*Published with permission*
In a bookbinding course that she had been required to endure, she had cut herself. Blood on the page had earned the ire of her direct superior, an ancient priest of Deneir with that god’s dry severity.
The technique that she had failed to master involved sealing a new page into an already completed tome. First, one peeled away the back cover, razoring leather-covered board from the sinew threading the existing pages. Then, as one could not sever those loops of sinew, one applied a thin seam of a melted concoction of resin and animal fat to an edge of the scraped and prepared parchment and pressed it onto the book. The free edge had to be affixed with clever clips. The entire thing mounted on a flip-board, one next turned it over, so that a candle flame swiftly applied to the mated creation, without touching the paper, might change the composition of the resin in some way that both made it fibrous and flexible once dried. And forever locked page to tome.
Clarianna did not understand the process; she had merely been required to document it as punishment, a hundred times.
She was that new page. A candle flame swept her spine, from coccyx to the base of her skull. She adhered to him at all points. His hands wrapped hers, trapped against his armor and his heart.
She lost her nerve and turned her face. “I’m sorry. I want to.”
Adam couldn’t not feel her heart pounding, but he couldn’t know the image that had interposed itself at the last instant. A dark head, beneath her chin. Fangs around the pulse racing in her jugular. Her wrists encircled in a dead hand.
Cradling her, he rested his forehead against hers. He said something soft and reassuring. She both wanted him, and she didn’t. The juxtaposition of fear and desire was confusing. She’d thought it was that she feared what came after a night, or several nights. She wasn’t a child. How long since the last fumbling, and the farewells that inevitably came after? Years. But her experience always the same. After the love, the loss. One or the other inevitably left, either through death’s door, or by their own choice. That was all she’d thought it. Common cowardice. This...jumbling of experiences, this muddying of what she knew to be true…. It was a blasphemy against the Knowledge she claimed to revere.
“Won’t you tell me what pains you,” she whispered. “I want to help you heal it.” She’d asked him about his demons, before, and that had led to...this.
He might not have heard. He seemed to be trying to recover composure. “It’s probably for the best,” he murmured.
Contrary, her fears faded. “Practical.” His hair stirred at her breath. She shifted, her lips closer to his earlobe. “Sensible.”
A door slammed behind her, and above.
The door down from the entry level of the Guild. Horror dawned. She’d only received the key today. Less than hours out of the Font’s less visceral companionship and quarters, and this is how she would be discovered?
Pushing away, she was leaving as Vale entered, lugging enough metal to dam a flood. Of course. Of course it would be her former employer, now her leader. Or was Sandrew still her superior? Who was she and where did she belong?
Gabbling, instead of running upstairs she reversed course, pushing past the both of them as they dealt with the other. Vale tried to extricate himself. She could respect that wish to remain untouched by this. Adam asked for a moment more with her, alone. Her contradiction of both of them was swift and thoughtless, asking Vale to stay and help with the armors clearly intended for her. Before he could answer, she slammed the door on both of them and fell against it, mortified, blood humming in every inch of her body.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid.” She wrapped her hand around the white quill pendant at her throat. Stupid woman. Filliken.
Through the door at her back, footsteps on the stairs, and the door at the top opening and slamming again.
Beneath the holy symbol, the bodice of the silk indulgence she had bought showed just how far down she was blushing. She’d been so proud of it. Her fault. She’d brought this on herself, just as she’d intended. Well done.
It took less than five minutes to figure out how to buckle on the scale male, hiding the silk. When the door of the bunkhouse opened, she was just finishing tightening the last strap, and whirled, but it wasn’t him.
She moved stiffly in the armor to the outside room, and looked both ways.
Vale handed her more accoutrements, and left.
Romantic Arc
Romantic Arc
Enjoy the game
Re: Romantic Arc
The sound behind her hadn’t been the raven, returning. Clarianna stilled, half turned. Adam had paused, from where he had stepped out from behind a tree.
So much for avoiding difficult choices.
The light she’d created to illuminate hers and Nipsy Peanut’s return from the Font poured off her, falling across the square. It merged into the streetlamp’s harsher glow and touched gleaming fingers to his person. He was all highlights. Sword hilt. Bow. He was all darkness. His hair, down around his eyes, traps for shadows.
“You used to be happier to see me,” he said.
Her body disagreed. The scratch of paper hidden inside her bodice argued against it. “You’re wrong. I’m still happy. I try not to be, but I can’t not be.” Her words tangled as he took two steps closer. “Happy.”
“You looked happier to see that bird.”
“Sygyrah?” Elven for wild bird. The purple-eyed raven had shared a different name with his mistress, but that was not hers to impose on. She called him Sygyrah, when she saw him, for what he was now.
Adam closed the distance. “Why do you try to be unhappy?” He had been fighting, something, sometime. Recently. He smelled of sweat and sewers. He stood too close, the heat from his body tangible. Touchable. She curled her fingers into the collar of the leathers she had bought to turn surprise blades from law-abiding citizens.
She could see his eyes now, in the light she shed. Highlights on shadow there, too. Liquid lenses that hid what lay deeper. “Because I shouldn’t be happy at what isn’t true.”
He furrowed his brow. “You think I’m false?”
She could wrap her fingers on her holy symbol, but instead she brushed them against the words he had written, the paper around the curve of her breast. Like a hand, cupped, uncreased with the newness of it but softening at the warmth of her skin.
The Guild door opened behind her and she teleported five steps away, staring at the Trumpet’s building.
Oghma’s open eyes, what are you doing, Clary? Clarianna. Miss Gardner.
Tymor stepped out and said … words. She wasn’t sure what. But they didn’t grow fainter with distance. He seemed inclined to chat. In elven, she said, “Please, new friend. May we have a moment?”
A moment later, they were alone again. As alone as one could be, in a public square. As alone as she could allow. Ever. Again. She rubbed her arms.
“You’re cold.” He was behind her now, not really an improved disposition of forces. This was a battle, with herself. In words he would hear, she called on Oghma for resistance against the elements, without specifying whether she meant falling snow or baser elements. He spoke, his smile shaping his words. “Why do you say I am deceived, priestess?”
“What you wrote.” She twisted around. “You haven’t. You don’t.” Beneath her chin, paper shifted. His attention did, as well. Briefly. The laces of the leather armor framed what she wanted hidden. She tucked the note back out of sight and tugged the laces tighter, with slow fingers.
“For your sake, I wish it was not so. But it is. I can’t deny it.”
A door slammed nearby. She looked around the square, half hoping for Tymor’s return. Only the snow fell, in the night. “You don’t know who I am; you haven’t told me what drives you. You keep saying things like that. We barely know each other, Adam.”
“Oh? I don’t know you?”
The sacerdotal elemental resistance was not doing its job. Heat crept up her spine and around her neck. She moved to put space between their bodies.
“Do you remember the first day we met?” He followed her with his gaze.
“You saved my life, a couple of times.”
“I remember a road, a dangerous road, and a woman more concerned with her notes than the weapon in her hand.”
“Present and accounted for,” she said wanly.
“More worried about writing down all she saw that was good, than what made her afraid.”
The wall of the newspaper offices bumped her. She couldn’t back up any further. She found her hand on the wound, remembering a knife. He could never know about that. He would make things worse, and probably be hurt doing so. If she was to carry out Sandrew’s mission for her and stop the Trumpet’s lies, this man going on a protective rampage would not help. “She was really, really naive.” Clarianna turned the hand at her hip to a gesture of brushing off his words. “And when a handsome prince rescued her from the big bad wolf, she might have thought she was in a fairy tale. But this isn’t a tale, Adam, and happy endings are rare.”
“Ah, gods. How I know that to be true.”
“I do wish you would tell me.” She shouldn’t. “As a friend. It hurts me to see you remembering pain.” The radiance pouring from her chose that moment to dissipate, casting them into shadow together.
Very amusing, Oghma. In all likelihood, she should not snarl at the Binder like that.
His silhouette against the streetlamp moved closer, blocking even that civic illumination. “You say I am deceived, but I can tell you feel it, too.”
Her eyes dropped, knowing that he could see her face quite well. “What happened….can never. Happen again. It isn’t base.” She closed her eyes. “Not based on….. It won’t last….” As if she had never strung two sensible words together. She was better on paper. “I made a promise.”
“What promise?” Lips at the side of her face, he breathed. In, taking in her own scent of candle smoke, parchment and anxiety, no doubt. And out, raising small hairs on her neck.
“To never knowingly partake in a lie.” Her face was tilted up. When had that happened? “To pursue truth.” Her frame fit against his, and within its breadth. “I have been given a task by my Loremaster. To destroy lies.” Not so tall that she was diminished, not so broad that she couldn’t hold him. But the shape of him, like a dancer, or a swordsman. Stop. It.
“The search for truth is all I have left.” His shoulders had bunched. Her eyes lingered. “And justice.” She saw that in him. “And I am trying to understand.” It was one of the things that she admired. “If that is why I found you.” One of the many, many things. “Clarianna, I fear that I am cursed, and more than anything I do not wish to bring that curse down upon you.”
“Cur..sed? Adam, I can intercede with a deity on your behalf.” His arm corded under her touch. She sucked in a breath, and let it out, with a plea. “Oghma, protect this man from the evils that he fears.” Divine Knowledge opened. Far, far off in its depths she saw a woman making a mistake but it didn’t matter, falling into the warmth that channeled around her. Invisible strength flowed through and merged into a growing heat. The touch of the Binder brought recognition of purely physical, completely natural, totally human reaction. He touched her cheek. Blood flow increased to extremities. Leather seemed more constricting. Paper pinched at the roughened surface of areola and nipple, suddenly shrunken.
He kissed her. Two seconds of virginal lips against hers, and he pulled back.
“Well, that was...chaste.” She came off her tiptoes, confused, and damning herself. Idiot. Fool. Open skirt. “Thank you,” she added, quickly, only making it worse.
“Not chaste.” He hadn’t moved that far away. “True.”
She relaxed, and found it in her to laugh. “Touche.” She squeezed his hand, where it caressed her face. His kiss hadn’t risen even to the level of triggering memories of cold flesh suffocating her. “It’s going to be alright.” Who was that meant for?
“I don’t know if it will be as you say, or if it will end the same way.” He also held conversation with somebody other than her. Somebody who knew to what it was that he referred. “But I am reminded of what it is I must do.”
And that wasn’t a bit concerning. “Someday you will tell me of your demons, Adam Payne.” She smiled, though, with relief and giddiness. “And I will banish them.” She turned her face, and kissed his palm, and immediately did not regret it.
A light grew on his jaw and cheek. The rim of the sun edged the corner of the building with ruddy fire. “Sunrise comes. We are safe from vampires.” The light did the same to his profile. It brought with it an expression she had never seen before. Hope? “And other things.” She lay her head back, the gritty mortar of the Trumpet crumbling behind it. “I think you did not take to heat...to heart….the message I meant to deliver.” Meant to. Hadn’t. “But I like seeing like this. Not so dark with the dawn on your face.”
He hand slid behind her neck, and he kissed her again. This time, not at all chaste.
And terrifying.
So much for avoiding difficult choices.
The light she’d created to illuminate hers and Nipsy Peanut’s return from the Font poured off her, falling across the square. It merged into the streetlamp’s harsher glow and touched gleaming fingers to his person. He was all highlights. Sword hilt. Bow. He was all darkness. His hair, down around his eyes, traps for shadows.
“You used to be happier to see me,” he said.
Her body disagreed. The scratch of paper hidden inside her bodice argued against it. “You’re wrong. I’m still happy. I try not to be, but I can’t not be.” Her words tangled as he took two steps closer. “Happy.”
“You looked happier to see that bird.”
“Sygyrah?” Elven for wild bird. The purple-eyed raven had shared a different name with his mistress, but that was not hers to impose on. She called him Sygyrah, when she saw him, for what he was now.
Adam closed the distance. “Why do you try to be unhappy?” He had been fighting, something, sometime. Recently. He smelled of sweat and sewers. He stood too close, the heat from his body tangible. Touchable. She curled her fingers into the collar of the leathers she had bought to turn surprise blades from law-abiding citizens.
She could see his eyes now, in the light she shed. Highlights on shadow there, too. Liquid lenses that hid what lay deeper. “Because I shouldn’t be happy at what isn’t true.”
He furrowed his brow. “You think I’m false?”
She could wrap her fingers on her holy symbol, but instead she brushed them against the words he had written, the paper around the curve of her breast. Like a hand, cupped, uncreased with the newness of it but softening at the warmth of her skin.
The Guild door opened behind her and she teleported five steps away, staring at the Trumpet’s building.
Oghma’s open eyes, what are you doing, Clary? Clarianna. Miss Gardner.
Tymor stepped out and said … words. She wasn’t sure what. But they didn’t grow fainter with distance. He seemed inclined to chat. In elven, she said, “Please, new friend. May we have a moment?”
A moment later, they were alone again. As alone as one could be, in a public square. As alone as she could allow. Ever. Again. She rubbed her arms.
“You’re cold.” He was behind her now, not really an improved disposition of forces. This was a battle, with herself. In words he would hear, she called on Oghma for resistance against the elements, without specifying whether she meant falling snow or baser elements. He spoke, his smile shaping his words. “Why do you say I am deceived, priestess?”
“What you wrote.” She twisted around. “You haven’t. You don’t.” Beneath her chin, paper shifted. His attention did, as well. Briefly. The laces of the leather armor framed what she wanted hidden. She tucked the note back out of sight and tugged the laces tighter, with slow fingers.
“For your sake, I wish it was not so. But it is. I can’t deny it.”
A door slammed nearby. She looked around the square, half hoping for Tymor’s return. Only the snow fell, in the night. “You don’t know who I am; you haven’t told me what drives you. You keep saying things like that. We barely know each other, Adam.”
“Oh? I don’t know you?”
The sacerdotal elemental resistance was not doing its job. Heat crept up her spine and around her neck. She moved to put space between their bodies.
“Do you remember the first day we met?” He followed her with his gaze.
“You saved my life, a couple of times.”
“I remember a road, a dangerous road, and a woman more concerned with her notes than the weapon in her hand.”
“Present and accounted for,” she said wanly.
“More worried about writing down all she saw that was good, than what made her afraid.”
The wall of the newspaper offices bumped her. She couldn’t back up any further. She found her hand on the wound, remembering a knife. He could never know about that. He would make things worse, and probably be hurt doing so. If she was to carry out Sandrew’s mission for her and stop the Trumpet’s lies, this man going on a protective rampage would not help. “She was really, really naive.” Clarianna turned the hand at her hip to a gesture of brushing off his words. “And when a handsome prince rescued her from the big bad wolf, she might have thought she was in a fairy tale. But this isn’t a tale, Adam, and happy endings are rare.”
“Ah, gods. How I know that to be true.”
“I do wish you would tell me.” She shouldn’t. “As a friend. It hurts me to see you remembering pain.” The radiance pouring from her chose that moment to dissipate, casting them into shadow together.
Very amusing, Oghma. In all likelihood, she should not snarl at the Binder like that.
His silhouette against the streetlamp moved closer, blocking even that civic illumination. “You say I am deceived, but I can tell you feel it, too.”
Her eyes dropped, knowing that he could see her face quite well. “What happened….can never. Happen again. It isn’t base.” She closed her eyes. “Not based on….. It won’t last….” As if she had never strung two sensible words together. She was better on paper. “I made a promise.”
“What promise?” Lips at the side of her face, he breathed. In, taking in her own scent of candle smoke, parchment and anxiety, no doubt. And out, raising small hairs on her neck.
“To never knowingly partake in a lie.” Her face was tilted up. When had that happened? “To pursue truth.” Her frame fit against his, and within its breadth. “I have been given a task by my Loremaster. To destroy lies.” Not so tall that she was diminished, not so broad that she couldn’t hold him. But the shape of him, like a dancer, or a swordsman. Stop. It.
