[story] in wolf's clothing
author: 55 paper bicycles (fic_jargon)
Vera was forced to hire knights - two of them - after the fourth attempt on her life failed only because the assassin slipped on a few loose roof tiles and impaled himself on his own sword. Dumb luck, her brother Robert seethed, was all that had kept her from being a newspaper headline. She was getting some form of protection, strange notions of independence and autonomy be damned. Secretly, Vera didn't mind as much as she pretended to. Oh, she made a token protest: No, Robert, we don’t need to hire anyone, I can take care of myself - even if I'm nobility I keep a gun under my pillow. She didn’t add (although she could have): And who do you think took care of the first three assassins, anyway? Vera wisely kept such thoughts to herself. Each assassination attempt had been more serious than the last, and installing traps along the staircases had created problems when she’d had to go downstairs at night to clean up before the blood could set in the carpet.
Both of the knights were high-blooded foreigners, not nobility, or even aristocracy. The first thing they did on arrival was spend an hour gaping at the house: at the microwave, at the holes cut in the walls separating one room from another, at her brother's collection of dragonflies and moths. They admired her television ("Look at how wide it is!" said Luck. "It's the length of my arm! Maybe even longer! Let's ask for it as payment." "Daria.") and then made themselves tea, which spared her the trouble of serving them.
Over the next few weeks Vera would come to recognize this as a running theme: Luck and Beornred worked neatly and efficiently, as quietly as possible, and when they weren't working, they criticized her furniture arrangement or the organization of her brother's bookshelves or the color of the walls. Luck had been born in the Far East, Beornred in the Far North, but they spoke the same dialect of Yovi with identical accents. Sometimes they played music together, but only when they could agree on what to play (which was rarely). Luck grinned as though she had been raised by wolves, and laughed all the time at nothing at particular, with a long, deep insincerity. Beornred, in contrast, rarely laughed at all, as though laughter was a strange food she had tried once but had never dared to taste. The only things they asked of her were that she not ask too many questions of them and that she go on living her life.
Vera told all of this to Robert, who said that they sounded like good, decent people, if eccentric. But what was a common-born knight without an eccentricity or ten? (Vera didn't bother pointing out that the Yovi nobility had their own sets of absurdities. Robert was old-fashioned, and not always in the gentlemanly way.) Common wisdom had it that a knight was a thuggish mercenary licensed to carry a sword; while it was true that Vera rarely saw either Luck or Beornred actively working, she couldn't argue with the safety they provided. Two days after she’d hired them, Vera had woken with a disquieting silence ringing in her ears like an alarm. She had half-expected to see both knights slain in the hall as she dashed downstairs, but all she’d seen was Beornred in the kitchen playing with the eggbeater, and Luck putting the bodies of the night's failed assassins out with the recycling.
When, after the second week, the recycling people had filed an official complaint with the city, Luck had taken to driving the unconscious bodies of the would-be assassins into the city and tying them to satellite dishes and power lines. Sometimes she would go into the country instead, and send them down the Nemes on inflatable rafts. Beornred refused to let Vera out of the house when Luck was gone, so Vera settled for making conversation during these times. Beornred, in turn, settled for cleaning the windows, washing the dishes, and, if Vera asked nicely enough, actually answering her questions.
She wasn't asking nicely enough today. They had been talking for the last two hours, and the most Vera had gotten out of Beornred was that she had been educated at the Diefenbach Academy with Luck, that her uncle kept sheep, and that knights preferred wearing deer-dragon leather over sheep-dragon leather, but sheep-dragon was easier to procure because deer-dragons belched fire at night, and then died when the fires they inadvertently created devoured all the surrounding oxygen. Incompatible digestive systems, Beornred said, as though this would explain everything to someone like Vera, who had spent her whole life in a city where the only legal hybrid was the passenger dragon-pigeon.
At sunset, Beornred called Luck on her cell. At the end of the call, she said, "Excuse me."
"Yes?" Vera said.
"I'll be outside."
Luck did not enter the house upon her return, but instead sat on the porch with a copper bowl and bottles of oil. She was doing some kind of ritual, or if not a ritual, a ceremony of some import. Either way, it involved no fewer than six bottles of perfumed oil, and bleeding on Vera's front steps.
"Beornred was calling you for the last two hours," Vera said. "Why didn't you pick up your phone?"
"Just between you and me?" said Luck. "I've always been the mean one. Back when we were in the academy, I stuck Eluned's uniform in a septic tank."
"She thought you had been shot by homing missiles and were bleeding out on the streets."
Luck laughed, and eased her feet out of her shoes and socks. They were caked with something that smelled like rust and did not look at all like mud. Vera couldn't see the car from the front steps, but she was willing to guess that it was missing a door or two. "Bet she's just upset she couldn't be the one to take aim."
