Tallah

Mertle hated the venom. She hated everything about it, from its lingering aftertaste—she felt it now in the back of her throat, tart, and it would be there for days—to the way it made her head throb.

Most of all, she hated pretending it worked on her.

Bells sounded the last hour of evening by the time the two women were finally satisfied with her answers. Thirst scratched at her throat, and they’d only brought her water to drink after her voice had gone too hoarse to be intelligible. Too little. Brackish.

“It’s gotten so late already?” Quistis stopped writing to count the bells. She’d amassed a tall stack of paper in front of her, each page crowded with neat handwriting. Two inkwells lay empty by the side.

Rumi hadn’t taken notes. And the captain had only rarely recorded any of the answers to her questions. Odd that.

Yes, it was bloody late. Mertle’s stomach grumbled and the headache was a constellation of small explosions in the space behind her eyes. She hadn’t needed to lie quite as much as she’d feared going in, and most of it was already part of her and Tummy’s story in Valen. The venom had contributed nothing but a wretched mood.

“I have all I need.” Rumi looked displeased and disappointed. She rose, stretched, and left without another word.

Rude.

“Rude.” Quistis stifled a yawn and glared at the space Rumi had occupied. “I’d apologise on her behalf, but that’s what I consider good manners from her.” Alone now, she perked up, gathered her papers, and tapped the block against the table. “I believe I owe you some answers.”

Mertle straightened in the chair and offered the most tired, hopeful smile she could manage, mimicking the tail end of a venom-enforced questioning. After a few bells, it would’ve lost its potency and, instead, forced elation in the victim, pride in having done exactly as was demanded of them.

She really, really wanted to spit in Quistis’s face just then, to share that horrid taste in the back of her throat.

Their interrogation had been a thing of beauty, as far as Mertle understood such things. For one thing, they hadn’t beat her. For another, they kept her off-guard and off-balance throughout the whole thing. Wildly different speech patterns. Call backs to earlier questions. A show of checking notes, both fresh and old. At one point Rumi had left the room, conferred with someone outside the door, came back, interrupted Quistis about a matter, left again, came back.

Wonderful, theatrical stuff. She’d hated every heartbeat of it. But at least every time the door opened it brought in a dash of chilled air that reinvigorated.

Quistis pushed forward the scroll she had on Sil, hesitated when Mertle didn’t reach for it, and then pulled it back, opened and read off it.

“This person you call Sil has been seen with one Tallah Amni, alias Cinder. You might have heard of her.”

Mertle’s eyes widened and she sat forward more attentively, gasping a soft “No…”

“What we know,” Quistis went on, “is almost nothing about her origin aside from what you’ve revealed. She was sighted aiding the fugitive Cinder on the Night of Descent and proven to be a skilled healer. As per our School’s edicts, we are not limited in whom we offer our services to, though we are still beholden to the laws of the land. Her aiding Cinder carries a death sentence in the empire and its allied city-states unless she turns the fugitive over to us. In that case, we may offer clemency and less extreme punishment.” She shrugged and offered Mertle a tight-lipped, almost apologetic smile. “I would advise that you do everything in your power to distance yourself from her and inform us or the regular constabulary if she contacts you again. I can’t speak of what her intentions are, but you are in danger of being caught in crossfire if you continue your relationship with her.”

She wrapped up the scroll and tapped it against her knuckles. Mertle allowed some time to pass, kept her mouth half-opened in shock and her eyes wide, and finally shook herself.

“It can’t be. You… It must be the wrong person—”

“If it were, we wouldn’t be here having this conversation, Mertle. I’m truly sorry and I hope you understand our attitude and our concern.”

In context, she would. Nobody living in Valen had any love for Cinder. Many would attack Tallah on sight with cobbles from the road if no other weapon were on hand. Anyone associated with her would get pretty much the same if not worse. Cinder, at least, people feared.

Anyone aiding her would be mobbed and torn apart.

“But—”

Quistis raised a hand and cut off her protest. “You are a free citizen of Valen. And you are in high and irreproachable moral standing. Our initial investigation into you and your partner revealed nothing that would require our attention and I would very much want it to stay that way.” She waggled the scroll. “As far as I am concerned, this is not a matter for public knowledge. It is not a threat, but I urge you to think well and long on what this information may mean for your life here.”

