Post by Kris11 on Jan 25, 2013 10:40:22 GMT 10
Rating: PG-13
Warning: rated for descriptions of violence, O/C character death
Prompt: #77: there and back again
Summary: What did he want? Briar hadn't thought to wonder for weeks, now, since Sandry had stepped off her boat, onto his docks, and had drawn him into the darkness.
A/N: Just another mention that I considered rating this an R for some brief explicit violence, so be warned if that is not your cup of tea, please. This is set in my Always Us 'verse, which has a bit of context now. All you need to know to read this, though, is that it is set in a world in which Niko never found the four. Sandry was found by grave-robbers, and ransomed to Berenene, who has since decided to back her attempt to take over Emelan from the new Duke Frantsen. Briar went to the docks, escaped and came to Summersea, and has been hired by Sandry to be her local talent in this take-over. Actually a lot of context? You can read them over on ff/n, if you're interested.
Briar sat on the bed to tug on the soft leather boots Sandrilene had delivered to him. It was nearly dark in his room, the light set in the furthest corner and lowered to a dim flicker as the Bag-girl herself was standing by the door, watching as Briar stood and tested the boots out, making sure they fit snugly and would make no sound. They were stained dark, just off black, like the rest of his clothes. His tunic had a hood that he could pull up over his head, but the rest fit on the tight side of fashionable, leaving no extra material to get caught in a fight or while he snuck about.
“I didn’t want to put you all in black,” the noble said,looking him over. “It looks too suspicious, if the Provost’s Guard sees you in the street.”
“Black isn’t best for sneakin’, anyhow,” Briar muttered,checking the knives he had secured on his upper body, making sure each and every one was easy to draw. He had sharpened them already that evening. “No shadows are pure black, you know.”
“I suppose not,” she answered distantly, that shadows-child,and Briar didn’t look up to mark the expression on her face. Some things were private. “You’re sure you have the address, the right room marked – ”
“For the last time, Duchess, yes,” Briar snapped, moving on to check the knives on his legs and in his boots. “If you don’t stop fretting, I’m not going to do this at all.”
“You don’t have to,” she said quietly. “I mean, if you don’t want to.”
He froze, one hand on the knife he had just slipped back into his ankle sheath, the other braced against the bed. They didn’t do this, the two of them. They didn’t do quiet concern and doubts and what they wanted. She had her madness and her darkness and her single-minded purpose. He had his ruthlessness and her money and his anger and that was what they were.
So he snarled, roughly: “just like a girl, to get cold feet at the last possible moment. You don’t want to go through with this, Duchess, just give me the say-so.” He pushed himself up to standing and stared at her. “But do it now, so I can get some sleep instead.”
She stepped forward, turning her head away from the light, however dim it was. “Good,” she said, the quiet expression gone as if it had been in his imagination. The guards kept to the outer guard-room of this merchant’s estate, out of her way unless absolutely necessary and Briar – skulking in dark corners – had seen more than one of the Namornese men make the gods-circle behind her back when she couldn’t see them do it. She made them nervous with her darkness and her rags and her resolve to take this country, no matter what it took, no matter who paid the price.
But Briar understood that. Why should she care about these people? When had any of them ever stuck a neck out for people like him, like this Bag-girl with her shadowed eyes? She made sense to Briar; it only made him nervous to see this shadow-princess show her human side. “Good,” she repeated, and he didn’t breathe a sigh of relief that she was back to her normal self, no, he did not.
She handed him small dried rose, the previously red flower turned rust. The thorns were still sharp; he pricked himself as he reached totake it from her. She looked up at him, the blue he knew was in her eyes masked by her pupils, large and dark as they tried to pick up the little light she’d give them. “Leave this there, when it’s done. When we do the others, I want them to know why.”
Briar grinned, all teeth and malice instead of mirth. He tucked the rose into the pouch he would strap securely to his side. The clocktower in Market Square chimed the hour and Briar did a last quick check before he moved towards the door.
“Be careful,” she said softly.
“Don’t worry your neb about me, Bag,” he said, slipping intothe darkness. “I’ll not lead them back here to you.”
She snorted. “Just be careful, Briar.”
“Don’t wait up,” he quipped and then was gone, down the staircase and out through the back door, into the small courtyard of the house Sandrilene had bought, one that led into a barely-used alley off Bowler’s Lane.It was a quick walk up Fountain Street, into the Emerald Triangle where the nobles supporting the current Duke lived.
Where one less would live, after tonight.
Briar touched a hand to one of the knives he wore and walked at a sedate pace through the darkness, as if he owned it.
He passed only one pair of harriers, and they didn’t look twice at him as he walked by, intent as they were on reaching Fountain Square and the food offered up free and hot for the Guards. Briar found the small street he and Sandry had strolled down last week – more an alley than an actual street, and one barely used during the day and neglected by the lord’s guards in the evenings. He planned to climb over the hedge that protected the nobleman’s property from riff-raff like Briar, but glanced around himself quickly first. If he was seen here, he would have to try to fight his way inside. He had brought multiple weapons for just that purpose, but knives would hold only so long against swordsmen, and he was unlikely – at best – to succeed, and survive.
Better if he could slip in, completely quiet... well, hedges had grown for him before, back in Sotat, but that had been an accident. He closed his eyes, one hand reaching out towards the plant, not quite touching its flat needles. He wanted them to coverall traces of his entrance, was asking them to obey him.
Stupid, he thought and opened his eyes. His fingertips had been just brushing the expanse of greenery that surrounded the manor, thick and impenetrable. Now, they hovered over empty space, reaching into a gap in the hedges that showed Briar the inside of the gardens, and the lights of the house on the other side. He froze, staring. Stepping cautiously, he slipped through the gap without letting the hedge so much as brush the tips of his hair or clothes.
He paused as he stepped into the darkness of the yard. Don’t... don’t close up til I’m back, he thought, feeling ridiculous, but he felt a trill of agreement that sent him scurrying away.
Hurrying across the narrow expanse of greenery, Briar felt each of the plants respond to the low buzz of nervousness, of anticipation building in him. As he paused between two low-growing trees, their branches and stems practically vibrated in answer to his emotions. His breathing was even, his hands absolutely, completely steady as he climbed onto the wide windowsill of the back hall and pulled out his lockpicks, but the plants gave him away.
He landed in a crouch, froze to listen for any movement of someone who had heard the dull thump of his leather boots hitting the floor.There was only quiet; the household went abed early, as Sandry’s spies had reported. He rose from the floor and closed the window behind him, careful not to latch it.
The master of the house worked after the family and most ofthe servants had gone abed. His office was on the main floor, only a few doorsaway. Briar ghosted down the corridor.
He opened the door quietly, without trying to be silent. Theman sat in a comfortable chair, close to the fire. It gave off a whiff of sandalwood; expensive and meant only for luxury. Briar walked across the room.
“Put the tea on the table,” the Lord said without looking upfrom the pages he was reading.
A number of suitably snarky replies flicked across Briar’s mind, but instead he moved, quickly, behind the man, and laid his longest blade, pulled from the sheath at his waist as he moved, against the pulse in the man’s throat. His victim gasped. “What – what do you want?” he asked,trembling against Briar’s hands.
What did he want? Briar hadn’t thought to wonder for weeks, now, since Sandry had stepped off her boat, onto his docks, and had drawn him into the darkness. He was not at home in the light, in the crowds. Perhaps he had been, once, in a lifetime before the streets and the cells and the docks,before all the anger and helplessness and loneliness had found too comfortable a home inside him. Sandry didn’t try to fit, didn’t try to forgive the light of the world for forsaking her, and Briar couldn’t. It bound them together more securely, more fiercely than blood.
“Long live the Duchess,” he whispered. Before the man could flail, he drew his knife across his throat. Blood gushed over both hands as he held the man still, waiting until he stopped thrashing before letting him go. Briar stood looking down for only a moment, the muscles in his arms screaming, his breath coming in quick gasps that had nothing to do with physical exertion.
In all his time on the streets, he had never... never intentionally....
Quit bleating! he yelled at himself, cleaning the knife and setting it back in his sheath. He moved around the chair and picked up the book the man had been reading. Opening it back to the now blood-splattered pages, he set it again on the dead man’slap. He reached into his pouch and pulled out the rose. It was no longer dead and dried, but had somehow come back to life, its petals a deep, flawless black. Briar set it on the pages of the book and turned his back to the room.
He hurried back the way he had come, ready to meet guards at every turn, but his trip back through the window and across the garden went unmolested. As he slipped through the hedges, he paused and closed his eyes,trying to picture what he wanted done.
He opened his eyes. The hedges were uniform across the hole that had previously existed, and had grown an extra quarter-foot in heightalong the top. Briar stuck his hands in his pockets and strolled away down the street.
He returned to the same rooms he had left only hours before, and changed into his usual clothes – the comfortable ones the Bag had brought for him – but as he turned to the cold water in the basin in the corner to wash his hands of the blood he looked around, the room seeming surreal and unfamiliar. His clothes felt too tight, the lamp beside the bed too bright, the furnishings too posh to possibly be his. They hadn’t changed. Sandry hadn’t done some dramatic renovation while he was gone, but he didn’t fit into these ordered surroundings in the same way he had before he had killed a man.
He extinguished the lamp and stood in the dark. “Long live the Duchess,” he whispered, his hands dripping onto the floor.
