Sunlight and Shade

Autumn 622. It's sunny in the Cathedral Square, with that clarity a fine cool day can have, the sky remote and pale.

"Why, Arrish Osric! How long has it been?" She stiffens at the voice, then relaxes and turns, a composed smile apparent by the time they can see her face. She adjusts the shoulder strap of her long leather case, resettling its weight across her back.

Darna is plumper now and more placid, and she's cut her hair. There's still a spark of girlish energy in there, but her fires are mostly banked now. She seems honestly pleased by the chance encounter. Liz, largely unchanged except for having more defined features and finer clothing, hangs back somewhat. Her smile is fixed and her eyes rather baleful; she does not seem pleased in the slightest. Briefly, Arrish rues a certain former lack of finesse.

"Darna. Liz." She calculates. "Coming on three years, I suppose it is? How time does fly. And how are you?"

"Marvellous! We were just at service; we didn't see you there."

Arrish flutters a hand as if in indication of something. "Oh, I go to an earlier one." Earlier last year, perhaps. Arrish hasn't attended a service since Brakan's name was on the death list. She never found out if Tremin's was.

"Liz married not three months ago, a lord, can you believe it? Lord Julen may even sit on council in a few years, if things keep going as they are. Of course, I married Harve right out of school. We have a little girl already and another on the way. We're hoping for a boy, of course." Complacently, Darna puts her hand on her belly. She's not yet showing. "So, about you, are you married yet?"

Arrish curtseys punctiliously to Liz. "Lady Liselle, then. My felicitations to you both. And, ah, no. I have not married."

Liz speaks up. "I heard you had a beau. An actual Knight of the Silver Hand, quite respectable. Though not from anywhere important... they'll take almost anyone these days, won't they? And it turned out they shouldn't have taken this one. He turned traitor, didn't he? Then he got what he deserved." Darna looks shocked, then vaguely censorious. Liz's smile is real now, and malicious.

She can see it, feel it. Slip past Darna. Liz is almost as big as a man. Reached her full growth before the rest and made much of it. But she'll flinch when Arrish moves. Arrish made sure of that when she put an end to Liz's habit of using that size and strength -- at least against her. Follow the flinch. Twitch the wrist. Blade slips free of sleeve, edge honed to silver. Twist, thread between those big arms as they swing to stop her. Too slowly. Close enough to kiss, flick the hand up and across. Arterial blood is shockingly red in the sunlight. Step back from the spray before it touches the stones. Darna is just realizing what's happening, drawing breath to--

She blinks once, setting her feet and going still. The choreography fades from her mind's eye.

She answers, quite evenly, "I'm not sure why my name was so linked to his. He was a friend, and kinless, so he named me in his will. That is all. I'm afraid I've pressing business. If you'll excuse me? Darna. Lady Liselle." She nods shortly, bare politeness, and walks on without waiting for response.

Shielded by a building, she reverses her cloak, draws a shawl over telltale hair, and changes her posture, her walk, her expression. She holds the case in her arm now, its weight balanced against her at a new angle. Suddenly she is anonymous, any woman idling to speak with friends after service. She doubles back to shadow them. Habit, maybe, she doesn't even know why. She didn't want to keep in contact with anyone from school.

"--you see her run off so fast? She was sleeping with him, count on it. How else could a nobody like her hook a knight, even a disgrace like that? I haven't heard about her even being in town lately. I wonder if she had to take an extended trip to the country? And what is she now, a musician?" There is a sneer in her voice.

She could open the case. It would be fast. No nearby witnesses on this street. She could-- why does this seem like a solution?

"Oh Liz, why do you take on so? You didn't have to rub it in. The poor thing. I know you weren't ever friends but she was nice enough to me, and she must be going through a lot. Look at her! She's so thin and twitchy. She could be so pretty, too, if she did something better with her hair and wore something more flattering. No wonder she hasn't settled down."

She needs to stop following them.

"Come on, Darna. She was always ..."

Their voices go indistinct behind her as she turns and picks up the pace.

She just walks, deliberately blanking her thoughts. Familiarity finally jogs her awareness, far from the Cathedral. This street is so small and crooked it's in shadow even though it's still early afternoon. It smells like rubbish and sweat. It feels like safe haven, some signal in the scent and echoes giving her comfort until she remembers it's anything but. But it could be worse. Her feet could have taken her to Elwynn. However, she doesn't want to be seen again, to hear any more voices from her--

Almost too late, she sidesteps into a niche behind a cramped stairwell, shadowing her face.

Ashiana doesn't wear time as well as the Oakmeadow girls. She's lost-cat scrawny, and whatever broke her nose since the last time Arrish saw her must have been something she couldn't go to a healer about, because it never mended properly. She looks like three times as many years have passed.

She still has the same fine, sharp eyes -- not quite sharp enough. She still has a knife in her boot, the bulge barely visible without knowing where to look. Arrish isn't close enough to guess where she keeps the backup now, but she's in no doubt that it exists.

Ash is murmuring with a girl with cropped-off hair, a new kid with obvious worship in her upturned eyes. That girl hasn't been on the streets long. Arrish isn't sure how she knows, because she's dressed street. But she's not at home here yet, not even half as home as Arrish used to be, even with her other options, her other lives.

Arrish scans down the street and finds the lookout, a year or two older than the recruit and more weathered. A corner closer than she should be. The borders are eroding and Ashiana's beginning to slip. She's not hungry enough any more, and she's getting tired. Ash offered better than the others, despite it all. But not for long. Does she only have a year now, or can she stretch it longer?

She's a link to the past, if a tenuous one. Arrish slides a hand along the case. There's a lot of misery coming down on Ash, and enough old grudges from outside the circle that it might go slow and hard. There'll never be another to replace her, protect her. Not since Arrish bowed out. Bought her way out, more like it. It would be safer to cut out the past entirely, practical. It could be a mercy.

There's probably at least two more sisters in earshot, not counting the ones she sees. Untrained as far as she's concerned; only Ash has a potential to give any trouble at all. Hens in the foxhouse.

She stops her hand on the cold metal of the catch. This doesn't make any sense. If she knows anything about Ash, it's that she stays bought. Even if she didn't have more personal reasons to keep quiet on what she can only possibly suspect. Arrish is out of it now, all of it. She's clean. Why is she even contemplating this?

Back into a true alley (she could touch both walls if she stretched out her hands). Up a pile of boxes to the roof, more habits; this is an old familiar perch. No one uses it anymore, she can tell, but there's still the double spiral scratched onto a slate, crudely stylized flames worn down by storms past. Sunwarmed now. She almost considers staying a time. But this isn't her place anymore, none of this. Time to go, time to leave.

She moves silently across the roofs to the canal, waits until no one is watching, and slides down a trellis. She's back in the flow of city walkers. She's just someone ordinary again, someone innocuous.

"Menethil Harbor," she hears herself say to the gryphon master. It must have been the rooftops that made her think of him. But she can't go there. What is she thinking today? She's thinking of brighter, hotter sunlight filtered through splayed leaves. Huge idols hacked from sandstone. A stolen kiss, followed by blood. His blood. Worth it, he says, laughing through the pain. No, no it's not. She'll do worse if she goes near him again, bone certain.

"Miss?" She hasn't paid the man. She focuses on him and then shakes her head, stepping back. "I... beg your pardon. I forgot to do something." She makes an abortive, apologetic gesture, and hastens off.

She finds the small shop. The man she needs is there: someone from her present, not her past.

Without much preamble, she says, "Hawk's off on his own business. I'm at loose ends. Give me something that can make real use of me. Keep me occupied. I don't care how long it takes. The longer, the better."

"We do have something in the works, but it's not exactly something I'd recommend." He's more serious than usual. It must be particularly unpleasant.

"I don't care, so long as it's as far away as possible."

He shrugs. "Need to get out of town, huh? Let me get you the details."

Original story in Arrish's journal.