“The search for truth is all I have left.” His shoulders had bunched. Her eyes lingered. “And justice.” She saw that in him. “And I am trying to understand.” It was one of the things that she admired. “If that is why I found you.” One of the many, many things. “Clarianna, I fear that I am cursed, and more than anything I do not wish to bring that curse down upon you.”
“Cur..sed? Adam, I can intercede with a deity on your behalf.” His arm corded under her touch. She sucked in a breath, and let it out, with a plea. “Oghma, protect this man from the evils that he fears.” Divine Knowledge opened. Far, far off in its depths she saw a woman making a mistake but it didn’t matter, falling into the warmth that channeled around her. Invisible strength flowed through and merged into a growing heat. The touch of the Binder brought recognition of purely physical, completely natural, totally human reaction. He touched her cheek. Blood flow increased to extremities. Leather seemed more constricting. Paper pinched at the roughened surface of areola and nipple, suddenly shrunken.
He kissed her. Two seconds of virginal lips against hers, and he pulled back.
“Well, that was...chaste.” She came off her tiptoes, confused, and damning herself. Idiot. Fool. Open skirt. “Thank you,” she added, quickly, only making it worse.
“Not chaste.” He hadn’t moved that far away. “True.”
She relaxed, and found it in her to laugh. “Touche.” She squeezed his hand, where it caressed her face. His kiss hadn’t risen even to the level of triggering memories of cold flesh suffocating her. “It’s going to be alright.” Who was that meant for?
“I don’t know if it will be as you say, or if it will end the same way.” He also held conversation with somebody other than her. Somebody who knew to what it was that he referred. “But I am reminded of what it is I must do.”
And that wasn’t a bit concerning. “Someday you will tell me of your demons, Adam Payne.” She smiled, though, with relief and giddiness. “And I will banish them.” She turned her face, and kissed his palm, and immediately did not regret it.
A light grew on his jaw and cheek. The rim of the sun edged the corner of the building with ruddy fire. “Sunrise comes. We are safe from vampires.” The light did the same to his profile. It brought with it an expression she had never seen before. Hope? “And other things.” She lay her head back, the gritty mortar of the Trumpet crumbling behind it. “I think you did not take to heat...to heart….the message I meant to deliver.” Meant to. Hadn’t. “But I like seeing like this. Not so dark with the dawn on your face.”
He hand slid behind her neck, and he kissed her again. This time, not at all chaste.
And terrifying.
Last edited by Wynna on Wed Mar 13, 2019 4:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Enjoy the game
Re: Romantic Arc
Dear Oghma,
Is this Your idea of a joke?
Angry. Frightened. Pitying. Absurdly, detachedly incredulous. Writing out what had started as morning devotions, she didn’t know which emotion was more to the fore. What was certain was that she hadn’t expected that. When one followed a man into the wood, one expected a certain set of results. Not a story that contravened belief and set all her determined bravado on its head.
You tell us to learn and to Know. Are there always checkpoints along that road, to verify our progress? Just checking up on me, were You?
Let me start from the beginning, in case You have lost track of this journey descending into the Hells. She winced, at an echo from Adam’s tale.
*****
“Are you all right?” In the Guild, the fire crackled, loud. He had wanted someplace more private than the Safehaven. He had wanted to go down to the apprentice’s chambers. She hadn’t really entertained that level of indiscretion. “It was dire news.”
“I can’t get the chill from my bones.” He had slumped to the floor, propped against the stones of the chimney. “You asked if I had heard the name Vansa. I heard Kal speak it once. He said that after Kringus, then Vansa.” Good. She wanted all of them back in their graves, blessed wafers crammed down their throats and flesh melting in a deluge of holy water. She wanted to be the one to do it to them. “But that is not the name that made me catch my breath.”
“The other one? Vanorak?” She curled her legs beneath her, close but not too close.
“Vanrak.” Subtly different pronunciation. She made a mental note. “It is a name I heard my father speak, several times, in anger, sorrow, even terror. Vanrak, the dark ranger.”
*****
The story he told made me doubt that the pantheon knows pity. He as a boy. His young sister, Tara, run down by a coach and team before his eyes, trampled. The desolation of his parents. The curse his father thought had brought it on them. The wealthy merchant, purveyor of fine wines, with a hidden shame. A hidden past, so completely, ludicrously on the nose.
I know this is the part where the ingenue has the white linen ripped from her eyes, and the hero reveals his tragic flaw. But...seriously?
*****
Smokey’s interruption had sent her diving out of her chair. She had bumped into a corner of the fireplace, so eager had she been to not be seen….what? Listening to a sad story? Watching the lips that told it. Throughout his tale of his father’s adventuring days, and the elder Payne’s descent into the Undermountain she had thought a myth, she had been saved from comforting him more than once by the force of her own stubborn willpower. Especially when he said that his father, alone of the adventuring band, had staggered back out, alive.
Hours later, she knew that had only been the preface.
*****
My vaunted willpower didn’t keep me from waiting for him on the square, after Smokey had gone, and after Vale and Master Peanut had suborned him into a slightly suspect activity that I am not certain I approve of. Nor did it keep me from continuing to follow, after he passed the Guild to which I thought we were returning. I did. Before that. I swear.
Willpower only kicked in when he sank to the grass, outside of the walls of the city, and patted a place beside himself.
*****
“What?” he said, seeing her expression.
“I don’t know. I want to know your story. But I’m afraid of ….” He frowned a question. “...of being a chapter in it, closed and gone.” She touched her hair. “I’ve offended you.”
“If you think me dishonorable, or that I would dishonor you, then I will go.”
Always the perfect response. He always had the perfect thing to say. “No. No, please. I’m sorry. I don’t know how you can feel so sure. How you can believe, so much. But you do. Don’t you?” She hadn't. When she'd read his note...his love letter. Call it what it was. When she'd read it, she'd been astonished, and frightened. Oh, for the simple days of only two conflicting emotions.
“You say that you’re afraid, but it’s me who trembles beside you.” He couldn’t possibly know what the thought of such vulnerability did to her. “To think I may visit the family curse on you.”
“It did not sound like a curse. It sounded like a terrible tragedy. But I have not heard it all, have I?”
“I want you to cast me off.” His expression closed, emphasized with a swing of his arm.
“I am three parts divided when I look at you, Adam Payne. There is the part that knows that such things do not happen, that mysterious champions do not save the girl from the ... “ She smiled “ .... big bad wolf. That is Mistress Gardner, the scribe. There is the part within me that wants you.” There. It was out. She hoped he wasn’t shocked. “There is the part that is frightened when you hold me and thinks things that should not mix with tenderness. I’m sorry if all these parts war within me and you are the victim of Mistress Gardner, Clary and the vampire’s cup.” She turned over her wrists, studying the pale underside, quite free of any scar but memory. “They do not agree one jot on what to do at any given time.”
“I would die rather than harm you, Clarianna, or see harm come to you. Sit beside me, in Lathander’s bright dawn, and understand why.”
*****
As I am sure You Know, Binder, here is where it gets good. Among his father’s adventuring band was also the love of his father’s life, whom I did not comment could not be his mother, as he had already revealed that only his father survived that journey. Side note: You remember the day You granted that Adam return to this life after falling to Kringus? Yes, that mother. The one he thought I was, as sense and life returned, calling out to me as her. Let’s not have that happen again, just between the two of us, yes? Good. I digress. The love of his father’s life was a Selunite priestess.
I know. Right?
*****
“He became separated from his band, and found by the servants of Vanrak the Dark Ranger.”
Vanrak, at last. She wanted to know more of the vampire leadership. Everything about them. “This Vanrak lives in the Undermountain? Or lived? Or unlived.” She frowned. Past or present? Or both?
