Strength in Numbers (Adult Themes)

[Wynna]

She had the strength to bear this burden. She could do it.

All of it. Korkoran walking away from the Binder’s Truth; Vale walking away from the Guild. Neither of those could overtax the support she had from others. There were those who actually bore the responsibilities of position and duty. She only had the guilt of causality.

Nipsy Peanut knew she wished to be on hand for Korkoran’s arrest. He might believe it could go down safely, or he might not. The Watch Sergeant’s own strength was in the secrets he held to himself and the discretions he showed for others’ secrets. She herself thought that blood would be spilled before Korkoran would bare his neck. When she had found him, the second time, his refusal to let her create an area around him in which only Truth could be spoken indicated as much. She wanted to believe he was not a thrall. He stood between you and Vansa. He had been a better person than expectations would suggest. Whose expectations? The answer to that was coming clearer. It was in the the way her thoughts shrank from the memory of her hand across his face at their first reunion. It was in tusks framing teeth bared at the circle of armed men beside whom he had just fought.

Laird Briarbrush could struggle through the roles that now fell to him, both as the protector of the Warrens and the sole remaining officer of the Guild. The curtness of his voice when he had said that Vale had left him holding both jobs had been a clue as to his mindset, but he obviously intended to do his best and she had every faith that his best would be enough. What Vale had told her once about his plans for her had nothing to do with his departure. Clary, did you give Cornelius a note for Vale? He seemed upset when he read it….crumpled it into the garbage. No. That wasn’t it, not even a small part of something larger. Something had happened that she had no part in. She was not the person to replace him.

But this. Rocking, one foot pushing off the board floor, toe and heel, holding a cold, pale bundle across her lap. This test was all her own.

The training mission through the sewers had gone so well, until Madog had spotted the horrid flotsam in the sewage.

In the hours she had sat here, cradling the baby, the chill flesh had not warmed. Dead. Drowned or slain by a goblin’s blade, she did not know. There wasn’t any blood on the cloak that she had seen, but the hours it must have spent in the liquid refuse could have hidden any amount of injury. She had gone so far only to uncover the wrinkled face from the swaddling Madog had wrapped the poor lost soul in. She could not imagine seeing what lay beneath, what the slime-covered baby-stealers had done. The silent tears in her eyes made the question academic. The alternating shadow cast by the lamp behind over her rocking was a blur of pale white face and darker gray.

“Have you ever wondered how many the goblins let float down the river?” Kalo filled a goblet with wine. He drank, and carelessly offered an opinion his tone did not confirm. “Well, I am glad you comfort him. Perhaps it will pass into the….” The door opened, to Sarenna and Kal. “...afterlife.”

Clarianna moved her arms, to show them what she held. “It is too late to go to Brother John,” she said. “I could not make myself do that.” Recognition, and pity from Sarenna. Recognition, and anger from Kal.

They moved into the Company antechamber. Kal closed the door. “It’s not a place safe at night, since she is near.” He did not have to name her.

“In the morning, then, Clarianna. First light.” Sarenna leaned against the bar. Softly, she said, “We could put it in a crate, if you…..”

“In a crate?” Her foot stopped the movement of the chair. “This child was abandoned. I won’t let him sleep in a crate.” That would not be the strong thing to do. Strength was holding something against its fear. Strength was protecting those weaker.

Kal, still at the door, exchanged a look with Sarenna. “It could be like something you put them in so they rest at night.” A crib. Kal did not know the word ‘crib’. Pity twisted in her heart, leaving its echo only for the abandoned child, lost and alone, left for dead. Afraid before the end came.

“We could make a pyre, like I said.” Kalo poured a handful of nuts into one hand.

She stroked the cloak away from his chin, fingers pressing beneath. Nothing. No pulse, of course. Dead flesh. “He is so cold and pale, like ice. What kind of a mother could send her child away and never see her again, before that child is gone forever?”

Sarenna folded down to kneel beside the armrest of the chair. “Sometimes they don’t abandon them. I’ve seen it happen.”

“If she had not abandoned her, this would not have happened.”

“Sometimes the goblins rip them away from the mothers.” Sarenna’s eyes had lifted.

“Then the mother should chase after, and die to protect the child. The mother should do all in her power, not turn away coldly and let it happen.” Under Sarenna’s attention, Clarianna called on Deneir, a dry and distant god, but strong enough to serve. Oghma could afford pity, and music, and joy amid Truth. The obsessions of Deneir could drive one to focus on a single task, honing and training the mind to a single-minded power. She was thankful for the perspective given to eyes now drying of their tears. Clear-sightedness could hurt, but the sting passed the longer one welcomed the distance.

Kal said, “Maybe the mother was young and alone and the babe was still born.” She could not spare the pain for his past.

Kalo crunched nuts. “The mother is dead.” He drew swift looks from both the other Company members. “Well, likely so,” he amended.

