Fic: R.S.V.P. Pt. 1 | LotS | C/D, R/K | NC-17

[liz_estrada]

Title: R.S.V.P.
Author: liz_estrada
Fandom & Pairing: Legend of the Seeker (post season 2 AU); Cara/Dahlia, Richard/Kahlan
Rating: NC-17 for sexual content and violence

Summary: Attached please find an overlong fic containing bloody fight scenes, some sad and/or filthy memories, and several odd conversations leading up to a gubmint summit for D’Hara and the Midlands. If attachment is corrupt (and it is), please submit your original receipt and an authorized claim form for full refund of purchase price.

Fourth installment in a series, follows Camelot is a Silly Place and Roundelay, and Terms of Service.

Author’s Note: This should have been finished a month ago, but lately I’ve had to fic in a strictly piecemeal and patchwork fashion. Ever written porn ideas on a stack of Post-Its? Which you then misplace, only to have them returned by a grinning stranger as you both depart a City Council meeting? Fun summer.

******

Prologue

In a blackened and broken tower deep in D’Haran woods, the world’s most powerful sorceress lies in bed beneath a sweaty and offensively vain mortal man. She smiles benignly as he curses and grunts and spends his dormant seed inside her. He looks ready to crow, self-satisfied and transported by his own performance. She, on the other hand, seems bored.

“Is this really such a pointless exercise?” Darken Rahl asks.

Nicci blinks as if her attention was elsewhere. “No, my Lord; dry copulation without climax is the perfect sendoff for my suicide mission.”

Affronted, he slaps her mouth and still she smiles. Nicci is brutally honest because it is her only freedom, and these petty punishments are worth seeing the spoiled brat shock in his eyes. She would prefer boiling him in the bath like a chicken, but the damned Sovereign Cuff on her ankle smothers her Han, leaving only a fragment active and enslaved to Rahl’s will. Very soon, that will change.

“Dear Nicci, why so negative?” he complains. “It’s an easy arrangement: I stage a major distraction, you execute a minor theft. Your permissions are quite specific, meaning simple stealth and a little magic should guarantee success. Cheer up.”

“The odds are against me. If I am caught, I will be killed by Richard. If I fail and escape, I will be killed by you. Even if I succeed, I will be killed by one of you - eventually,” Nicci reasons. “My time is short. If you wish to cheer me, then make me come.”

Bemused, Rahl casts a quick glance toward his nethers, still soft and recovering. Nicci shakes her head and smiles again.

“Use your tongue,” she suggests. “It’s indefatigable, judging by your endless monologues.”

His cold blue eyes turn fiery at the insult and he clearly wants to hit her again, but she appears placid and indifferent. Rahl really needs to wipe that look off her face, so he kisses her mouth and treks southward, folds her legs back and monologues to the very limit of his ability.

Still, Nicci remains unfazed. It’s not that Darken Rahl is a bad lover - far from it, in fact. Nicci simply can’t be bothered with politesse anymore. After half a year of dreaming and plotting, she lit on a gambit that captured his imagination, and this idea has returned her a little power. She holds Rahl’s ambition hostage and knows it; tonight, she is merely testing their realigned dynamic.

It also helps that she intends to kill him very soon, in a most horrific and poetically just way. She plans only two initial casualties: a single Palace guard and that back-shooting Mord’Sith bitch will die quickly, when Nicci steals the necessary spells and takes a hostage. Everyone else must wait their turn to meet the Keeper.

Once her Han is free, they won’t be kept waiting for long. Her plan is so tantalizingly close to fruition that every time she looks at Darken Rahl, she sees him burned skinless, mouth gaping in a scream until he literally explodes. And so Nicci watches him tonight, lapping and subservient like the ungifted dog he is, and she smiles.

******

In the People’s Palace conference hall, three people scribble and read and fuss over paperwork as twilight darkens tall windows. Servants discreetly light a dozen more lanterns, fill water jugs, replace drying inkwells, and vanish. Work for these three scribblers will likely continue through the night in preparation for tomorrow’s reception, welcoming officials and dignitaries from all across the territories to a week-long diplomatic summit.

Not one of them looks forward to this gathering. At least one of the three will gladly skip it, given a valid excuse.

Lord Richard Rahl sits at one end of the ornate mahogany table, giving final review to a farmland sharing agreement between two unfriendly cities. Successful mediation would mean food and profitable trade for thousands, but Richard’s frustration over the entrenched, unreasonable demands from one side is such that he wonders if D’Hara would even miss them.

“Can we do without Echannel?” he asks while stretching his back and yawning. “They take too much in dry goods and meat, and then never deliver anything of solid value in barter.”

Cara, commander of the D’Haran military, and the Lord Rahl’s personal Mord’Sith guard and friend, bites her tongue to hold back a tart reply. Her post at the table center is marked by neat piles of lists. She likes lists, and since her generals like their jobs, they have learned how to keep close track of resources and disbursements.

To her left is a used quill stained with indigo ink; to her right, a capped golden inkwell with a clean quill, and two journey books. Cara impatiently taps her gloved fingers against the naked pages of one volume. She expects two messages tonight and both are tardy.

At the far end of the long table sits Richard’s lovely and patient wife, Kahlan, the Mother Confessor who governs the Midlands. Her brow is creased from frowning hours spent reviewing and editing similar treaties and agreements. She glances at Cara and notes her sullen frustration, then gifts Richard with a tired smile.

“I’m unfamiliar with Echannel,” she admits. “What do they trade?”

Richard pauses awkwardly with his mouth hanging open. Cara looks up from a quartermaster inventory and provides a blunt answer: “Diseased whores.”

“Cara!” Richard cries, wincing toward his bride as if those words would scorch her tender ears.