Adam shrugged, uninterested in verb tense. “I can only assume.” He recollected her attention with a declarative. “They wanted nothing more than the priestess.” She drew her knees in, startled. “They offered my father a dark bargain. Deliver her to them, and they would show him the way to the surface and reward him with riches beyond his wildest fantasies.” Her arms tightened around her knees. “He betrayed her. Betrayed them all. To what dark fate even he could not bring himself to say. He emerged with the promised fortune, but also a parting gift from Vanrak himself. He told me of his hollow voice echoing in his mind.” She had vampires in her head, too, but only memories. That much would drive her mad.
She broke into the unrelenting horror of his tale, her voice high. “Vanrak spoke to your father? In his head?”
Adam’s father had betrayed his priestess lover to a vampire lord.
“So he said. Vanrak told him that he would have fame and fortune beyond his wildest dreams, but never that which he truly sought, honor and nobility -- for he was a vile betrayer, and as far as he climbed his loss in the end would be doubly so.”
*****
Hence the death of the sister. Hence the ominous forebodings he constantly spouts. Hence my flight back into the city. Escorted, yes. Silent, yes. Reeling. Yes.
So was that fair? I ask You, by all that is good and holy and True.
I am very angry with You. Why would You allow this to go so far? How can history be allowed to formulate itself in such a mockery of the past, to mirror the characters and the beginnings of a terrible family cycle? I’m afraid that I'm going to have to ask You to fix this. Right now.
Never. Happen. Again.
Is this Your idea of a joke?
Angry. Frightened. Pitying. Absurdly, detachedly incredulous. Writing out what had started as morning devotions, she didn’t know which emotion was more to the fore. What was certain was that she hadn’t expected that. When one followed a man into the wood, one expected a certain set of results. Not a story that contravened belief and set all her determined bravado on its head.
You tell us to learn and to Know. Are there always checkpoints along that road, to verify our progress? Just checking up on me, were You?
Let me start from the beginning, in case You have lost track of this journey descending into the Hells. She winced, at an echo from Adam’s tale.
*****
“Are you all right?” In the Guild, the fire crackled, loud. He had wanted someplace more private than the Safehaven. He had wanted to go down to the apprentice’s chambers. She hadn’t really entertained that level of indiscretion. “It was dire news.”
“I can’t get the chill from my bones.” He had slumped to the floor, propped against the stones of the chimney. “You asked if I had heard the name Vansa. I heard Kal speak it once. He said that after Kringus, then Vansa.” Good. She wanted all of them back in their graves, blessed wafers crammed down their throats and flesh melting in a deluge of holy water. She wanted to be the one to do it to them. “But that is not the name that made me catch my breath.”
“The other one? Vanorak?” She curled her legs beneath her, close but not too close.
“Vanrak.” Subtly different pronunciation. She made a mental note. “It is a name I heard my father speak, several times, in anger, sorrow, even terror. Vanrak, the dark ranger.”
*****
The story he told made me doubt that the pantheon knows pity. He as a boy. His young sister, Tara, run down by a coach and team before his eyes, trampled. The desolation of his parents. The curse his father thought had brought it on them. The wealthy merchant, purveyor of fine wines, with a hidden shame. A hidden past, so completely, ludicrously on the nose.
I know this is the part where the ingenue has the white linen ripped from her eyes, and the hero reveals his tragic flaw. But...seriously?
*****
Smokey’s interruption had sent her diving out of her chair. She had bumped into a corner of the fireplace, so eager had she been to not be seen….what? Listening to a sad story? Watching the lips that told it. Throughout his tale of his father’s adventuring days, and the elder Payne’s descent into the Undermountain she had thought a myth, she had been saved from comforting him more than once by the force of her own stubborn willpower. Especially when he said that his father, alone of the adventuring band, had staggered back out, alive.
Hours later, she knew that had only been the preface.
*****
My vaunted willpower didn’t keep me from waiting for him on the square, after Smokey had gone, and after Vale and Master Peanut had suborned him into a slightly suspect activity that I am not certain I approve of. Nor did it keep me from continuing to follow, after he passed the Guild to which I thought we were returning. I did. Before that. I swear.
Willpower only kicked in when he sank to the grass, outside of the walls of the city, and patted a place beside himself.
*****
“What?” he said, seeing her expression.
“I don’t know. I want to know your story. But I’m afraid of ….” He frowned a question. “...of being a chapter in it, closed and gone.” She touched her hair. “I’ve offended you.”
“If you think me dishonorable, or that I would dishonor you, then I will go.”
Always the perfect response. He always had the perfect thing to say. “No. No, please. I’m sorry. I don’t know how you can feel so sure. How you can believe, so much. But you do. Don’t you?” She hadn't. When she'd read his note...his love letter. Call it what it was. When she'd read it, she'd been astonished, and frightened. Oh, for the simple days of only two conflicting emotions.
“You say that you’re afraid, but it’s me who trembles beside you.” He couldn’t possibly know what the thought of such vulnerability did to her. “To think I may visit the family curse on you.”
“It did not sound like a curse. It sounded like a terrible tragedy. But I have not heard it all, have I?”
“I want you to cast me off.” His expression closed, emphasized with a swing of his arm.
“I am three parts divided when I look at you, Adam Payne. There is the part that knows that such things do not happen, that mysterious champions do not save the girl from the ... “ She smiled “ .... big bad wolf. That is Mistress Gardner, the scribe. There is the part within me that wants you.” There. It was out. She hoped he wasn’t shocked. “There is the part that is frightened when you hold me and thinks things that should not mix with tenderness. I’m sorry if all these parts war within me and you are the victim of Mistress Gardner, Clary and the vampire’s cup.” She turned over her wrists, studying the pale underside, quite free of any scar but memory. “They do not agree one jot on what to do at any given time.”
“I would die rather than harm you, Clarianna, or see harm come to you. Sit beside me, in Lathander’s bright dawn, and understand why.”
*****
As I am sure You Know, Binder, here is where it gets good. Among his father’s adventuring band was also the love of his father’s life, whom I did not comment could not be his mother, as he had already revealed that only his father survived that journey. Side note: You remember the day You granted that Adam return to this life after falling to Kringus? Yes, that mother. The one he thought I was, as sense and life returned, calling out to me as her. Let’s not have that happen again, just between the two of us, yes? Good. I digress. The love of his father’s life was a Selunite priestess.
I know. Right?
*****
“He became separated from his band, and found by the servants of Vanrak the Dark Ranger.”
Vanrak, at last. She wanted to know more of the vampire leadership. Everything about them. “This Vanrak lives in the Undermountain? Or lived? Or unlived.” She frowned. Past or present? Or both?
Adam shrugged, uninterested in verb tense. “I can only assume.” He recollected her attention with a declarative. “They wanted nothing more than the priestess.” She drew her knees in, startled. “They offered my father a dark bargain. Deliver her to them, and they would show him the way to the surface and reward him with riches beyond his wildest fantasies.” Her arms tightened around her knees. “He betrayed her. Betrayed them all. To what dark fate even he could not bring himself to say. He emerged with the promised fortune, but also a parting gift from Vanrak himself. He told me of his hollow voice echoing in his mind.” She had vampires in her head, too, but only memories. That much would drive her mad.
She broke into the unrelenting horror of his tale, her voice high. “Vanrak spoke to your father? In his head?”
Adam’s father had betrayed his priestess lover to a vampire lord.
“So he said. Vanrak told him that he would have fame and fortune beyond his wildest dreams, but never that which he truly sought, honor and nobility -- for he was a vile betrayer, and as far as he climbed his loss in the end would be doubly so.”
*****
Hence the death of the sister. Hence the ominous forebodings he constantly spouts. Hence my flight back into the city. Escorted, yes. Silent, yes. Reeling. Yes.
So was that fair? I ask You, by all that is good and holy and True.
I am very angry with You. Why would You allow this to go so far? How can history be allowed to formulate itself in such a mockery of the past, to mirror the characters and the beginnings of a terrible family cycle? I’m afraid that I'm going to have to ask You to fix this. Right now.
Never. Happen. Again.
Enjoy the game
Re: Romantic Arc
Regret fell away as she pressed her lips to his between one sorrowful word and the next. This was the vampire queen’s fault.
Not Clarianna Gardner’s. Never that. Note to self: never ask about his mother again.