Do as you’re told and all will be well. Not a threat, my sore butt. You lie as you breathe, captain Quistis.

“And with that, you are free to go. I can’t express how grateful I am for your time, Mertle. You’ve given us much to think on.” Quistis rose, stretched as well, and wobbled slightly. “I think my legs fell asleep,” she complained.

That’s the venom you drank, you lying tart. Outwards, Mertle said nothing. After some time staring at the scroll, she rose as well and made for the door, walking as if through a dream, not paying attention to what else Quistis was saying. Something about gratitude and patience and being reimbursed for the discomfort and so on and so forth and—

She didn’t care.

She was hungry and the throbbing in her head climbed all the way to the tips of her horns. Her legs were jelly and her fingers tingled, all the tell-tale signs of venom moving through her. The hunger it caused wouldn’t abate for days and she thought unhappily on this as Quistis brought her cloak—pleasantly dry and warm—and lied more pleasantries at her.

Nobody walked her out or barred her exit. Six naked corpses swayed and twisted on the chilly midnight wind. Two fresh nooses waited at the end of the line, swaying with the others. Rumi Belli would burn both ends of the candle that night.

Mertle hurried past and tried not to stare any more than any other would. The road back to the Agora loomed ahead, long and tiring, but the exercise would loosen up the kinks in her back and legs. It hadn’t been that long of an interrogation, but she’d been tense and on edge the entire time, balancing the impulse of telling absolute truth with the necessity of extracting whatever the Guard already knew.

Captain Quistis had asked for her consent for a Mind Touch. She’d refused. Elend always refused that intrusion if it could be helped. Too much bad blood with illum weavers, and Mertle had been brought up in a particularly conservative family back in Beril. Quistis accepted this without question. She, herself, was not allowed by the laws of her School to do a touch without consent. Mertle knew that from Sil, but also knew it wasn’t a binding law. If Quistis had wished it, she could have had Barlo come in, hold Mertle down, and then perform the touch at leisure.

Chalk one up to human propriety.

Yes, she did visit the Sisters of Mercy regularly. An old knee injury bothered her. She showed them the scar. Some forge accident from back when she lived in Diolo that had never healed properly and got worse when the weather got cold. A shard of metal was still in there, between the bones, and the Sisters were slowly teasing it out because she was afraid of having her knee cut up for quicker healing.

Of course, there was nothing but the scar there. She’d done the extraction herself when it happened, but it always offered decent cover for any number of things.

Why was lady Tianna at the Sisters at nearly the same time as she?

Who knew? For her part, Mertle wanted nothing to do with the upstart. She described the haggling—to Quistis’s poorly veiled amusement—from the Meadow and then the clumsy attempt to bring someone else and do it for the lady. In the end she’d made nothing for the human and would sooner cut a horn off than deal with her again.

What had she wanted made?

Leather armour.

What kind?

More expensive than she apparently afforded. Mertle had the requirement list in her shop if they were interested in checking, just regular work with absurd stipulations. Jewels sewn as buttons. Can you imagine the stupidity? No, nothing else out of the ordinary. Just a fat-headed prim cunt— “Pardon the language! Don’t know what came over me.”—who couldn’t take a civilised no for an answer.

And then came the questions about Sil.

She’d talked about their first meeting and what followed. Kept details away. Blushed and babbled her way through some of it, the shy elendine engaged in something that back home would be forbidden.

Rumi revelled in the discomfort. Quistis blushed.

No, she hadn’t suspected anything amiss with Sil. Was there something amiss?

No, she’d never met Sil’s companions. She wasn’t aware Sil kept any constant companions. The healer went on sorties for the Guild. Or, at least, she always implied it was for the Guild. Sometimes she would be gone for entire seasons.

Yes, she’d returned this time at the beginning of Winter, gone through most of Summer and Wither. They’d spent some nights together, but something felt strange about Sil. Restless. She’d assured Mertle that it had only been a long and difficult sortie, nothing more. She needed time to recover and get over some of the things she’d seen.

No, she hadn’t mentioned where she’d been or what she’d done, just that it would be better for Mertle not to know about it. Seemed pained by it so she’d done her best not to bring it up.