"I don't think so."
"You know what they say: 'Beware the wolf-skinned from the north; for though unassuming-'"
"She says that the two of you are being targeted," Vera said, before Luck could launch into one of her spiels. Luck claimed to be quoting the book of the Asil, but Vera had read the canon, and knew for a fact that no such passages existed.
Luck scratched her ear. Her hand came away bloody. She wiped it on the bottom of her shirt. "Well, we finally found out who was targeting you. Your half-brother, yeah? The magistrate. Since you were so kind to not tell us."
"You're wrong," Vera said.
"That's not what Robert told me." Luck flexed her fingers, and then winced. Blood was running down her arm.
"You called my brother," Vera said flatly. She tried to look cool and unaffected, but judging by the smirk creeping onto Luck's face, she looked more like a bird with ruffled feathers.
"I majored in history in uni. Means I know how to do things like basic research."
"How much do you know?"
"Half-brother, not noble, burned his hand in a fire when he was little either trying to save your old man from dying, or keeping his head in the flames. Honestly, not much. No more than what your brother told me and the paper's archives." She untied the scabbard from her belt, and laid it flat on her lap. The scabbard of Luck's sword was spotted with blood and dented with battle. Luck pulled the sword out of the scabbard, and wiped it down with oil. Then she said, "If you think you're in danger, then tell us to do something about it. We're here because you need us."
"I don't need you," said Vera. "I can dismiss you any time I want."
"Yeah, that's right. Go ahead and get yourself killed. I'll let you, since you're so damn thick." Luck dried her hands on a towel, and then casually tossed the towel aside.
"Am I in that much danger?"
"You tell me." But Luck's smile was edged with moonlight, the red moon rising in the east. "You asked for our swords," she said. "You didn't hire us so we could dick around and swat away these small fries, you hired us for our swords. And we will pledge you them, should you ask."
The way Beornred regarded Luck as she came limping back into their bedroom said everything Beornred was too well-bred to say out loud.
"What," Luck said, sitting at the desk. She rested her head on the mahogany surface, and blew the hair from her eyes.
Beornred took the med kid out of the suitcase. "Reckless," she said, and pointed to the edge of the bed. "Come here."
"Don't want to."
"I'm not giving you a choice," said Beornred, and Luck hobbled onto the edge of the bed. Beornred cut away both the sleeve and the bandages from Luck's arm, and ran her hand, lightly, along the wound. "You and Vera were talking earlier."
"Eavesdropping on the roof again?"
Beornred swabbed alcohol onto Luck's arm, indifferent to Luck's muffled curses. "Maybe." Beornred, having finished cleaning the wound, went about dressing it properly. Every now and then Luck would invent a curse that made Beornred roll her eyes, or, if she came up with something particularly juicy, say, "Daria."
But even entertaining games get boring after a while. By the time Beornred finished dressing the injury, her only response to Luck's curses was, "That's nice. Turn your arm a little bit to the right." So, rubbing her hand over the gauze, Luck switched back over to business. "What's our plan forward?"
"I thought you'd have one." Luck spread her good arm out, and made an exaggerated shrug. Beornred hummed. Then she said, "Keep talking to her."
"You don't mind?"
"Even you need to have fun every now and then."
"I like to think of it as 'being educational' instead of 'having fun.'" Their eyes met. Luck grinned. "Just kidding."
Early in the morning, Vera awoke to an explosion rattling her eardrums. She bolted out of bed, gun at the ready. It had to be magic, or maybe not, but magic was sure as hell more likely than a bomb, unless it wasn't-
The door opened. Vera cocked the safety back, put weight on the trigger, and nearly shot. Nearly, because Luck pushed the door open all the way, and laughed. Vera was tempted to shoot anyway, but set the safety again, and tossed the gun under the sheets.
"Morning," said Luck. "Fight broke out in the basement last night, boiler got busted. Eluned's down there fixing it back up." Another explosion rattled the windows.
"This loudly?" Vera said.
"Subtlety's for wimps."
"Subtle people don't get shot at."
"Like you'd know that, huh?" Luck picked up a bottle of perfume from the dresser, and gave it a sniff. Then she said, "I'm cooking today. Just the way my mother-oh, shit! I forgot to turn off the stove."
Luck had lied: she hadn't forgotten about the stove at all. Once Vera was sitting down at the table, Luck refused to let her go back to her room to change into her day clothes. Instead she forced her to sit still while Luck listed all the reasons the magistrate needed to die. By the time the magistrate sent a summons for her in the afternoon, Vera was only too glad to leave the house. Luck, of course, went with her; Beornred was still working in the basement, and Luck never missed an opportunity to have Vera's ear. She only shook Luck off after closing the double doors to the magistrate's office.