His arms went around her. Their noses bumped. Clumsy, clumsy Clary. Against his lips, she whispered, “I’m sorry.” Clumsy not only in deed, but in applying words that found their mark. “I’m sorry I doubted you.” That wasn’t quite honest. “I’m sorry I doubt myself still. I’m sorry for your mother, and your pain, and your past.”
He kissed her into silence. Seemingly content to leave the rest of the tale for later, he leaned in, pulling her up against him on her tiptoes. “You.” Kiss. “Have.” Kiss. “Nothing.” Kiss. “To apologize for.” She thought she was owed two more for that, until he made up for it with the next long effort, his mouth finally trailing along her cheek. “Ever.”
Too much. Her heart raced, with a burst of unfocussed fear in the back of her mind.
Vansa. The bitch queen. Behind her in the night. For how long? If Kal hadn’t opened the door when he had…. She had nothing to be afraid of there. And yet I am. It was Kal the vampire wanted.
She pushed back, turning sudden rejection into a grip of her hands around the straps of quiver and bow. He hadn’t noticed. Her skin burned from the rasp of his jaw against her cheek. She eased down. “I have to get some rest, Adam.” Her body contrary to her subconscious, she came back up for a quick kiss, and then away before he could re-engage at their previous level of contact.
Or not. He caught her hand easily, twining fingers. “Let’s get you home.”
“It will be fine from here.” The market stirred, behind them, carts bumping over cobbles, awnings rolling up. Jets of light around the surrounding buildings, between the shadows lying long on the wet ground. Always dawn with this one. Always, after the weaknesses of the night, the resolve of the day. She slid her fingers free, not knowing whether to be happy that he let her.
“What?” He settled bow and quiver with a shrug. As if he had his own subconscious upwellings, his hand brushed over the hilt of his sword, and away.
For him, it was probably that easy. Physical solutions for the dangers that surrounded them presently, and from out of his past. She had things she had to say. “It doesn’t matter to me.” The City Watch passed, young men, grumbling and shoving each others, laughing and jeering as they took their first bleary-eyed patrol. Boys. Younger than Adam. He could be like them, but he had been tested, by things they might not know. “Whether this started because of your past.” She had to say this, as he eyed them in a different way, assessingly. “Whatever your wishes to...protect me.” Her. This man wanted to protect her. Could. Had. Vansa. “Whatever they came from, they came, and you did. And I am supremely happy at this moment.” Her smile spread, perhaps a little too late, a little too bright. “But if Vale gives you a note from me tomorrow.” She almost caught her breath at a stab of regret, sharp and hard. “Just forgive me.”
Not Clarianna Gardner’s. Never that. Note to self: never ask about his mother again.
His arms went around her. Their noses bumped. Clumsy, clumsy Clary. Against his lips, she whispered, “I’m sorry.” Clumsy not only in deed, but in applying words that found their mark. “I’m sorry I doubted you.” That wasn’t quite honest. “I’m sorry I doubt myself still. I’m sorry for your mother, and your pain, and your past.”
He kissed her into silence. Seemingly content to leave the rest of the tale for later, he leaned in, pulling her up against him on her tiptoes. “You.” Kiss. “Have.” Kiss. “Nothing.” Kiss. “To apologize for.” She thought she was owed two more for that, until he made up for it with the next long effort, his mouth finally trailing along her cheek. “Ever.”
Too much. Her heart raced, with a burst of unfocussed fear in the back of her mind.
Vansa. The bitch queen. Behind her in the night. For how long? If Kal hadn’t opened the door when he had…. She had nothing to be afraid of there. And yet I am. It was Kal the vampire wanted.
She pushed back, turning sudden rejection into a grip of her hands around the straps of quiver and bow. He hadn’t noticed. Her skin burned from the rasp of his jaw against her cheek. She eased down. “I have to get some rest, Adam.” Her body contrary to her subconscious, she came back up for a quick kiss, and then away before he could re-engage at their previous level of contact.
Or not. He caught her hand easily, twining fingers. “Let’s get you home.”
“It will be fine from here.” The market stirred, behind them, carts bumping over cobbles, awnings rolling up. Jets of light around the surrounding buildings, between the shadows lying long on the wet ground. Always dawn with this one. Always, after the weaknesses of the night, the resolve of the day. She slid her fingers free, not knowing whether to be happy that he let her.
“What?” He settled bow and quiver with a shrug. As if he had his own subconscious upwellings, his hand brushed over the hilt of his sword, and away.
For him, it was probably that easy. Physical solutions for the dangers that surrounded them presently, and from out of his past. She had things she had to say. “It doesn’t matter to me.” The City Watch passed, young men, grumbling and shoving each others, laughing and jeering as they took their first bleary-eyed patrol. Boys. Younger than Adam. He could be like them, but he had been tested, by things they might not know. “Whether this started because of your past.” She had to say this, as he eyed them in a different way, assessingly. “Whatever your wishes to...protect me.” Her. This man wanted to protect her. Could. Had. Vansa. “Whatever they came from, they came, and you did. And I am supremely happy at this moment.” Her smile spread, perhaps a little too late, a little too bright. “But if Vale gives you a note from me tomorrow.” She almost caught her breath at a stab of regret, sharp and hard. “Just forgive me.”
Enjoy the game
Re: Romantic Arc
She set down her half-empty glass. “I am sorry. I raised memories you would rather not have.”
He remained looking at the bottle, at the mark of the vintage. The topic had brought first sadness, then a flash of anger to his eyes. “I cannot run away from my past.”
She buried her face in the glass, drinking to hide what might show otherwise. “I am hoping you can do just that. I do not want you anywhere your past.” The red wine dimpled to her silent sigh. Carefully, with all the requisite components in their expected places, she repeated it. “Anywhere near your past.” One would not have thought that returning the Guild’s gift to an antidextrous apprentice would reduce said apprentice to stumbling over her words. The Guild’s ring had been meant to make her less a threat to her compatriots’ posteriors on the march to death two nights ago, but she no longer required it.
Seen through the rippling surface of the wine, two new rings adorned her fingers on the bowl of the glass. One, a flat band of gold, bore symbols of protection that she had carefully transcribed into a notebook. The runes on the inside of the silver ring, Adam’s gift, covered her in armor specific to the foulest undeath.
Her mind wandered. The Mermaid had finer glassware than one would have expected. Or perhaps he had arranged that, too. He had seemed to share a look with the old woman behind the bar as Clarianna had found the table with the placard with its one word. Payne.
“Enough about me. I want to hear of you.”
More than that she had died, and returned for him? She remembered the stench of blood and shit in her nose, and the cold. And the pain in her neck, fading. She remembered nothing after, until waking on the cold stone of an altar in the Plinth. “I told you, there is nothing to know.” Wine, administered again, helped with that uncomfortable subject.
“I beg to differ.” He raised the bottle. “More?”
Her gaze strayed to the old woman behind the bar. The “Mother” of the “daughter” that had been taken into the sewers by vampires. She found her fingers twisting an empty glass. “Please.” She proffered it. “I did have some things to ask you, for your help and advice.”
“Of course.” He poured a generous amount, then filled his own and lifted it to his own nose, his hands warming the glass. To her, it did not taste of anything but … well … wine, but it did remind her of other flavors. Blackberries. Coffee. Molasses. His fingers spread on the globe of the glass. Salted caramel candies.
The dim interior of the tavern seemed somewhat warmer than the evening had outside. “It is the rewards, garnered from our venture against Kringus. It is quite a lot of money. More money than I have ever been able to call my own. I would ask you, in your expertise as one raised to it, and as a warrior....what use should I put it to?”
“Did I miss some fortune that night?”
She leaned forward, beside the candle. “I received very near 1000 gold pieces for my part,” she whispered.
He laughed. Lightly, but he laughed. "That is hardly a fortune."
She sat back, knowing she was flushed and hoping he would put it down to the wine. “It is to me. My childhood--”
“Do go on.” He leaned in as she leaned out.