“What? Everyone knows they’re the chief coastal exporter of low-quality sex workers.”

“I didn’t know,” says Kahlan, shrugging a little.

“You wouldn’t know,” Cara confirms. “Beautiful women never pay for sex.”

Punchy from endless review of Midland tariff laws, Kahlan yawns and hides a smile behind her hand. “I must be tired, because that almost sounded flattering.”

Cara snickers, and it almost turns into a yawn. All this paperwork is torturous, but she’ll be damned if these two will outlast her. “You must be very, very tired if you’re fishing for compliments from me.”

“Please. I would never poach from private waters,” Kahlan quips, nodding toward the journey books. The Mord’Sith glares, which only makes the Confessor lean forward - chin on palm - and engage further. “Tell me, how did you learn the relative quality of Echannel’s unhygienic specialty?”

Cara slumps and casually riffles her golden hair. “Not by first-hand experience, if that’s what you want to know,” she says. “As I mentioned, beautiful women needn’t spend a farthing for pleasure.”

Kahlan puckers her mouth, sourly amused by Cara’s robust ego. “So how, then?”

“Soldiers gossip like old women,” Cara answers. “It’s common knowledge that troops return from that garrison pissing arrowheads, with their cocks blistered like cauliflower.”

With a loud snort and a bright blush, Kahlan covers her mouth and folds double laughing.

“Cara! That’s enough!” Richard yelps, looking even more like a scandalized schoolmaster.

“I’m only speaking the truth.” Cara points an accusing finger at Kahlan. “Besides, her majesty over there started it.”

The Mother Confessor, still shaking and jolly red, raises a hand to take responsibility. “I should have known better. Spirits, why did I even ask?”

“When you are bored of late, you amuse yourself by trying to unsettle me,” Cara blandly reasons. “But you’ll need a different topic. We can talk about sex all night - I won’t turn pink and duck my head.”

“I concede,” Kahlan says, sitting up straight and wiping away tears of laughter. “So, when is Dahlia due back?”

“Three days,” Cara says, and nothing more.

Since ending her curious business arrangement with the bedeviled Baron Alphonse Danton, Dahlia is free to pursue entrepreneurial efforts abroad. She has been on the road for almost two weeks, hawking her own stringed instrument teaching system in nearby towns. The simplified method relies on finger placement charts rather than written music and theory, and it's selling rather well. Dahlia reports earning excellent money, though her absence is driving Cara to distraction.

Kahlan smiles to herself. “She’ll be home before you know it. Maybe then we’ll finally be allowed to talk with the woman.”

“You’ve spoken,” Cara glumly protests.

“Shouted greetings as you’re whisking her out the door do not count as conversation,” Richard rebuts. “If she’s going to be around for a while, we’d like to know her better.”

“Or know her at all,” Kahlan adds.

Cara opens her mouth, but she cannot muster a proper defense. She’s kept Dahlia to herself for three months and does feel some guilt over her behavior, but there is such decadent luxury in having sole title to something wondrous. After so many years of communal everything, a season of private bliss does not seem too much to ask.

And yet, a complex fear lurks behind that simple truth: should she draw Dahlia fully into her world, Cara knows disaster will surely follow. She cannot shake this dread, cannot explain to her friends how it feels like an unpaid debt, an IOU in the Keeper’s clawed fist. She wonders if all reformed blackguards try to conceal any happiness rather than risk it being torn away as deferred justice.

Gregarious Dahlia, who hugs dirty children on the street and flirts with toothless old men in taverns, has indulged Cara’s reticence to socialize as a couple - perhaps for too long. Habits ingrained are harder to break, and a hermitage romance can become a prison if lovers never venture outside. Maybe if she starts with something very, very small…

Cara takes a breath and almost whines before speaking. “Dahlia wishes to know you, as well,” she admits. “I suppose we could arrange something. A meal, maybe. Once she’s home.”

“Which is when, again? Three days?” Kahlan asks, suddenly sounding very chipper.

She suspects the Confessor is already plotting some candlelit double-date dinner, and it’s a measure of how much Cara misses Dahlia that the thought of such an evening doesn’t make her skin crawl.

Richard taps a quill on the inkwell rim and clears his throat. “No word on that other matter?”

Cara meets his eyes and shakes her head. Her second journey book also remains blank. “The scouts work in full dark. They’ll report soon.”

As she speaks, a tiny circle with a tall stem appears on the journey book page beneath her hand - a half-note symbol in the top left corner which indicates a message from a singer, not a soldier.

Her smile is automatic, a muscular reflex. Tap her knee and Cara will kick; likewise, word from Dahlia makes her lips twitch into funny, disobedient curves. Her amused companions take note and return to their drudgery, granting her the quasi-privacy of the ignored.

Cara removes a glove and dips a quill in the golden inkwell, generously coating the feather tip with her blood. There is no need to be conservative, even with such precious ink. Half of a pair, this enchanted inkwell was gifted by a certain matchmaking wizard, and Dahlia has its mate. Once filled with the blood of two lovers, the gilt wells do not run dry so long as both hearts beat.

Although Zedd, too, advocates for a more public relationship, the wizard keenly intuits Cara’s fear of loss and usually supplies his friend with more support than pressure. When he presented the inkwells just before Dahlia set out on her trip, Cara thanked him and gripped the old man’s arm hard enough to bruise.

In the top right corner, she replies to Dahlia’s hollow half-note with a solid whole note. The distance between them shrinks to nothing as words steal across the page.

Good news: 50 more units sold in Hargrove Mill! Will you still want me when I’m wildly rich?

At first, her eyes simply caress the words, enjoying the efficient beauty of Dahlia’s penmanship. Cara wants to reply - I will not. