Arc 8: Chapter 45: The Handmaiden's Confession, the Headsman's Sin |
“Lady Miresgal wishes to speak with you.”
The words were like a bucket of cold ice over my head, after so many weeks of silence and distraction. I was at my desk in the room I’d been leant within a tower of the Herald’s Keep, penning another letter to the Emperor. Tzanith stood at the window, having slipped in along with the fading rays of daylight, quiet and unobtrusive as though she were that very light. Her hair was tied into a long braid just as when I’d first met her, left to hang over her left shoulder. She wore a sleek blue dress with scant jewelry, a ring on her left forefinger that shone with captured starlight, and bands on her elfin ears.
I was dressed only in trousers, boots, and tunic. There hadn’t been any fighting in nearly two weeks, and I’d mostly been left in the role of delegate. Nodding at the elf’s words, maintaining an outward calm, I stood and went for my cloak, deciding to opt for speed rather than take the time to get fully armored. Rysanthe was a friend, and I did not fear her.
Tzanith moved to the desk, studying the stacks of letters and scrolls there. This wasn’t the first time she’d visited me. In fact, we’d been thick as thieves for weeks, fellow delegates from our respective courts. The handmaiden’s council had been invaluable both to me and to the Bannerfolk. I suspected she was seeding more debts for her own monarch, but I’d let it slide. In a way, it was returning things to the status quo, building instead of destroying, and there were other battles that needed my attention.
“The lothalno has sent his answer?” She asked.
Lothalno was the elven title for our Emperor. All king, they called him, or more formally Lothalno curun’ai, which was king of all men. Perhaps with time he might be.
“A messenger just came in today,” I confirmed as I took my cloak from its hook and began to secure it to my shoulders. “He’s on tour in the Baern Cities. There’s trouble with the Church there… Trouble with the Priory, I should say. They took power after the sack of Isengotta last year, started conducting mass witch hunts, canonizing commoners as crusader knights. It’s chaos in the city-states, from all I’ve heard. There’s open conflict between the barons, villages being raided by wild irks, sightings of demons and woed. House Pardoner requested the Accord’s intervention.”
There was more news, none of it good and not all of it came from the Baerns. I’d missed much during my adventure in the Bannerlands.
Tzanith pursed her lips, her only sign of concern. “I have been asked to tell you to bring him.”
But she wasn’t referring to the ex-crowfriar. My gaze went to a small chest laid on a corner table, one that’d been made of strong oak and securely locked.
“They want me to hand him over,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
“I have only been asked to have you bring him,” Tzanith said calmly. “You knew this would happen.”
I had. A creeping tension began to settle in me, iron roots in my chest.
Perhaps I should go in armor, I thought. I didn’t like thinking it, did not want to imagine having to fight Rysanthe. She’d done so much for me, and for Maxim. Without her, we’d both probably be dead or lost to madness. I’d worn her curse traps for years, still used techniques she taught me to guard my mind and soul. All the trouble in the Bannerlands had been to rescue her in the first place.
But she was also Death, and if the Choir had come to a decision on me, she was who they would give the order. Her, or Oraeka. Perhaps both.
These thoughts made me pause as I moved to the lacquered chest. A stir of wind from fluttering wings brushed my back as I studied it. Turning, I found Tzanith standing very close, looking up at me with her half-blinded gaze. The elf wore a strange expression, one I struggled to understand. Her insectile wings fluttered with an uncharacteristic nervousness, though her blue-black eye remained steady. Her other one, crossed by a pale line of scar, remained closed as it had since her battle with Raania of Torslowe. The effect was almost like that of a flirtatious wink, though she had no seduction in her posture then.
She’d also pierced her brow above her injured eye with another ring, as though she meant to draw attention to the battle wound, took pride in it. The brow-ring was faerie gold, the same shade her right eye had been before the dhampir blinded it.
“You told the Choir that you were abandoning their service,” she said in a low, uncertain voice. “You said it right to their faces.”
She’d been there to witness it, while acting as her queen’s mouthpiece. I’d almost forgotten, and the reminder of my arrogant words to those demigods took me aback, made the past weeks flash in my vision.
“I did do that,” I said with a touch of wryness. “Didn’t I?”
“They will not have forgotten,” Tzanith said in a warning tone. “Alken, there are already many among the Onsolain who consider you a threat. Indeed, there are even many among my people who would take revenge on you for Alicia Wake’s betrayal.”