She’d leaned hard into the bauble-head elendine routine, with a tongue loosened by venom. Talked too much and gave absurd details. Unnecessary ones most often, but verifiable by someone with too much time on their hands to do so. Let them run around and ask about bath salts, elderberry syrup, or candied corn. No skin off Mertle’s horns.

Now, walking home, she catalogued every word she’d said, painstakingly reconstructing her own story as she wove through the nighttime crowd. She’d need to brief Tummy on some of it, but otherwise it was a testament to Sil’s own paranoia that everything she had to share with the Storm Guard was all at once true, and harmless.

They have too much time to spare on me.

Someone followed her through the crowd, far enough to be nearly invisible. Instinct warned her but she didn’t need to turn around and check. Of course they’d keep up their observations, look out for anything that contradicted her statements. Tallah had taught her most of their tricks and their methods.

But, then again, someone had put her and Tianna in the same place despite her best efforts to pass unseen. Someone was better than simply good. She’d need to keep that in mind when next going to Aliana.

For now, food. Too much thinking on an empty stomach and she’d start having ideas and those never ended well. She’d take the elevator down, swing around the Tallow Quarter, and pick up something spicy from Lotho’s cart. Tummy liked him. He had someone grow real Beril peppers and Mertle could do with a touch of home as the cold dug into her heels and calves.

Winters on Nen had been kinder.

The ground rumbled and she slowed her pace. No reason to crowd for the elevator if a vent was imminent. It was already that late in the night.

Something pricked her instinct. Not the tail that swam in the crowd with her. Something… different. She cast about and found nobody staring. Just shadows pooling in nooks and crannies, chased there by the spritelight of streetlamps. With an overcast sky above and no moonlight, there were entirely too many shadows around the narrow, choked streets.

People shouldered her aside as she stopped in the middle of their flow.

Attention crawled across her skin, someone’s gaze peeling her layer by layer. Cold sweat broke on the back of her neck, the temptation to twist in place nearly overpowering.

A vanadal jostled her as he moved against the current, heading up towards the central spire of the Fortress. Some aelir slithered through the crowd, muttering something about the pigsty that Valen was. A man with a painted face nodded an apology as he trod over her feet in the jostle.

Someone watched.

Where?

“Careful with those.” A woman pressed a hand on Mertle’s own, forcibly pushing it back beneath her cloak. “People might panic if they saw you pulling a blade.”

Mertle had her knives out, blades naked to the chill of the night, with no recollection of gripping them. If not for the stranger, she might’ve raised them. And then…

Night exploded into day as the Hearth vented power. Its pillar of white light punched out through the cloud cover and banished the dark and all its shadows.

It revealed the hidden observer.

Shadows had concealed the woman before, up in the narrow gap between the Fortress’s wall and its guard tower. Tall and wide of shoulder, wearing no cloak, hair tied in a long ponytail spilling over her shoulder. Light reflected off wide, round spectacles to hide the eyes behind the glass. Instinct wanted Mertle to raise her weapons but the stranger’s grip on her wrist was iron-hard.

“Put it away, girl. Before one of the guards sees.”

The observer turned and disappeared as the light of the venting faded. Not all shadows returned with the night.

Spots swam in her vision as Mertle realised this other stranger still held her wrist. The grip was hot and getting hotter. She pulled away and was released. With reluctance, she replaced the knife in its sheath.

“Thank you,” she muttered, struggling to make out the woman’s face through the coloured blobs of after-light. Anyone moving to a Hearth city for the first time learned quickly to look outward when the ground rumbled, away from the centre spire. Not many looked into a pillar of blinding light twice.

She got the impression that she’d seen the vagrant somewhere before but couldn’t exactly place that plain face. The crowd carried her away. Mertle got her profile as she turned into the flow and the certainty of recognition grew. Dressed in rags. The left sleeve of her coat knotted at the shoulder. Dark hair cropped short, as if with a hatchet.

And her touch had been blisteringly hot. She hadn’t noticed in the moment, but now the lingering heat was odd.

Two strange women in the crowd and she was rather certain they weren’t of Quistis’s people. Or were they? Was this some new game of the captain’s?

Was she turning paranoid?

Standing in the middle of the walkway and annoying the other passers-by wasn’t going to reveal anything except make her tail suspicious. She set back down towards the elevator, turned away upon seeing the crowd waiting to descend, and headed for the stairs. Rays of fresh moonlight filtered down through the gap in the cloud cover and flowed into the stairwell through slit windows cut in the side wall.

It was a lonely descent, her nerves fraying with the combination of hunger, exhaustion, and lingering venom effects. Quistis and her people she felt she could handle. This new element, the woman on the spire? That spilled a drum of oil on her fire and invited unwanted hesitation.

She’d seen the face somewhere. Same as that other one. For the life of her, she couldn’t figure where and it made her jumpy. Someone sneezing in the stairwell startled an embarrassing squeak out of her chest.

Tummy’s going to laugh himself sick. And then he’s going to clap me over the ears for letting them get so deep under my skin.

Everything about the night distilled in her veins into a kind of sullenness that even the aromas of Lotho’s late-night cuisine couldn’t abate. What made everything worse was the temptation to look over her shoulder and the mounting fear that she’d see the woman with glasses glaring back. Imagination added glints of reflected light into every shadowy nook she passed.

“Why so gloom, tiny?”

Lotho was human, greying, and about half-a-head shorter than her. He always smiled, gap-toothed, regardless of weather or time of day, manning his food cart on the intersection of a busy set of alleys that led into some of the Enginarium’s outer city factories. This would be his first batch of food for the new day she realised, so as fresh as it could get. The first manufacturing shift change of the day was less than a bell away.

At least this would be the silver lining to her night.

“Long day, Lotho. Longer night.” She perched on a stool in front of his cart and knuckled her eyes. “Two of the usual, please. And a cask of that thing you call beer.”

Lotho smiled and leaned into their well-practised routine, “Now that just hurts my feelings. I brew it myself you know. It’s perfectly good beer.”

“By human standards,” they said in one voice.

Mertle continued, thinking up a new insult for him to add to his collection, “In as much as it’s got a fizz, you don’t need to chew it, and it doesn’t come out as blood on the other end?”

He chuckled, poured her a thimble of grimesh—blessed may he be by whatever deity he chose to worship—and left the bottle on the counter between them.

The grimesh went down wonderfully on an empty stomach and a headache, like an elkana kick to the back of the head, strong enough to bring up stars on the edges of her vision. It made every part of her feel so much worse, but the heat and spice soon numbed the worst of it. She poured herself a second thimble.

“You’re mean tonight, kid. I don’t like you like this. Wood bowl?”

“Mhm.”

He prepared two bowls—one large, one small—of his winter stew and added two extra sausages and three baked crow peppers to her portion. “Don’t count extra eagles. It’s on me. You look famished.”

She couldn’t help but smile as Lotho placed a lid over the two containers and hung them in netting for easy carrying. Same for the casket of dubiously named beer. Her mouth watered the moment he handed them over.

“There’s a gentleman looking very hungrily this way. Friend of yours?”

She didn’t turn while counting out the eagles, “If he orders, give him an extra pickle please. One of your good ones, yes?”

Lotho grimaced as he pocketed her money.

“You’re terrible tonight. Why do you want the Guard prosecuting me? Who’d sell you grimesh afterwards?” He leaned in conspiratorially. “Want I knock him out or some such?”

She smiled at him and shook her head, “Kind of you to ask, Lotho, but I’m joking. Leave him be but, maybe, keep an eye out if he follows me.”

“Go rest, kid. Send my regards to Tummy.”

“Will do, Lotho. Thank you. Always nice seeing you.”

Moonlight dimmed as the clouds swirled through the gaping wound above. The first fat flakes of the evening, and maybe the last of this winter, fell in a dance as she walked the final stretch towards her little corner of the Agora. Wind rattled shingles above, picking up the tempo to promise a final effort of storm.

Maybe it had been all a fluke meeting. A beggar in the street—Oh! That’s where she’d seen that one-armed woman before. Begging by the Sisters’ hospital. Talking to… Quistis. Of course. Another tail to be wary of? Seemed likely. But…

Her head spun. What kind of bloody web was this to get stuck in? She could understand being followed and questioned. Their investigation made sense. She’d gotten what she needed—suspicion off Tianna and onto her companions.

So why this new complication? Why… just why?!

No pattern that is observable is ever random, Sarrinare whispered in her ear.

“Shut up,” she whispered back.