“Yes, I was asking a question. My question is this: Should I best buy a deadlier weapon or improve the defenses of my armor? If I am to slay vampires, I must both equip and train.”
He seemed amused. “I will answer you, Mistress of Avoidance, but then I want to hear what you started to say of your childhood. Are we agreed?”
“On many things. My first choice would be defensive. But I do not know if that is my natural inclination towards safety, or a wise choice.” They talked to the end of a glass on the subject. She enjoyed the animation that came over him when describing how to best kit her so that she was not a hindrance, despite a certain possessiveness behind his words.
She had died, and lived again. Before -- there would always be a before and after now -- before, she had taken that novel sense of belonging to him as a prerogative of his upbringing, a manner shaped by the simple fact that he was used to owning things, most especially things he wanted. When he said that he would look for something suitable, her own reaction surprised her.
“Do not buy it for me, Adam Payne.” Immediately sorry, she softened her tone of warning, with word and deed. “You have already laid out too much gold in gifts for me.” She ran the tip of a finger behind her ear, waking the smell of the perfume he had given her at the start of this evening. The silver band gleamed ruddy in the candlelight. He followed her gesture with his eyes. Wine had made her stupid.
Perfume and wine and a dark, intimate tavern. It would take an empty head indeed to mistake what his arrangements portended. He would know, doubtlessly, where the motherly tavern manager’s daughters laid their heads to sleep.
“What good is gold if we cannot spend it on those we love?”
She had a clear memory of the morning after they died and awoke in the Plinth. He hadn’t wanted to be alone with his thoughts. Nor had she. If Vale knew she had let Adam take a bunk in the apprentice’s room, the guildmaster hadn’t mentioned it. She had collapsed in her own, in her armor, alone, and woken with his bare arm across her waist. Possessively. Protectively. At least she had still been armored, mind you.
“Gold is for eating, Adam. And having a roof under which to sleep. Not eating the gold, of course. That would be silly.” A somewhat hysterical giggle escaped. She was not good at this.
He pressed the advantage, taking the hand that wore his gift in both of his. “Won't you tell me about yourself? Where you are from. Your family. The first book you ever read. Your favorite book. How you came to Oghma.”
“Teach me to fight. More than staves on the mat in the Guild basement.” She couldn’t even pretend that had come out other than as intended. But Laird had been there, so his memory made a chaperone.
“There is so much i would know of you.”
She curled her fingers in his grasp. “You will be disappointed.”
“I doubt that very much.”
“Promise to teach me to fight.” Oghma had a purpose for her. It did not include partaking in a lie, or furthering one. Not that Adam was the liar, even to himself. If one believed Truly, then one did not lie. He believed that he loved her. That much she believed, now.
“Don't you know you are what I think about each waking hour, and dream about when I sleep?” His grip tightened.
“Adam. When you say such things....” She couldn’t voice what first came to her mind. “...I am clumsy and unable to formulate thoughts into words. Which is all I used to be good for, so you have taken that from me. Give me something in return.” She twisted her hand so that the flat silver band pressed his palm. “Not something made of pretty metal, but stronger stuff.”
He seemed a bit taken aback. “I ... I mean …”
“Teach me to fight, to be brave, to know what to do. Here, with you, in this second chance at life that began the day I arrived and had a guildmaster tell a stranger to look after me in the wood, I feel as if I am finally living in black and white, where all used to be gray.”
A range of emotions crossed his face. She saw regret, and resolve.
Oh, no. He wasn’t the liar here. That honor went to one who knew what she did not feel.
She loosened her hand in his, completely. “Gray life, gray employment, gray food and drink and relationships. Gray where I used to dream of the sharp edges of good and evil and how I would be when I grew up but all the color leaching from my life into responsibilities .... I told you that you would be disappointed. I was not raised on tutors and dance instructors.” Again, she softened, seeing his recoil. “I know the gold that brought you those also brought unbearable pain to your family. But my mother would have welcomed even a single coin from your family, in passing.”
“None of it was real. You are real Clarianna. Your mother, of whom I would dearly like to know, is real. I am just a colorful painting, commissioned by a greedy self absorbed man who betrayed everyone he ever loved.”
“Real enough.” She picked up bottle, to run unsteady fingers across the vintner’s mark. “That others wanted your flavors. Your favors.” She frowned. “The favor of your family’s mark as distributor of their wines.”
"Gods." Somewhat quickly, he changed the subject. “I promised you dinner and we haven't even ordered. Are.” He stammered. Most unlike him. “Are you hungry?”
That hitch in his words went through her with an outsized significance. She was drunk. There were cleansing rituals to take toxins from one’s blood. The bottle begged a question, which she answered by upending it into her cup. “A very nice paining. Painting. And when I look at it, this painting, it makes me think thinks -- things -- have never thing before.....”
He recovered, into a smile, hidden behind the heel of his hand. It was a natural smile, and it went through her like a sword.
“I come late to this level of paining, Adam Paint. And you will forgive me if I...take my time learning the strokes.” She knit her brow. “Is that a mixed allergy...allegory. Semaphor?”
“Let’s finish this bottle, yes? Then I will walk you home. Worry not, dear Clary. I have all the time you need.”
She set the bottle down with a thump, which rocked the table and the candle. He caught it, steadying the flame as she cupped both hands around her wine glass and drank every drop. “Take...me home. Adam. Take me back to the Guild." The walk would sober her up, and being among others would be ... good? Safer. Than here. The ceiling creaked to some movement, in the rooms above them. The walls of the Guild were thin, with fellow members and her responsibilities beyond them. "It is home now.” She groped for her cloak and knocked it off the back of the chair but recovered it well, she congratulated herself. Nothing else was knocked over as he helped her across the rocking ground and out the door.
“Easy now. That's it.” He supported her, an arm around her waist. “That vintage is known for its potency,” he said, where he would breathe in the perfume he had bought for her.
She had died two nights ago. He had died, for the second time.
“Of course it is.” She hooked an arm through his and leaned her head on his shoulder. Playing the drunkard. Some of it True; some of it feigned. All of it to forego responsibility. Oghma impose your strength, for I have none.
“Come, let’s take you home.”
“Yes,” she mumbled. “I thing so.”
He remained looking at the bottle, at the mark of the vintage. The topic had brought first sadness, then a flash of anger to his eyes. “I cannot run away from my past.”
She buried her face in the glass, drinking to hide what might show otherwise. “I am hoping you can do just that. I do not want you anywhere your past.” The red wine dimpled to her silent sigh. Carefully, with all the requisite components in their expected places, she repeated it. “Anywhere near your past.” One would not have thought that returning the Guild’s gift to an antidextrous apprentice would reduce said apprentice to stumbling over her words. The Guild’s ring had been meant to make her less a threat to her compatriots’ posteriors on the march to death two nights ago, but she no longer required it.
Seen through the rippling surface of the wine, two new rings adorned her fingers on the bowl of the glass. One, a flat band of gold, bore symbols of protection that she had carefully transcribed into a notebook. The runes on the inside of the silver ring, Adam’s gift, covered her in armor specific to the foulest undeath.
Her mind wandered. The Mermaid had finer glassware than one would have expected. Or perhaps he had arranged that, too. He had seemed to share a look with the old woman behind the bar as Clarianna had found the table with the placard with its one word. Payne.
“Enough about me. I want to hear of you.”
More than that she had died, and returned for him? She remembered the stench of blood and shit in her nose, and the cold. And the pain in her neck, fading. She remembered nothing after, until waking on the cold stone of an altar in the Plinth. “I told you, there is nothing to know.” Wine, administered again, helped with that uncomfortable subject.
“I beg to differ.” He raised the bottle. “More?”
Her gaze strayed to the old woman behind the bar. The “Mother” of the “daughter” that had been taken into the sewers by vampires. She found her fingers twisting an empty glass. “Please.” She proffered it. “I did have some things to ask you, for your help and advice.”
“Of course.” He poured a generous amount, then filled his own and lifted it to his own nose, his hands warming the glass. To her, it did not taste of anything but … well … wine, but it did remind her of other flavors. Blackberries. Coffee. Molasses. His fingers spread on the globe of the glass. Salted caramel candies.