And, of course, once she shut the doors, she felt instantly smaller, as though the entire office was a tall forest in the old country, and the magistrate the forest beast.
He was pacing by his desk, his jaw tight and nostrils flared. When she came in, he did not say anything except, "Sit," and she did so. Then he said, "Vera."
"Christopher."
"I am willing to... make a truce," he said. "I'll stop sending assassins after you. Frankly I cannot afford to send another assassin without tapping funds from the public trust. Normally I would simply take without asking, but considering that your pet thug presented a bill - on fancy letterhead - to the minister of financial affairs this morning, I’d like to avoid a scandal."
And asking for public money for assassins would be more of a scandal than the Lady Chelmsford being found dead by means of a sword through the eye? Political logic. It baffled her. "That's all it takes?" Vera asked.
"I’ve already told you. I don’t have the funds to continue this little venture," said the magistrate, sounding annoyed. "I, unlike you, do not have an endless well of money from illustrious forebears piled in the eaves."
"It isn't as though Father left us that much."
"Left you and that turncoat brother of yours. Not I." The magistrate sat down and rested his elbows on the edge of the desk. He considered her levelly for a long moment. Eventually, he said, "The knights know my true name. You will be spared but them, I cannot allow to live. Don’t bother to beg, I won’t change my mind."
Beg for whom: them or her? The knights could handle themselves. She had no intention of doing anything for them - or, at least, she amended, nothing for Luck. But Christopher should have already known that; he knew her. She and he had grown up in the same house. When she was a child, he had dared her to snuff candles out with her fingers, and then to hold onto the hot wick until she cried uncle. As everyone knew, dumb pride was a staple feature of nobility. How many people had chosen to burn rather than be seen on bended knee? She still had the scar on her index finger and thumb: smooth, shiny pink skin, flat against the ridges of her fingerprints.
Thinking all of this, Vera said nothing. Instead she said, "Our father didn't beg."
The magistrate's smile could have blighted entire countries. "Does that matter?"
"When did Luck find time to leave the house this morning?" Vera said.
Beornred stared at Vera. Then she cut vegetables. "I was the one who went to the magistrate."
"What?"
"She is injured, and so served as the distraction while I was out. Do you prefer klein or kushner tomatoes?"
"Kushner," she said, and resisted the urge to slap herself with the cutting board. Why had see assumed it had been Luck? "What was your business in the magistrate's house?"
"Daria is injured," she said. Yes. They had already established that. Vera waited, and her patience was rewarded when Beornred finished quartering the tomatoes. "Do not mind it, my lady. I only questioned his motives and presented the bill to the minister of finances. Cucumber or zucchini?"
"Cucumber," said Vera. "I mean-"
"Zucchini it is," said Beornred, and kept chopping.
"If there are no more assassins after me, I don't need you anymore," said Vera. "I'm releasing you from my services."
"I see. Our contract will dissolve at midnight. Daria and I will stay until morning to collect payment. Are you allergic to any types of berries?" Vera bit her cheek. Beornred upended a bag and the berries scattered across the countertop. She caught one just before it teetered off the edge, and popped it into her mouth.
"Where's Luck?" Vera asked. "I haven't seen her all the way back home."
"Daria is speaking with a client."
"You don't know that."
"She swears her oaths not lightly. If you do not command her to attack the magistrate, she will not go. After she is released from her contract, however--" Beornred took one look at the windows, and said, "Even if she were to be cut loose, it is raining. Daria thinks it's bad luck to mix blood with water."
"And what about when the rain stops?"
Beornred's mouth curved around the weight of a memory . "She doesn't hold her drink well, but loves to try. Green peppers or red?"
"Whichever," Vera said. While Beornred ran cold water over the red peppers, she said, "I'm glad that you're around."
"Stranger things have happened."
"I mean it," Vera said. "Normal people would say 'thank you.'"
"I am pleased that you find me tolerable, my lady."
That would do. Vera offered a tentative smile to Beornred, and went down to raid the wine cellar.
After four glasses of wine, Luck collapsed on the couch and fell asleep. Midnight passed without any incident. Vera drank coffee until Beornred came to her room and said that Luck was definitely asleep, and even if she were to wake up, she'd have one hell of a time getting out of the knots Beornred had tied her in.
"Thank goodness," Vera remembered saying. "I'll be able to sleep well tonight."
"Yes," Beornred said. "Good night, my lady."
At the crack of dawn, Luck pulled Vera out of bed, and shook her awake.
"Stop that," Vera said, trying to shrug her off. It didn't work as well as she would have hoped: Luck's arm was immobile and unmovable as stone. "If you're looking for Eluned-"
"She's not here," said Luck.
"I-what?"
"It's over. There was a gas leak in the magistrate's mansion. A spark blew the entire place to splinters."
"Was it an accident?"
Luck barked a laugh. "Wouldn't that be convenient? Get dressed. Eluned should be back soon."
At eight o'clock, Beornred returned to the manor on foot. Luck had earlier refused to see her. She had told Vera to relay the message that she was too busy seething, but really she was sleeping, exhausted from long hours of worrying. Vera met Beornred at the gates in Luck's place.
"I bought breakfast," Beornred said, holding up a paper bag. Her clothes were sooty, and reeked of smoke. A cut on her forehead matted her hair with blood. There was a sword on her hip, one that Vera could not recall seeing before. ... No, she had seen it. She had seen it many times. Why had she thought that she hadn’t seen it? Beornred carried that sword everywhere, not all the time, but so often that Vera would have had to have been blind not to have noticed it. Or was that Beornred's talent, an odiously perfect ability to slip in and out of people's notice?
"Don't come in," Vera said.
"At least open the gates wide enough so I can drop this off. You'll need something for breakfast." When Vera made no move, Beornred took the key from her pocket.
"Don't."
"I see," said Beornred. She left the key in the lock, and stepped away. "Very well."
"You tricked me," said Vera. "I thought you were on my side."
Beornred looked skyward in thought. And then she said, "I swore no fealty."
"You had orders."
"Our contract expired at midnight. I was then free to take another client's request." Beornred laid a white glove on the lock of the gates and said, "You should thank him later. The magistrate was thinking about sending the police."
Vera stared. Suddenly the sky was sinking, falling through her head. Suddenly Beornred was standing before her, blood all the way up to her elbows; suddenly Vera was running, running from the dog that was very suddenly a wolf with teeth and murder written into its bones - but when she blinked, Vera was standing in the same spot, and Beornred was easing the gates open. She slipped through easily, easily as oil through doors, water through rocks, fire through lives. Many things were bubbling in Vera's mind, ready to surface in her mouth, but all she could think of was, I barely come up to her shoulders.
Luck drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. When that failed to elicit a response from Beornred, she blew air through her teeth and said, "She threw us out, huh."
"Perhaps that is why we are in the car rather than in her house," Beornred said dryly. She was crocheting in the passenger's seat. Luck didn't know much about needlework or knitting, only that Beornred knit because she got carsick otherwise, and that Beornred sucked at it.
"Didn't think she'd have the guts to do it, that's all."
The car door rattled, and a few pieces of glass fell onto the seat. Beornred brushed the glass onto the floor of the car, and said, "I told you to fix that."
"I'm the one driving here. You want it fixed so badly, you do it." Beornred grunted, and leaned, stiffly, towards the car door. Magic hummed around her hands, at the edge of the spell on her lips. Luck's eyes softened. She placed her hand on Beornred's leg, and squeezed. "Didn't mean anything by it," she said. "Honest."
The Yovi suburb melted into a blur of green and gold. Farmland, really: farmland and cables suspended by towering, steel beams. Luck stuck her hand out of the window, and relished the feel of air pushing her hand back. A sign read "FUEL 30." They would last.
"So how'd you piss her off?" Luck said.
"I asked her if she wanted butter or jam with her breakfast."
"What, really? Asshole."
Beornred smiled. She reached over to the back seat, wincing as she did so, and put the brown paper bag in her lap. She pulled a loaf out of the bag, and broke off a piece. "I still have some left, if you're hungry."
"Don't think that makes anything better. You ditched me and had all that fun by yourself-"
"You," Beornred said around a mouthful of puffy Yovi bread, "would have found it fun."
"And you're saying you wouldn't have?"
"It was implied."
"Eluned." The sun caught on the angular planes of Beornred's face, and gave a silver glint to the normally plain, straw color of her hair. Luck had one hand out in the wind, the other hand in control of the car, but she risked, for a moment, letting go of the wheel to brush back hair from Beornred's face.
With a cool, practiced ease, Beornred guided Luck's hand back to the steering wheel. "You're driving off the road."
Indeed. The golden wheat was bowing before the wreck of their car, stalk after stalk bending its head down to them, thwacking dully on the windshield and scratching at her exposed hand.
"Oh, hell," Luck muttered. "Think anyone saw us?"
"Tractor. Unknown distance." Beornred peered over her shoulder, and winced. "I suggest flooring it."
"Your wish," Luck said, depressing the parking break, "is my command."
Beornred gripped the armrest as the car spun in a semi-circle and continued on the highway at a speed that made the road feel more like the barrel of a gun, and the car the bullet. "You shouldn't say things like that so lightly. Someone may take you too seriously."
"Oh yeah? Screw you."
"Yes," said Beornred with a smile. "That's more like it."
the end
Vera was forced to hire knights - two of them - after the fourth attempt on her life failed only because the assassin slipped on a few loose roof tiles and impaled himself on his own sword. Dumb luck, her brother Robert seethed, was all that had kept her from being a newspaper headline. She was getting some form of protection, strange notions of independence and autonomy be damned. Secretly, Vera didn't mind as much as she pretended to. Oh, she made a token protest: No, Robert, we don’t need to hire anyone, I can take care of myself - even if I'm nobility I keep a gun under my pillow. She didn’t add (although she could have): And who do you think took care of the first three assassins, anyway? Vera wisely kept such thoughts to herself. Each assassination attempt had been more serious than the last, and installing traps along the staircases had created problems when she’d had to go downstairs at night to clean up before the blood could set in the carpet.
Both of the knights were high-blooded foreigners, not nobility, or even aristocracy. The first thing they did on arrival was spend an hour gaping at the house: at the microwave, at the holes cut in the walls separating one room from another, at her brother's collection of dragonflies and moths. They admired her television ("Look at how wide it is!" said Luck. "It's the length of my arm! Maybe even longer! Let's ask for it as payment." "Daria.") and then made themselves tea, which spared her the trouble of serving them.
Over the next few weeks Vera would come to recognize this as a running theme: Luck and Beornred worked neatly and efficiently, as quietly as possible, and when they weren't working, they criticized her furniture arrangement or the organization of her brother's bookshelves or the color of the walls. Luck had been born in the Far East, Beornred in the Far North, but they spoke the same dialect of Yovi with identical accents. Sometimes they played music together, but only when they could agree on what to play (which was rarely). Luck grinned as though she had been raised by wolves, and laughed all the time at nothing at particular, with a long, deep insincerity. Beornred, in contrast, rarely laughed at all, as though laughter was a strange food she had tried once but had never dared to taste. The only things they asked of her were that she not ask too many questions of them and that she go on living her life.
Vera told all of this to Robert, who said that they sounded like good, decent people, if eccentric. But what was a common-born knight without an eccentricity or ten? (Vera didn't bother pointing out that the Yovi nobility had their own sets of absurdities. Robert was old-fashioned, and not always in the gentlemanly way.) Common wisdom had it that a knight was a thuggish mercenary licensed to carry a sword; while it was true that Vera rarely saw either Luck or Beornred actively working, she couldn't argue with the safety they provided. Two days after she’d hired them, Vera had woken with a disquieting silence ringing in her ears like an alarm. She had half-expected to see both knights slain in the hall as she dashed downstairs, but all she’d seen was Beornred in the kitchen playing with the eggbeater, and Luck putting the bodies of the night's failed assassins out with the recycling.
When, after the second week, the recycling people had filed an official complaint with the city, Luck had taken to driving the unconscious bodies of the would-be assassins into the city and tying them to satellite dishes and power lines. Sometimes she would go into the country instead, and send them down the Nemes on inflatable rafts. Beornred refused to let Vera out of the house when Luck was gone, so Vera settled for making conversation during these times. Beornred, in turn, settled for cleaning the windows, washing the dishes, and, if Vera asked nicely enough, actually answering her questions.
She wasn't asking nicely enough today. They had been talking for the last two hours, and the most Vera had gotten out of Beornred was that she had been educated at the Diefenbach Academy with Luck, that her uncle kept sheep, and that knights preferred wearing deer-dragon leather over sheep-dragon leather, but sheep-dragon was easier to procure because deer-dragons belched fire at night, and then died when the fires they inadvertently created devoured all the surrounding oxygen. Incompatible digestive systems, Beornred said, as though this would explain everything to someone like Vera, who had spent her whole life in a city where the only legal hybrid was the passenger dragon-pigeon.
At sunset, Beornred called Luck on her cell. At the end of the call, she said, "Excuse me."
"Yes?" Vera said.
"I'll be outside."
Luck did not enter the house upon her return, but instead sat on the porch with a copper bowl and bottles of oil. She was doing some kind of ritual, or if not a ritual, a ceremony of some import. Either way, it involved no fewer than six bottles of perfumed oil, and bleeding on Vera's front steps.
"Beornred was calling you for the last two hours," Vera said. "Why didn't you pick up your phone?"
"Just between you and me?" said Luck. "I've always been the mean one. Back when we were in the academy, I stuck Eluned's uniform in a septic tank."
"She thought you had been shot by homing missiles and were bleeding out on the streets."
Luck laughed, and eased her feet out of her shoes and socks. They were caked with something that smelled like rust and did not look at all like mud. Vera couldn't see the car from the front steps, but she was willing to guess that it was missing a door or two. "Bet she's just upset she couldn't be the one to take aim."
"I don't think so."
"You know what they say: 'Beware the wolf-skinned from the north; for though unassuming-'"
"She says that the two of you are being targeted," Vera said, before Luck could launch into one of her spiels. Luck claimed to be quoting the book of the Asil, but Vera had read the canon, and knew for a fact that no such passages existed.
Luck scratched her ear. Her hand came away bloody. She wiped it on the bottom of her shirt. "Well, we finally found out who was targeting you. Your half-brother, yeah? The magistrate. Since you were so kind to not tell us."
"You're wrong," Vera said.
"That's not what Robert told me." Luck flexed her fingers, and then winced. Blood was running down her arm.
"You called my brother," Vera said flatly. She tried to look cool and unaffected, but judging by the smirk creeping onto Luck's face, she looked more like a bird with ruffled feathers.
"I majored in history in uni. Means I know how to do things like basic research."
"How much do you know?"
"Half-brother, not noble, burned his hand in a fire when he was little either trying to save your old man from dying, or keeping his head in the flames. Honestly, not much. No more than what your brother told me and the paper's archives." She untied the scabbard from her belt, and laid it flat on her lap. The scabbard of Luck's sword was spotted with blood and dented with battle. Luck pulled the sword out of the scabbard, and wiped it down with oil. Then she said, "If you think you're in danger, then tell us to do something about it. We're here because you need us."
"I don't need you," said Vera. "I can dismiss you any time I want."
"Yeah, that's right. Go ahead and get yourself killed. I'll let you, since you're so damn thick." Luck dried her hands on a towel, and then casually tossed the towel aside.
"Am I in that much danger?"
"You tell me." But Luck's smile was edged with moonlight, the red moon rising in the east. "You asked for our swords," she said. "You didn't hire us so we could dick around and swat away these small fries, you hired us for our swords. And we will pledge you them, should you ask."
The way Beornred regarded Luck as she came limping back into their bedroom said everything Beornred was too well-bred to say out loud.
"What," Luck said, sitting at the desk. She rested her head on the mahogany surface, and blew the hair from her eyes.
Beornred took the med kid out of the suitcase. "Reckless," she said, and pointed to the edge of the bed. "Come here."
"Don't want to."
"I'm not giving you a choice," said Beornred, and Luck hobbled onto the edge of the bed. Beornred cut away both the sleeve and the bandages from Luck's arm, and ran her hand, lightly, along the wound. "You and Vera were talking earlier."
"Eavesdropping on the roof again?"
Beornred swabbed alcohol onto Luck's arm, indifferent to Luck's muffled curses. "Maybe." Beornred, having finished cleaning the wound, went about dressing it properly. Every now and then Luck would invent a curse that made Beornred roll her eyes, or, if she came up with something particularly juicy, say, "Daria."
But even entertaining games get boring after a while. By the time Beornred finished dressing the injury, her only response to Luck's curses was, "That's nice. Turn your arm a little bit to the right." So, rubbing her hand over the gauze, Luck switched back over to business. "What's our plan forward?"
"I thought you'd have one." Luck spread her good arm out, and made an exaggerated shrug. Beornred hummed. Then she said, "Keep talking to her."
"You don't mind?"
"Even you need to have fun every now and then."
"I like to think of it as 'being educational' instead of 'having fun.'" Their eyes met. Luck grinned. "Just kidding."
Early in the morning, Vera awoke to an explosion rattling her eardrums. She bolted out of bed, gun at the ready. It had to be magic, or maybe not, but magic was sure as hell more likely than a bomb, unless it wasn't-
The door opened. Vera cocked the safety back, put weight on the trigger, and nearly shot. Nearly, because Luck pushed the door open all the way, and laughed. Vera was tempted to shoot anyway, but set the safety again, and tossed the gun under the sheets.
"Morning," said Luck. "Fight broke out in the basement last night, boiler got busted. Eluned's down there fixing it back up." Another explosion rattled the windows.
"This loudly?" Vera said.
"Subtlety's for wimps."
"Subtle people don't get shot at."
"Like you'd know that, huh?" Luck picked up a bottle of perfume from the dresser, and gave it a sniff. Then she said, "I'm cooking today. Just the way my mother-oh, shit! I forgot to turn off the stove."
Luck had lied: she hadn't forgotten about the stove at all. Once Vera was sitting down at the table, Luck refused to let her go back to her room to change into her day clothes. Instead she forced her to sit still while Luck listed all the reasons the magistrate needed to die. By the time the magistrate sent a summons for her in the afternoon, Vera was only too glad to leave the house. Luck, of course, went with her; Beornred was still working in the basement, and Luck never missed an opportunity to have Vera's ear. She only shook Luck off after closing the double doors to the magistrate's office.
And, of course, once she shut the doors, she felt instantly smaller, as though the entire office was a tall forest in the old country, and the magistrate the forest beast.
He was pacing by his desk, his jaw tight and nostrils flared. When she came in, he did not say anything except, "Sit," and she did so. Then he said, "Vera."
"Christopher."
"I am willing to... make a truce," he said. "I'll stop sending assassins after you. Frankly I cannot afford to send another assassin without tapping funds from the public trust. Normally I would simply take without asking, but considering that your pet thug presented a bill - on fancy letterhead - to the minister of financial affairs this morning, I’d like to avoid a scandal."
And asking for public money for assassins would be more of a scandal than the Lady Chelmsford being found dead by means of a sword through the eye? Political logic. It baffled her. "That's all it takes?" Vera asked.
"I’ve already told you. I don’t have the funds to continue this little venture," said the magistrate, sounding annoyed. "I, unlike you, do not have an endless well of money from illustrious forebears piled in the eaves."
"It isn't as though Father left us that much."
"Left you and that turncoat brother of yours. Not I." The magistrate sat down and rested his elbows on the edge of the desk. He considered her levelly for a long moment. Eventually, he said, "The knights know my true name. You will be spared but them, I cannot allow to live. Don’t bother to beg, I won’t change my mind."
Beg for whom: them or her? The knights could handle themselves. She had no intention of doing anything for them - or, at least, she amended, nothing for Luck. But Christopher should have already known that; he knew her. She and he had grown up in the same house. When she was a child, he had dared her to snuff candles out with her fingers, and then to hold onto the hot wick until she cried uncle. As everyone knew, dumb pride was a staple feature of nobility. How many people had chosen to burn rather than be seen on bended knee? She still had the scar on her index finger and thumb: smooth, shiny pink skin, flat against the ridges of her fingerprints.
Thinking all of this, Vera said nothing. Instead she said, "Our father didn't beg."
The magistrate's smile could have blighted entire countries. "Does that matter?"
"When did Luck find time to leave the house this morning?" Vera said.
Beornred stared at Vera. Then she cut vegetables. "I was the one who went to the magistrate."
"What?"
"She is injured, and so served as the distraction while I was out. Do you prefer klein or kushner tomatoes?"
"Kushner," she said, and resisted the urge to slap herself with the cutting board. Why had see assumed it had been Luck? "What was your business in the magistrate's house?"
"Daria is injured," she said. Yes. They had already established that. Vera waited, and her patience was rewarded when Beornred finished quartering the tomatoes. "Do not mind it, my lady. I only questioned his motives and presented the bill to the minister of finances. Cucumber or zucchini?"
"Cucumber," said Vera. "I mean-"
"Zucchini it is," said Beornred, and kept chopping.
"If there are no more assassins after me, I don't need you anymore," said Vera. "I'm releasing you from my services."
"I see. Our contract will dissolve at midnight. Daria and I will stay until morning to collect payment. Are you allergic to any types of berries?" Vera bit her cheek. Beornred upended a bag and the berries scattered across the countertop. She caught one just before it teetered off the edge, and popped it into her mouth.
"Where's Luck?" Vera asked. "I haven't seen her all the way back home."
"Daria is speaking with a client."
"You don't know that."
"She swears her oaths not lightly. If you do not command her to attack the magistrate, she will not go. After she is released from her contract, however--" Beornred took one look at the windows, and said, "Even if she were to be cut loose, it is raining. Daria thinks it's bad luck to mix blood with water."
"And what about when the rain stops?"
Beornred's mouth curved around the weight of a memory . "She doesn't hold her drink well, but loves to try. Green peppers or red?"
"Whichever," Vera said. While Beornred ran cold water over the red peppers, she said, "I'm glad that you're around."
"Stranger things have happened."
"I mean it," Vera said. "Normal people would say 'thank you.'"
"I am pleased that you find me tolerable, my lady."
That would do. Vera offered a tentative smile to Beornred, and went down to raid the wine cellar.
After four glasses of wine, Luck collapsed on the couch and fell asleep. Midnight passed without any incident. Vera drank coffee until Beornred came to her room and said that Luck was definitely asleep, and even if she were to wake up, she'd have one hell of a time getting out of the knots Beornred had tied her in.
"Thank goodness," Vera remembered saying. "I'll be able to sleep well tonight."
"Yes," Beornred said. "Good night, my lady."
At the crack of dawn, Luck pulled Vera out of bed, and shook her awake.
"Stop that," Vera said, trying to shrug her off. It didn't work as well as she would have hoped: Luck's arm was immobile and unmovable as stone. "If you're looking for Eluned-"
"She's not here," said Luck.
"I-what?"
"It's over. There was a gas leak in the magistrate's mansion. A spark blew the entire place to splinters."
"Was it an accident?"
Luck barked a laugh. "Wouldn't that be convenient? Get dressed. Eluned should be back soon."
At eight o'clock, Beornred returned to the manor on foot. Luck had earlier refused to see her. She had told Vera to relay the message that she was too busy seething, but really she was sleeping, exhausted from long hours of worrying. Vera met Beornred at the gates in Luck's place.
"I bought breakfast," Beornred said, holding up a paper bag. Her clothes were sooty, and reeked of smoke. A cut on her forehead matted her hair with blood. There was a sword on her hip, one that Vera could not recall seeing before. ... No, she had seen it. She had seen it many times. Why had she thought that she hadn’t seen it? Beornred carried that sword everywhere, not all the time, but so often that Vera would have had to have been blind not to have noticed it. Or was that Beornred's talent, an odiously perfect ability to slip in and out of people's notice?
"Don't come in," Vera said.
"At least open the gates wide enough so I can drop this off. You'll need something for breakfast." When Vera made no move, Beornred took the key from her pocket.
"Don't."
"I see," said Beornred. She left the key in the lock, and stepped away. "Very well."
"You tricked me," said Vera. "I thought you were on my side."
Beornred looked skyward in thought. And then she said, "I swore no fealty."
"You had orders."
"Our contract expired at midnight. I was then free to take another client's request." Beornred laid a white glove on the lock of the gates and said, "You should thank him later. The magistrate was thinking about sending the police."
Vera stared. Suddenly the sky was sinking, falling through her head. Suddenly Beornred was standing before her, blood all the way up to her elbows; suddenly Vera was running, running from the dog that was very suddenly a wolf with teeth and murder written into its bones - but when she blinked, Vera was standing in the same spot, and Beornred was easing the gates open. She slipped through easily, easily as oil through doors, water through rocks, fire through lives. Many things were bubbling in Vera's mind, ready to surface in her mouth, but all she could think of was, I barely come up to her shoulders.
Luck drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. When that failed to elicit a response from Beornred, she blew air through her teeth and said, "She threw us out, huh."
"Perhaps that is why we are in the car rather than in her house," Beornred said dryly. She was crocheting in the passenger's seat. Luck didn't know much about needlework or knitting, only that Beornred knit because she got carsick otherwise, and that Beornred sucked at it.
"Didn't think she'd have the guts to do it, that's all."
The car door rattled, and a few pieces of glass fell onto the seat. Beornred brushed the glass onto the floor of the car, and said, "I told you to fix that."
"I'm the one driving here. You want it fixed so badly, you do it." Beornred grunted, and leaned, stiffly, towards the car door. Magic hummed around her hands, at the edge of the spell on her lips. Luck's eyes softened. She placed her hand on Beornred's leg, and squeezed. "Didn't mean anything by it," she said. "Honest."
The Yovi suburb melted into a blur of green and gold. Farmland, really: farmland and cables suspended by towering, steel beams. Luck stuck her hand out of the window, and relished the feel of air pushing her hand back. A sign read "FUEL 30." They would last.
"So how'd you piss her off?" Luck said.
"I asked her if she wanted butter or jam with her breakfast."
"What, really? Asshole."
Beornred smiled. She reached over to the back seat, wincing as she did so, and put the brown paper bag in her lap. She pulled a loaf out of the bag, and broke off a piece. "I still have some left, if you're hungry."
"Don't think that makes anything better. You ditched me and had all that fun by yourself-"
"You," Beornred said around a mouthful of puffy Yovi bread, "would have found it fun."
"And you're saying you wouldn't have?"
"It was implied."
"Eluned." The sun caught on the angular planes of Beornred's face, and gave a silver glint to the normally plain, straw color of her hair. Luck had one hand out in the wind, the other hand in control of the car, but she risked, for a moment, letting go of the wheel to brush back hair from Beornred's face.
With a cool, practiced ease, Beornred guided Luck's hand back to the steering wheel. "You're driving off the road."
Indeed. The golden wheat was bowing before the wreck of their car, stalk after stalk bending its head down to them, thwacking dully on the windshield and scratching at her exposed hand.
"Oh, hell," Luck muttered. "Think anyone saw us?"
"Tractor. Unknown distance." Beornred peered over her shoulder, and winced. "I suggest flooring it."
"Your wish," Luck said, depressing the parking break, "is my command."
Beornred gripped the armrest as the car spun in a semi-circle and continued on the highway at a speed that made the road feel more like the barrel of a gun, and the car the bullet. "You shouldn't say things like that so lightly. Someone may take you too seriously."
"Oh yeah? Screw you."
"Yes," said Beornred with a smile. "That's more like it."
the end