Tallah

Tummy worked the forge like an angry god. His hammer strikes sent sparks flying to the farthest corners of the room to ping off polished breastplates and swords honed to perfection.

Mertle dodged another blast of iron sparks.

“I know you don’t like this. But what choice do I have?”

He only growled and redoubled his hammering, as if settling a grudge with the lump of steel destined to become another black dagger. His surly silence did little to help Mertle with her own nerves, especially after events seemed to have taken a turn for the weird. She paced the room, stark naked, too worked up to sit still and try and get any of her own responsibilities sorted. A draw of grimesh had only made her mood worse.

Her eyes kept sliding off the thing resting in front of the forge fire, draped over a painting rack, warming. Tummy had dug its metal coffin out from beneath the floorboards and they now waited for the material to regain its old comfort.

For now, the suit hung between them, a quiet accusation from the smith’s part. Mertle felt her face flushing from everything he chose not to say.

She wasn’t going back to bad, old habits.

If… If she were, she would’ve made a brand new suit, one to fit in all she’d learned since they’d ran from the Sarrinare household. Wearing the old one was just… insurance. Easier to sneak about when dressed for the job.

Getting her false tooth out and replacing it with the hollow replica was also just that, insurance in case of something turning catastrophic. Plenty of things had begun going sideways and she was done being caught out.

At least she could still lie to herself convincingly enough, she thought as she traced the contour of her arm band. Her mind slipped the confines of the cramped room, running away to Sil’s side. Where was she? Was she alright still? Did Tallah achieve some new milestone in her secret mission?

Mertle desperately wished for the sorceress’s return to end this strange, confusing time.

“You’re with the priestess nearly daily,” Tummy grumbled, deftly stabbing the battered steel back into the crucible. “What could she possibly mean to speak about that can’t be done on any other time? Why the need for this absurd skulduggery?”

She could only raise her hands in ignorance, “I don’t know. Wish I did.”

It hurt to speak. And holding a knife was just about the best she could manage at the time. The burns she’d suffered were superficial, but they were her constant reminder of how everything she thought she knew had gone tits up. They’d treated the injuries with Sil’s ointments, but she wasn’t going to heal quickly enough to show her face behind the counter for at least a tenday—not without using one of the draughts they hoarded, and both of them refused dipping into that stock on a whim.

“You’ll be careful, yes?” Tummy oiled her knife’s scabbard and set it down next to the warmed-up gear. “You’ll not hesitate, yes?”

“You know me. I’m always careful.”

The ingratiating smile withered on her face beneath his beady dark gaze. If their aelir’matar hadn’t rounded his ears back then, they’d probably be twitching just now.

“If you get a whiff of that night weaver, you bolt right back here. Yes?”

“I promise.” Her knife slid out of its sheath whisper-quiet, its blade sharpened and polished to a mirror gleam. Tummy had made it a personal mission to see the weapon in its best shape since she’d forged it. “I’m as well-armed as I’ve ever been. If someone out there’s playing games with me, they ought to be worried.”

She sounded more confident than she felt. It didn’t really fool Tummy but he nodded along all the same. They’d been enjoying this life of honest trade too much, gotten too entrenched in their roles, if some unexpected occurrences were enough to rattle both their nerves.

Her old skin proved a snug, comfortable fit now that the material had warmed and loosened. It bore her own enchantments: to drink in shadows, swallow her footsteps, and mask her scent. She’d been too afraid to destroy it, so instead she’d buried it, hoping each season that she’d never have to dig it up.

More fool she. Sarrinare laughed atop the crown of her head, the aelir’matar’s ghostly memory running cold fingers through Mertle’s hair. Good tool, it crooned. Always a good tool, no matter how far you run and how many names you steal for your own.

The mask proved more difficult to don. Mertle retched and gagged when she pulled it over her mouth and nose, the stench of old blood an overpowering presence.

They’d washed the gear before burying the lot. Even knowing it was all imagination, she could barely keep the thing on without eyes tearing up.

“You look about good to puke,” Tummy noted. “That bad?”

“Been a while. I’ll be fine.”

She applied a mixture of soot and oil over the exposed part of her face, making sure the red of her skin was all covered up. Sarrinare laughed ceaselessly.

Two knives hung heavy on her. One, the black blade, on her thigh. The other, of normal steel, on the small of her back. Both their outlines were barely visible against the suit’s grey. She wouldn’t be taking any chances this time, not with the night weaver somewhere out in Valen. Whatever that woman’s interest was, Mertle had had quite enough of others getting the drop on her.

A wall panel slid aside smoothly to reveal the crawl space beyond. A tight fit but she squeezed through and climbed upward between inner and outer wall, through the stifling heat let out by the forge’s chimney. It led into their tight attic, and then beyond into the next shop. Mertle crawled on her belly through the gaps that connected her home to the rest of the block.

Back when Valen had burned, the Agora had been spared the worst of it. As such, it was one of the few places in the city that hadn’t been torn down and rebuilt, the old buildings allowed to cluster tightly together.

And this allowed her to emerge beneath the eaves of her aelir competitor, five buildings over. She slid aside a narrow panel and extracted herself into the frigid cold air of the night, hands finding grip on an ancient masonry gargoyle roaring silently at the street below.

I taught you this trick. Sarrinare whispered in her ear while she held on one-handed and replaced the panel. I taught you to ensure your exit the moment you move anywhere new. You ran away, but you still respect what I taught you.

She wished dearly she had mixed the poison stronger, so it would’ve shut up that horrid creature forever. A ridiculous thought that had her nearly missing the first frozen handhold.

Do not allow yourself distractions on your final approach. Now there is only you and your goal. Everything else is distraction, and unworthy of you.

She was being mocked by herself. Lovely. The cold bit hard but the old enchantments etched in the back of the suit still held, insulating her from the worst of the weather.

Beneath, the Agora lived and breathed, spoke in a thousand voices and crawled with foot traffic.

Above, the Mother and Daughter moons were high on a crystal-clear sky. Neptas shone between them, now growing larger each day as thaw neared.

A perfect night, then, for skulking about. Two bells separated her from Aliana’s meeting time, so she would go slowly across the longest route. She checked each step, took stock of vantage points, ignored no dark nook that could hide a person. Or even a cat. Plenty of cats had taken to roaming the rooftops now, always sniffing about and making a racket on the shingles. For the night, Mertle would be one of them.

She set out towards the Sisters’ tree. Old skills came back easily. Too easily. The challenge in finding the next hidden alcove, the deep-enough pool of shadows, and the connecting beam between buildings… it made her heart sing with a joy she’d never allowed herself on Nen.

You wear Mertle well. She remains a lie. Maybe her ancient teacher was right. In the cold, with belly flat on shingles from which snow had recently melted and slipped off, watching for errant gazes, she allowed herself the simple honesty of enjoying the challenge. On Nen, the challenge had been tainted by whom the effort had served.

Here, she served herself and her fancies. It was worth holding on to.

It took less than a bell to find her way clear of the Agora and head towards the Daylight wall. The only possible witness to her crossing was the corpse frozen in the gibbet, but Mertle made sure not to cross even its line of sight. The woman had died there after screaming herself hoarse for two days straight. Either she froze to death, or found some way of ending herself, but it had been quiet for a while after.

The cage swung on a night breeze, its squeak hard to ignore.

From the Agora, to the wall, to beneath one of the elevators heading up, hanging by numbing fingers to the metal beams beneath the carriage. From there, a slow crawl across the odd assortment of Guild buildings, taverns, and guard postings. These were a challenge that made her heart sing, the rush of avoiding detection like nothing else she’d felt in a long time. Even being Tianna barely compared.

By the time she knocked on Aliana’s window, her time was nearly up. She could’ve arrived earlier, but she had hung beneath the eaves of the Paladin Corps’ great outside wall, and watched the coming and going of young recruits. A trickle of fresh-faced young farmers flowed now into the city, coming in from the villages, to join up as soldiers or adventurers. Winter was finally at an end.

“You’re late,” Aliana grumbled as she opened the window to allow her in. “I expected you here a bell ago.”

The ground rumbled and the night turned white just as the priestess closed the window and its shutters, proof that Mertle had arrived exactly on time and not one heartbeat too late.

“You asked me not to be followed. I did as asked. I may have startled a cat on the way here. Otherwise, did exactly as requested.”

It only got a nod and a grunt of appreciation from the old priestess. She held a tray with a single burning candle to light the way.

“Come. Try and not drip too much on the carpets. We’ve enough mildew growing in here without outside help.”

Mertle had been instructed to knock on a window opening out to the lower city, a lone gap in the hospital’s wall, protected from sight by a twist of root growing out in search of better soil. The corridor she followed now was dug amid more twisting roots, an unkempt place that brought to mind the Olden trees of Nen and their scents. But the white-leaf’s sap smelled sweeter, almost a nectar, and overpowered the must of a place ill-used.

If she were to guess, these passages were unknown to anyone visiting the hospital. Maybe even to many of the Sisters themselves.

Aliana led the way up a labyrinthine mess of stairways that took them further into the citadel-like building. For a while they climbed. Then they went downward, beneath roots crowding passages in such a way that they had to squeeze by. Deeper in without a word shared.

Mertle pulled down her mask and released her braid from under the tight head covering she wore. It was getting too warm inside, the air humid and cloying, the smell of the tree overpowering. She resisted the urge of asking how much farther, but instinct kept her hand close to the black knife. It thrummed faintly in answer to the ambient weave that permeated the entire place.

Aliana opened a door at the far end of a corridor that had descended gently into what Mertle considered the heart of the entire place. Maybe the journey had meant to confuse and lose her among the twists and the turns, but she knew exactly where she was and how she’d get out if need be.

Old skills came back easily…

The priestess opened wide the door to a barely lit room and ushered her in with a tilt of the head.

Inside, a single sprite lamp hung in a recess on the ceiling, caged in a metal mesh that cast long shadows across the sparse interior. A table was laid out to the side, unseen from the corridor leading in. Several chairs were arrayed around it.

The door closed behind her with a soft, final click.

There, at the far end of the table, half illuminated, sat Captain Quistis Iluna. And she smiled.