For being an Alder Knight, I knew. For surviving when their realm, their king, did not. Neither had I forgotten Irn Bale’s words to me, his compromise to keep his own court from tearing me apart.
“That group who met you then represents a minority who are protecting you from the Choir’s wrath,” Tzanith continued. “If you go through with this, defy their will, then—”
“I told them what I told them,” I said, trying to calm her. “And I didn’t quit. I just said that I was tired of their infighting, and wouldn’t be taking conflicting orders. Umareon wanted Ildeban destroyed, while Nath and Urddha and the rest wanted me to subdue him, return him to the Briar’s keeping.” Or so I’d assumed. I held both hands up, as though weighing two items on a scale. “I’m used to that with human nobility, but I took my oath to the Choir believing they were above it. I don’t think that makes me faithless, to hold them to a higher standard.”
“You are in danger,” Tzanith insisted with a fervor that surprised me. “Your oath to them means you aren’t protected from retribution. They can kill you, Alken, and Rysanthe is their hand as much as you are.”
Her words were like cold water to my thoughts. I’d come to the same conclusions, but having them spoken aloud, and this audience imminent, made those suppressed worries return to the fore of my mind.
Tzanith’s next words were spoken quickly, breathless with something near panic. “Marry me. Formalize an alliance with my queen. It will give her cause to protect you, and she has the power to do so.” She must have seen the mask that formed over my face, for she spat a curse in elvish and pushed harder. “Ak’kraice! I will not enslave you! I swear it, swear it by the name of Maerlys Tuvonsdotter and her blessed father. I swear it by the name of my parents, who are now gone from me! I will make you happy all your days, be faithful to you, love you!”
I stared at the elf in shock. There were tears forming in her remaining eye, tears and something I hadn’t recognized before, though it must have been there. Fear, and hope.
How had I not seen it? Because I hadn’t wanted to? Or had I simply not believed myself worthy of it?
She saw my dawning realization, and in either embarrassment or hope she threw herself into my chest, holding my shirt and burying her face there.
Not long before, I’d have pushed her off, been cold just to avoid this. But Tzanith and I had spent much time together in recent weeks, cooperating as fellow dignitaries. She’d risked her life, fought alongside me. Things were different. After a moment of surprise, I wrapped a single arm around the elf’s slim shoulders. She was shaking.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize.”
“You mortals never see what’s right in front of you.” Tzanith’s words, spoken into my shirt, were muffled and devoid of much of her immortal charms.
“How long?” I asked her.
One dark eye peeked up at me. “How long have I loved you?”
I just nodded. Tzanith pulled back, and I let her go, though she kept her hands on my chest.
“Since that first night,” she said after a moment. “That first night I saw you at my father’s hall.”
A strangled laugh escaped me. “I was a wretch then! Half dead and unwashed, your father’s prisoner… Hell, I was covered in my own shit.”
She did not smile or snicker. Her eye was steady on me, her words serious. “And yet, despite that, you fought my father so bravely. Indeed, you even subdued the spirits my people sewed into you, calmed them even as they tried to devour you… I did not see hate in you, or defiance. You looked so sad. Your heart was broken, but there was a fire in your eyes, Alken Hewer, one my people did not put there. When I went to you that time, I thought I might peer into you and see its source, put the pieces of you back together. I was arrogant, and thought you’d crumble to my charms like any other mortal. It was not until after that I realized your rejection had hurt.”
I winced, but Tzanith was not done. “And I have seen you since. I have seen you in so much pain, yet fighting so hard despite it. It has made me want you more. My queen knew of my infatuation, it is why she hatched her scheme to form a link to you through me. But I wanted it. Wanted you. I want to give you what you want, Alken.”
“What I want?” I asked in confusion, not understanding.
“Love,” the elf said in a hushed voice, a blush coloring her cheeks. “You love, and you want to be loved. It is not what I would have expected of you, of a warrior, of a remnant of Tuvon’s knights or of the Headsman of Seydis. I would have expected you to hate, to be bitter and dark.”
I glanced at my black armor, displayed on a stand facing the bed. “I am those things. I do hate.”
“Perhaps,” Tzanith admitted. “But there is still a light in you. I want to nurture it. To guard it. Will you not let me?”
This confession had taken me completely off guard. I didn’t know what to say, just stared at her with a numb tongue for a long minute.
“At least let me protect you!” She insisted. “Even if you cannot love me in return, a formal marriage to the Seydii court will give you the backing to resist the Choir.”
She was right. Hell, I didn’t even feel that resistant to the idea anymore. Tzanith was kinder and more gentle than anyone I’d ever loved or allowed to love me. Catrin had been compassionate and dependable, but compelled by dark impulses and dark hungers. Rosanna had been controlling and fickle, at turns possessive. Tzanith Balesdotter would probably be a relatively healthy match. I could be content at her side, perhaps even happy.
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And yet, even still… I felt myself pull away from her, watched as her face fell.
“I can’t do it,” I said with genuine regret. “I’m sorry, Tzan, but I can’t.”
That was three times I’d rejected her. In elven law, three is binding. The elf blinked several times, and the tear she’d been holding finally escaped her remaining eye. It shone like a drop of quicksilver, and formed a tiny crystal when it fell, landing without so much as a sound on the carpeted floor.
“Is it because of what you saw?” She asked in a hollow voice. “My true form?”
“No!” My reply came out with more force than I’d intended, surprising the elf. I calmed and said, “No. That is not it.”
I’d loved a Daughter of Ergoth, and her true nature had been far more horrifying than what I’d glimpsed behind Tzanith’s glamour. That wasn’t it at all. After all I’d seen, the handmaiden’s hidden face had done little more than surprise me.
“Then what?” Tzanith insisted, anger beginning to creep through her sorrow.
She is like her father, I thought. He’d been prone to wild swings in mood as well, to gaiety one instant and wrath the next. But then again, they were fey. It was in their nature. They hid little, and were always in the process of change. They were the land, and reflected its shifts, its wounds and tremors.
Part of me wanted to shut the conversation down there. This wasn’t something I wanted to talk about, ever, and I’d avoided it even with Emma and the rest. Vicar had stabbed at the issue, but I couldn’t explain even to him, didn’t know how.
But Tzanith had bared her heart to me. She’d held a torch for me for years, and I hadn’t even realized. She deserved something. And besides…
After what happened on that hill outside the city, I’d come to a revelation. Or, perhaps, I simply accepted something I’d already known.
My hand lifted to the scars tracing the stark mask of my face, those four restless lines running at a steep angle from the corner of my left eyebrow and down my cheek. Even thinking about the subject made them prickle.
“That night,” I began, “Evangeline was killed by a demon. The same one who gave me these.”
Tzanith’s eye went wide at this confession. She’d probably not expected me to talk about it, not after all these weeks of refusing. Not after that confrontation at Estival Bawn.
“She’s out there,” I said. “And I believe she’s with him again. That magi, the one who started all of this.”
“Reynard.” The elf’s face darkened. Her kind had more reason than any to despise that name.
I nodded. “That whole thing had the fox’s stink all over it. It’s the only reason she would have been there. Maybe she was just supposed to observe, see if Ildeban’s plan succeeded, or maybe she was there to dispose of Evangeline after everything played out. All they needed her for was the ritual, after all, to help expose the God-Queen’s seals. Evangeline had one of Reynard’s demons in her, I watched it get ripped out of her, she—”
I was rambling. Babbling. Stalling, really, to avoid giving Tzanith the explanation she demanded. Her calm, ocean dark eye watched me, her expression a mask. I trailed off and lowered my hand.
“She’s out there,” I said in a softer voice. “And she hasn’t forgotten what… what I did to her. I sent her to Hell for twelve years, and I know she’ll take revenge on me for it. Until I confront her, until I… until this is over, I can’t let anyone get close to me. Especially not in the way you want.”
Memories flashed through my mind, of another woman, another demon. Catrin staring at me with lightless eyes, her wounds crawling with maggots. Yith’s voice, its horrible laugh and multitudinous pitches mocking us. The way it had bent her limbs, broken them.
My voice dropped, became firm and full of conviction. “She will kill you, Tzanith. Maybe worse than kill you. I can’t be responsible for that. I can’t be with anyone knowing they might get involved in it. I’m cursed, don’t you understand? Damaged goods. Untouchable… Because she marked me as hers.”
I laid a hand flat over my scars. Her scars. Shyora’s brand.
Slowly, as though she feared I was a glass sculpture that might fall and shatter if she pushed too hard, Tzanith reached up and laid a hand over the one I held to the wounds.
