealed, almost called off the whole marriage. I had to use every trick in the book to beg him not to. You know he only approved of Reggie because of the good family name. After everything I did to convince him not to cancel the wedding I couldn’t bear to tell him that it was a mistake. Do you understand?”
Fiona smiled sadly at Sasha. “Of course I don’t understand. That doesn’t mean I don’t care. What would I know about a father’s approval of my wedding?”
Sasha chuckled at that. “I suppose you’re right. It was a bit of a silly question. In any case, things just kept getting worse. There was even a time I thought he might kill me. Donyo found out, actually. He gave me a lot of encouragement, and when there wasn’t any of that to be had he would at least drink with me.”
“The man’s never failed in that regard.”
Sasha laughed. “Certainly not. But Donyo also encouraged me to get out. He has been doing so for months.”
“So what happened? Why tonight?”
“Nothing happened, and that’s exactly why tonight. Tonight was the most normal night I could have picked. There’s no reason for Reggie to be suspicious. With any luck he won’t realize I’m gone until late tomorrow.”
“Sasha, that’s so horrible. All of it. I can’t believe that Reggie—”
“Let’s not,” Sasha said. “I understand my situation is bad. But I didn’t come here for a pity party. I came here because Donyo told me it was the safest place I could be, and to see you, of course.”
Fiona quickly avoided that last comment. “Why not leave earlier, Sasha? Why let yourself go through all of this? I mean, if it was just a matter of getting out of bed and walking out the door….”
Sasha scowled. “I’m sure you would have had no problem doing that. Let me guess, if it were you there would have been a fight to remember. If you had one black eye he’d have had two? Would you pull a knife and tell him you’d
take his balls if he raised a fist to you? I’m not you, Fiona, and you’re not me. So don’t try to lecture me! I loved him, and I still do. This is complicated and hard, and I just destroyed my family so I don’t feel like sitting here—”
“I’m sorry,” Fiona interrupted. She felt shame coil in her stomach, ever tighter. There was so much shame these days. “That was out of line. Of course I don’t understand. I’m proud of you for leaving.”
“Thank you, that was all I wanted to hear.”
“Excphellent! Knew yeh’d showuup!”
Both women spun their heads around to see a red-cheeked Donyo Brownwater smiling from ear to ear through his salt-and-pepper beard.
“Good gods,” Fiona moaned. “This is still my house, Donyo. You should at least knock.”
“We didn’t want to draw any unnecessary attention,” a childish voice said. Shifter emerged from behind Donyo, face shrouded in the shadow of the low-hanging purple hood.
To Fiona’s surprise Sasha rose and took Donyo’s hands in her own. “I owe you a tremendous debt of gratitude, Donyo. Thank you.” She leaned and planted a small soft kiss on his cheek, causing his face to erupt into a burning bright red.
“I’m glad you’re here already,” Shifter said to Sasha. “Now we’re just waiting for one more.”
“One more?” Fiona said as she rose. “What are you talking about? You can’t just hold meetings in my own house without telling me.”
“We’re telling you now,” Donyo said cheerfully. Fiona was about to scold him when Martin Lightwing arrived, looking sheepish.
“Hello,” he said lamely. He couldn’t quite meet Fiona’s eye.
“What exactly is going on here?” Fiona asked.
“We have matters of state to discuss,” Shifter said simply.
“I’m not part of a state, and I don’t want to be part of your matters. There’s enough on my plate as it is right now.”
“That’s too bad,” Shifter said. “Because you don’t have a choice. Now everyone, sit down.”