The truth of that was apparent. “Yes, the mother is dead.” Of course that was so. “But that doesn't make any of this better. Only more tragic.”

“Does this sort of thing happen….” For some reason, Sarenna’s tone had become hesitant. “...in Silverymoon, Clarianna?”

“Not at first in Silverymoon.” She wanted to rock the baby more, but it would do no good, so she just held tight, telling them all what they all must already know. It was common lore. “Further north, the barbarians expose their unwanted babies.”

“We should name him, at least,” Kalo said. “How about Mael?”

A ripple of some emotion went through the room, like a flame felt by a hand on the other side of a frosted fire screen. Sarenna licked her lips and looked around slowly at Kalo. Kal hissed, “Shut up, you fool.” With their attention no longer fixing her in place, Clarianna began to shift the blanket up again, to hide what it held completely, but a blemish stopped her. “What is that?”

“What is what?” Sarenna gave over her glower at Kalo. It had no effect on him. He was strong. Clarianna drew aside the blanket, baring a fragile collar bone. Clavicle. Distance. Oghma’s Knowledge but Deneir’s distance. They warred behind the frosted glass of her thoughts.

“You know what, Kalo? Maybe I should have crushed that amulet.” The snarl in Kal’s voice would have raised any other man’s hackles.

Kalo washed down cashews with mulled wine. “Agreed, my old friend.”

“Kal…” Sarenna’s voice faltered. “Look.”

“What is that!” Clarianna’s voice shrilled. Strong? Her finger trembled, pointing at the mark on the child’s neck, and another, two of them, beside each other. Puncture wounds. The pale, bloodless neck. She surged to her feet. “Is that a bite?” Not glass, but a sheet of melting ice separated her from her emotions, and the shame of her fear overwhelmed it, collapsing it in an instant. The thing she had cradled tumbled out of her arms, thrust out of her arms and into the seat in which she had rocked it. “Are they feeding on babies?”

“How could they?” Sarenna whispered.

“Shit, it is.” Kal’s eyes locked on the now obvious twin punctures.

“Fucking vampires.” Sarenna backed away.

“Fucking Vansa.” Kal’s face burned red with blood.

“Burn it,“ Kalo said.

[Wynna]

Books, paper and the hush of centuries absorbed the chatter among the shelves. Scribes and acolytes droned, beneath the level of words. Her eyes drooped over her research into Vansa’s origins. Such as it was. The warmth in the library didn’t help. Too many candles and bodies moving in too small a space. Just like your mind, Clarianna Gardner.

She’d risen with the safety of the dawn and removed herself to the Font. She’d told herself, tiptoeing out of the quiet Company headquarters, that it was in the hopes of finding clarity. A hope thus far unrecognized. Adam knew. He’d said as much last night. He knew her too well, and he had recognized that she had not told them everything about Nipsy and Vale’s visit. She’d had to tell him something, he and Kal as it had turned out. Vale’s condition demanded it. The rest was a phantasm of her own mind, concocted out of her past.

Too many people with too many disparate needs surrounded her of late. She had tried to keep track of them with to-do lists, but the numbers of things to do grew too high to track. Let’s face it, numbers aren’t your strong suit anyway. Humor didn’t help, not when it was thinly veiled truth.

She pressed the heels of already ink-stained hands to her eyes. Mushy dents over ocular sockets too close to the upper dermis. She felt worn away.

The horror of the tiny, brutalized body had done this. Followed by the upwelling confusion over Vale’s derangement, the two together had packed a disorienting punch. Like the one he delivered you the night Adam fell to Kringus and you went after him in rage...and were promptly put on your arse? It hadn’t been his fault. She’d attacked him, first. He’d hit her. Not his fault. She’d hit him.

Like she’d attacked Korkoran. Who had not, as far as she knew, turned himself in meekly to the Watch. As yet? Wonders do happen.

This wonder wouldn’t. Why would Korkoran do that, with the example she had provided of how he would be treated? The wonder was that he had not struck back at her, that he showed more self-restraint than the former Guildmaster, and herself. If a supposedly decorous acolyte of Oghma treated him like that, what could a monstrous half breed expect from the rest of humanity? Or elvenkind? Or gnomish Watch sergeants? What could he expect from anybody who did not share the inequality thrust upon him by his own birth?

Why did she keep losing her composure, and striking those who failed her expectations?

Jhasper’s merry voice rose briefly behind her, chiding some scatterbrained scribe for a transcription error. Too many transcription errors, and the copy would be different from the source. It would be damaged and deficient. Not what was wanted by the creators at all. It would need to be discarded to some cold refuse heap where it could be picked up by the next unkind hand --

Stop. It.

Vansa. Research. Clarianna pulled her hands from her eyes, and found Jhasper beside her, his shrewd eyes regarding her now revealed own, and the dark crescents beneath them, no doubt. She had seen those in the mirror this morning. The mirror she now carried with her at all times. To go with the garlic. And the holy water. And the fear.