“Confront her?” She asked me in a quiet voice.
I blinked with one eye. In that pose, we both only showed one, mirrored one another. Her left eye, dark as a sky at twilight, locked with my golden one.
When she saw my blank look, she spoke again. “You said confront her. Not slay her, or banish her.”
Had I said that? I opened my mouth, tried to hedge, to correct myself. A sudden heat rose in my throat and made me clamp my jaw shut. I’d been about to lie.
“Oh!” Tzanith saw something in my face, and once more her eye brimmed. This time it was with pity rather than with heartbreak. “You poor thing. I’m so sorry.”
I lowered my hand and brushed past her, putting my back between us so she couldn’t see my face. Shame crawled up my neck, unsteadied my voice. “I’m not who you think I am. Not who anyone thinks I am.”
I was a wretch still, had been for a long time. I put on the grim mask, pretended to know what I was doing, to be at turns dangerous and decisive.
A front. A glamour.
“My people can clean it from you,” Tzanith offered in a soft voice. The heartfelt sympathy in her words made me want to cringe. “We can make your mind yours again.”
“That’s not—” I had to wire my jaw shut, having been on the verge of shouting. She didn’t understand it either, assumed the same thing everyone else did. That I was some kind of victim, a cripple who’d had a piece of me ripped away, but they were all wrong. “That’s not necessary. Not what’s wrong.”
I didn’t need to turn around to see the elf’s confusion. I took several deep breaths, calming myself, finding my balance. How did I explain? Even Vicar had been confused, and I hadn’t wanted to admit it to him.
“I think… I think I made a mistake.”
“A mistake?” Tzanith asked.
I nodded. “Yes. In Seydis, I think that I made the wrong choice, and you and your kind lost your king for it, your home. They teach us the Adversary cannot be compromised with, cannot be trusted, but that isn’t why I did it.”
I fought hard to keep it, the scadudemon had told me. When I realized they would take it no matter how I resisted, I put a bit of myself inside.
Her words, filtered through that shadow. It had entered our world through my medallion, the one I’d given to her as a love token. The scadudemon had been an echo of her feelings, her rage and her pain, slipped through the cracks between worlds while hidden within that very item.
And the way she’d said my name that day beneath the Grand Basilica… It was the only thing she’d said then, the only thing she seemed to care about. There hadn’t been hate there, not at first, but something almost like joy. There was everything Delphine had told me too, her story about how they’d broken the bindings on Shyora’s voice, given her the ability to betray her master. All so she could then tell me the truth, warn me of the plot, the subversion of the Table and of Alicia’s betrayal.
“She never took my mind from me,” I continued in a bitter voice. “I think she just wanted to be free. She was a slave, and she went to me for help. Yes, she was a demon. Yes, she was a succubus and a deceiver, and I’m a fool to think it! But…”
I turned to look at Tzanith. The elf stared at me with a mixture of concern and horror.
I was born in a trash heap, and you blame me for wanting to escape it?!
“I was a paladin of the Archon,” I said. “And a knight of Urn. The God-Queen’s own laws say that knights should strive to redeem their enemies before destroying them, to defend the innocent, to fight with love rather than hate. But I killed her, rejected her, because I was afraid of believing that what she said was true. I didn’t want to believe that I was already living in a lie.”
Tzanith spoke like her words were venom she meant to spit out. “That thing is not innocent.”
My smile was a twisted, ugly thing. “No, definitely not. But she was looking for her own knight, I think, someone to save her. Probably it would have ended badly for me, but I could have stopped the rest. That’s my true sin, Tzanith, don’t you see? She reached out to me for help, and I met her hand with a sword.”
There had been a thousand ways she could have gone about commissioning my help. She could have taken countless guises, spoken a legion of lies, told me anything that might have made even a scrap of sense. Hell, she could have invaded my dreams and planted suggestions there. I would have readily believed the Alder Knights capable of evil — I’d liked the idea that there were true knights and true good in the world, but deep down I hadn’t ever really believed it.
She could have gained my aid easily, but instead she’d shown me her horns, her wings. Why? Why did she do that?
I could only come to one conclusion. One impossible, terrible conclusion.