The dim interior of the tavern seemed somewhat warmer than the evening had outside. “It is the rewards, garnered from our venture against Kringus. It is quite a lot of money. More money than I have ever been able to call my own. I would ask you, in your expertise as one raised to it, and as a warrior....what use should I put it to?”
“Did I miss some fortune that night?”
She leaned forward, beside the candle. “I received very near 1000 gold pieces for my part,” she whispered.
He laughed. Lightly, but he laughed. "That is hardly a fortune."
She sat back, knowing she was flushed and hoping he would put it down to the wine. “It is to me. My childhood--”
“Do go on.” He leaned in as she leaned out.
“Yes, I was asking a question. My question is this: Should I best buy a deadlier weapon or improve the defenses of my armor? If I am to slay vampires, I must both equip and train.”
He seemed amused. “I will answer you, Mistress of Avoidance, but then I want to hear what you started to say of your childhood. Are we agreed?”
“On many things. My first choice would be defensive. But I do not know if that is my natural inclination towards safety, or a wise choice.” They talked to the end of a glass on the subject. She enjoyed the animation that came over him when describing how to best kit her so that she was not a hindrance, despite a certain possessiveness behind his words.
She had died, and lived again. Before -- there would always be a before and after now -- before, she had taken that novel sense of belonging to him as a prerogative of his upbringing, a manner shaped by the simple fact that he was used to owning things, most especially things he wanted. When he said that he would look for something suitable, her own reaction surprised her.
“Do not buy it for me, Adam Payne.” Immediately sorry, she softened her tone of warning, with word and deed. “You have already laid out too much gold in gifts for me.” She ran the tip of a finger behind her ear, waking the smell of the perfume he had given her at the start of this evening. The silver band gleamed ruddy in the candlelight. He followed her gesture with his eyes. Wine had made her stupid.
Perfume and wine and a dark, intimate tavern. It would take an empty head indeed to mistake what his arrangements portended. He would know, doubtlessly, where the motherly tavern manager’s daughters laid their heads to sleep.
“What good is gold if we cannot spend it on those we love?”
She had a clear memory of the morning after they died and awoke in the Plinth. He hadn’t wanted to be alone with his thoughts. Nor had she. If Vale knew she had let Adam take a bunk in the apprentice’s room, the guildmaster hadn’t mentioned it. She had collapsed in her own, in her armor, alone, and woken with his bare arm across her waist. Possessively. Protectively. At least she had still been armored, mind you.
“Gold is for eating, Adam. And having a roof under which to sleep. Not eating the gold, of course. That would be silly.” A somewhat hysterical giggle escaped. She was not good at this.
He pressed the advantage, taking the hand that wore his gift in both of his. “Won't you tell me about yourself? Where you are from. Your family. The first book you ever read. Your favorite book. How you came to Oghma.”
“Teach me to fight. More than staves on the mat in the Guild basement.” She couldn’t even pretend that had come out other than as intended. But Laird had been there, so his memory made a chaperone.
“There is so much i would know of you.”
She curled her fingers in his grasp. “You will be disappointed.”
“I doubt that very much.”
“Promise to teach me to fight.” Oghma had a purpose for her. It did not include partaking in a lie, or furthering one. Not that Adam was the liar, even to himself. If one believed Truly, then one did not lie. He believed that he loved her. That much she believed, now.
“Don't you know you are what I think about each waking hour, and dream about when I sleep?” His grip tightened.
“Adam. When you say such things....” She couldn’t voice what first came to her mind. “...I am clumsy and unable to formulate thoughts into words. Which is all I used to be good for, so you have taken that from me. Give me something in return.” She twisted her hand so that the flat silver band pressed his palm. “Not something made of pretty metal, but stronger stuff.”
He seemed a bit taken aback. “I ... I mean …”
“Teach me to fight, to be brave, to know what to do. Here, with you, in this second chance at life that began the day I arrived and had a guildmaster tell a stranger to look after me in the wood, I feel as if I am finally living in black and white, where all used to be gray.”
A range of emotions crossed his face. She saw regret, and resolve.
Oh, no. He wasn’t the liar here. That honor went to one who knew what she did not feel.
She loosened her hand in his, completely. “Gray life, gray employment, gray food and drink and relationships. Gray where I used to dream of the sharp edges of good and evil and how I would be when I grew up but all the color leaching from my life into responsibilities .... I told you that you would be disappointed. I was not raised on tutors and dance instructors.” Again, she softened, seeing his recoil. “I know the gold that brought you those also brought unbearable pain to your family. But my mother would have welcomed even a single coin from your family, in passing.”
“None of it was real. You are real Clarianna. Your mother, of whom I would dearly like to know, is real. I am just a colorful painting, commissioned by a greedy self absorbed man who betrayed everyone he ever loved.”
“Real enough.” She picked up bottle, to run unsteady fingers across the vintner’s mark. “That others wanted your flavors. Your favors.” She frowned. “The favor of your family’s mark as distributor of their wines.”
"Gods." Somewhat quickly, he changed the subject. “I promised you dinner and we haven't even ordered. Are.” He stammered. Most unlike him. “Are you hungry?”
That hitch in his words went through her with an outsized significance. She was drunk. There were cleansing rituals to take toxins from one’s blood. The bottle begged a question, which she answered by upending it into her cup. “A very nice paining. Painting. And when I look at it, this painting, it makes me think thinks -- things -- have never thing before.....”
He recovered, into a smile, hidden behind the heel of his hand. It was a natural smile, and it went through her like a sword.
“I come late to this level of paining, Adam Paint. And you will forgive me if I...take my time learning the strokes.” She knit her brow. “Is that a mixed allergy...allegory. Semaphor?”
“Let’s finish this bottle, yes? Then I will walk you home. Worry not, dear Clary. I have all the time you need.”
She set the bottle down with a thump, which rocked the table and the candle. He caught it, steadying the flame as she cupped both hands around her wine glass and drank every drop. “Take...me home. Adam. Take me back to the Guild." The walk would sober her up, and being among others would be ... good? Safer. Than here. The ceiling creaked to some movement, in the rooms above them. The walls of the Guild were thin, with fellow members and her responsibilities beyond them. "It is home now.” She groped for her cloak and knocked it off the back of the chair but recovered it well, she congratulated herself. Nothing else was knocked over as he helped her across the rocking ground and out the door.
“Easy now. That's it.” He supported her, an arm around her waist. “That vintage is known for its potency,” he said, where he would breathe in the perfume he had bought for her.
She had died two nights ago. He had died, for the second time.
“Of course it is.” She hooked an arm through his and leaned her head on his shoulder. Playing the drunkard. Some of it True; some of it feigned. All of it to forego responsibility. Oghma impose your strength, for I have none.
“Come, let’s take you home.”
“Yes,” she mumbled. “I thing so.”
Enjoy the game
Re: Romantic Arc
She demurred. “I didn't expect a heart to heart tonight.” An understatement.That she would find herself in an open place, discussing men with Sarenna was like scribing an anatomy text with a dagger. Thematically appropriate, but overkill. “At least not with you.”
Sarenna sniffed, unsquelched. “It's not yer fault, Clarianna. This has been on my mind for a while. If it's too much, just say so, I'll understand. I meant what I said about what I never had. It's a lot, I know.”
Any of the respectable members of the Guild could come down from the quiet upper level. “Why?” she asked, puzzled. “I... cannot say I would not like a female friend in this world of men.” Always trying to soften what others thought of her, even after the fact of an insult. She should just let the cold shoulder stand. “But...and please don't take this wrong.” Embers hissed. “Why do you care about me?”
“Truth?”
“Always.”
“Because of yer pluck.”
“I beg your par--” Oh. She’d thought the fire burned down, but the coals were in her cheeks. Why did she continue this conversation at all? Her own wine-fueled wanton behavior had been put behind her quite satisfactorily, thank you. Six lost innocents had seen to that.