I wasn’t some pitiful victim of Pernicious Shyora, not a dupe or a conquest who’d been left stained and wanting. I’d denied it for years, though I felt it deep down, part of me knowing it was true. I spat poison at Delphine even though I’d allowed the scadudemon to cling to me, unwilling to banish it.
Because I’d felt I deserved it. Because my true sin wasn’t failure, had nothing to do with being tricked or lacking vigilance. It had always been about guilt. Guilt about what I’d done to her.
The confession, even made quietly within myself, came as no lifting of a burden or comfort. It was a bitter truth, but also a revelation. I’d broken her heart too, and if that was the case, then it meant…
It meant so many things. It meant Delphine had been right, at least about some of it. It meant I’d done something terrible.
Tzanith just shook her head, torn between bafflement and anger. “You cannot redeem it, Alken. There is nothing there to redeem. They are just hunger.”
Was that true? If it was, then how could they hate so much? Instead of saying as much I said, “I tried to redeem Evangeline, at the end.”
That’s when it had happened, when she made her move. She would have killed Evangeline regardless, I suspected, was there to do it, but she waited until that moment.
Tzanith just shook her head and insisted, “She will destroy you.”
“I’m not planning to let her,” I said in a firm voice. “It isn’t my intention to suicide, but this thing between me and this demon…” I took a deep breath. “If she tries to hurt anyone to get to me, then I will fight her. If she tries to kill me, then I will defend myself. Beyond that, I don’t know what’s going to happen… But I can’t let anyone get between us and risk being destroyed for it.”
Tzanith shook her head, growing angrier now. “Don’t pretend that’s why you’ve rejected me. You are still… with that thing.”
Was I? I didn’t really know her. Fidei had been a facade, though there might have been some truth in the glamour, just as there’d been truth in Finn Nu. I had not understood that, not until I’d become lost in him.
“I meant what I said before,” I told her in a calm voice, feeling oddly calm then. “You stood at my side, Tzan, and helped me get all my people out alive. If not for you, that all could have gone so much worse.”
Not only that, but these recent weeks with her calm presence at my side, her charisma and intelligence. She’d given much of her elven wisdom to the lords and ladies of the Banner as they sought to move forward.
“I’m in your debt,” I continued. “I offer it freely. If you ever need me to repay you, then you only need to ask.”
She drew in a sharp intake of breath, a small gasp of genuine surprise. It was a great power I’d just given her, possibly the most I could have short of offering my heart and loyalty in full. Elves usually had to resort to elaborate schemes to put mortals in their debt, to earn the favors that were to them more valuable than holy gold.
Awkward silence fell. The sun crept down to threaten the distant horizon beyond the room’s small window. Tzanith’s wings fluttered, a nervous gesture. Then, kneeling, she picked something up off the floor — her own tear, which had become a small, clear crystal. Taking my hand by the wrist, she placed it into my palm and closed my burnt fingers around it.
“What you have just told me,” she said in a dark voice, “would put all your own kind against you. If they heard these words, they would call you a warlock, a deviant. The Inquisition would take you and no one would stop them. If my kind knew, they would use it against you, make you the world’s pariah. You would not be able to walk beneath a single tree without hearing its mockery, not feel the brush of so much as a leaf for the land’s disgust.”
She was right. It was why I’d gone so long disassembling and avoiding the full truth. I’d only told her because… Why? Because I was a fool, and because I’d broken her heart. Because I was tired of lying about it.
“I will keep your secret,” Tzanith promised. “Because I see your broken heart and know you are not evil, only confused. The demon does not love you, Alken. It is only capable of want and hate. Remember that, and guard yourself. Guard your heart, lest it be eaten.”
I didn’t know what to say. The elf tear was smooth in my hand, warm from some inner heat. It was an incredibly valuable favor, one that told me she meant what she said, that her affection was real.
I hated myself for rejecting Tzanith Balesdotter. She would be easy to love. I could choose to do it, for love is a choice. It is not a madness, or a helplessness as many describe it as, though it can feel like that when you’re young. It’s a delicate thing that requires dedication, care, and nurture. It must be confronted with open eyes and an open heart both, and that is terribly difficult, for both sides must do the same and in that trust, that vulnerability, risk themselves to hurt.
I could choose to love Tzanith. But I knew I could not give her all of myself, and she deserved better than that.
“Rysanthe is waiting,” I said.
Tzanith nodded, still watching me with her troubled, worried gaze. “I will take you to her.”