“Because you have a fire in you that I really didn't think was there. But I was wrong.”
A ring on her hand covered the edge of an ink stain that bled into the creases of her knuckles. She did not wish to have this conversation. She never wanted to have this conversation. She did not need more threats rising from their graves, not from generations of her own family’s mistakes. “If I do, it is because of him.”
“Adam?”
“Adam. Adam Payne.” She did it deliberately.
She could name the threat to her own security. Did Patrishal have this conversation on the floes of a far northern expedition, about a man I do not know? Did Bothii sit around a campfire, discussing her nameless tribesman? She clamped down on disorderly and unbidden escapees from her psyche, shaken. Shamed. She would not think those names. She would not resurrect them, so long buried beneath the ice.
“He has had a lot of it. Pain.” Sarenna could not see beneath the surface of her expression. It was not to be melted. “Clarianna....under the steel I've got a heart too, you know.”
Obviously, a reflective expression was not enough to send the focus back at the woman draped across the other chair. Words were required. “Sarenna, if you think it is hidden underneath steel, you couldn't be more wrong. You wear red to hide your heart on that sleeve.”
“Tell me the truth, Clarianna. Do you love him? Or are you just trying to protect and save him?”
Godsdamned performers. Rage spiked through her. She was not the topic of the woman's next love song. She sat, unmoving, and let the cold reclaim her heart. “That is...an outrageous suggestion.”
Sarenna sniffed, unsquelched. “It's not yer fault, Clarianna. This has been on my mind for a while. If it's too much, just say so, I'll understand. I meant what I said about what I never had. It's a lot, I know.”
Any of the respectable members of the Guild could come down from the quiet upper level. “Why?” she asked, puzzled. “I... cannot say I would not like a female friend in this world of men.” Always trying to soften what others thought of her, even after the fact of an insult. She should just let the cold shoulder stand. “But...and please don't take this wrong.” Embers hissed. “Why do you care about me?”
“Truth?”
“Always.”
“Because of yer pluck.”
“I beg your par--” Oh. She’d thought the fire burned down, but the coals were in her cheeks. Why did she continue this conversation at all? Her own wine-fueled wanton behavior had been put behind her quite satisfactorily, thank you. Six lost innocents had seen to that.
“Because you have a fire in you that I really didn't think was there. But I was wrong.”
A ring on her hand covered the edge of an ink stain that bled into the creases of her knuckles. She did not wish to have this conversation. She never wanted to have this conversation. She did not need more threats rising from their graves, not from generations of her own family’s mistakes. “If I do, it is because of him.”
“Adam?”
“Adam. Adam Payne.” She did it deliberately.
She could name the threat to her own security. Did Patrishal have this conversation on the floes of a far northern expedition, about a man I do not know? Did Bothii sit around a campfire, discussing her nameless tribesman? She clamped down on disorderly and unbidden escapees from her psyche, shaken. Shamed. She would not think those names. She would not resurrect them, so long buried beneath the ice.
“He has had a lot of it. Pain.” Sarenna could not see beneath the surface of her expression. It was not to be melted. “Clarianna....under the steel I've got a heart too, you know.”
Obviously, a reflective expression was not enough to send the focus back at the woman draped across the other chair. Words were required. “Sarenna, if you think it is hidden underneath steel, you couldn't be more wrong. You wear red to hide your heart on that sleeve.”
“Tell me the truth, Clarianna. Do you love him? Or are you just trying to protect and save him?”
Godsdamned performers. Rage spiked through her. She was not the topic of the woman's next love song. She sat, unmoving, and let the cold reclaim her heart. “That is...an outrageous suggestion.”
Enjoy the game
Re: Romantic Arc
Best to end it now, before the inevitable happened and all the joy in this dawn died aborning.
“Hush, hush.” She cradled the infant, his face red as a ripening peach in the light through the eastern windows. She’d come back alone, to see this miracle and hold on to it.
The babe would not be comforted, wailing thinly.
That a priest of Helm could do such soft duty was a contradiction, like pious thoughts and reckless actions. Like past and present, or desire and love. Words and deeds. “I love you, sweetling.” On her hip, she rocked a tiny human in swaddling. “You are loved.”
Whatever past lay behind him to bring him to this journey of redemption, Brother Khiber did this present moment a righteous service by taking in lost souls. The Helmite had given her a rag, dipped into warm milk that he called from the air into a pot. The baby continued to refuse it, little fist knocking it aside, face screwed up into a knot of indignation.
She did not know how to do this. Bothii did not have the wherewithal to love a baby.
The memory of her own voice jarred the rhythm of her swaying, side to side to sudden stop. The baby howled. Khiber, taking the opportunity to get some little tasks accomplished, glanced around. Clarianna pressed her lips to the orphan's wrinkled forehead to hide the knitting of her own. She was struck by another dichotomy farther back in her past than the bittersweetness of last night.
Rebellious whore or heartless scholar?
Neither. Your mistakes are all your own, Clarianna Gardner. Drawing the baby closer, she turned her back on the holy warrior, scrubbing a fleck of rust from ceremonial raiment. “Hush,” she said, a little more faintly, wishing that Oghman vestments included shields and armor.
Deeds. The priest came of a faith that honored deeds of strength. She had words, to speak of things she did not know how to describe. Words that so long locked up seemed determined to end their confinement. Words that the night before had ceded the forefront to deeds. Tell the Truth, at least to yourself and the Binder, Clary. You were determined to lay your words down in surrender. But once out, her entire sordid soul laid bare, had she a choice? In the heat of the moment? In the light of the symbol she now held, a baby redeemed from horror and given over to the keeping of a goodly priest? Excuses.
The babe chose that moment to grizzle at her breast. She caught the innocent hand and kissed it. She could not give it what it wanted, and so dangled the rag again temptingly. Best to end it now before the inevitable, uncontrolled, messy ending arrives. Easy words to think. A deed too difficult to accomplish.
“Hush, hush.” She cradled the infant, his face red as a ripening peach in the light through the eastern windows. She’d come back alone, to see this miracle and hold on to it.
The babe would not be comforted, wailing thinly.
That a priest of Helm could do such soft duty was a contradiction, like pious thoughts and reckless actions. Like past and present, or desire and love. Words and deeds. “I love you, sweetling.” On her hip, she rocked a tiny human in swaddling. “You are loved.”
Whatever past lay behind him to bring him to this journey of redemption, Brother Khiber did this present moment a righteous service by taking in lost souls. The Helmite had given her a rag, dipped into warm milk that he called from the air into a pot. The baby continued to refuse it, little fist knocking it aside, face screwed up into a knot of indignation.
She did not know how to do this. Bothii did not have the wherewithal to love a baby.
The memory of her own voice jarred the rhythm of her swaying, side to side to sudden stop. The baby howled. Khiber, taking the opportunity to get some little tasks accomplished, glanced around. Clarianna pressed her lips to the orphan's wrinkled forehead to hide the knitting of her own. She was struck by another dichotomy farther back in her past than the bittersweetness of last night.
Rebellious whore or heartless scholar?
Neither. Your mistakes are all your own, Clarianna Gardner. Drawing the baby closer, she turned her back on the holy warrior, scrubbing a fleck of rust from ceremonial raiment. “Hush,” she said, a little more faintly, wishing that Oghman vestments included shields and armor.
Deeds. The priest came of a faith that honored deeds of strength. She had words, to speak of things she did not know how to describe. Words that so long locked up seemed determined to end their confinement. Words that the night before had ceded the forefront to deeds. Tell the Truth, at least to yourself and the Binder, Clary. You were determined to lay your words down in surrender. But once out, her entire sordid soul laid bare, had she a choice? In the heat of the moment? In the light of the symbol she now held, a baby redeemed from horror and given over to the keeping of a goodly priest? Excuses.
The babe chose that moment to grizzle at her breast. She caught the innocent hand and kissed it. She could not give it what it wanted, and so dangled the rag again temptingly. Best to end it now before the inevitable, uncontrolled, messy ending arrives. Easy words to think. A deed too difficult to accomplish.
Enjoy the game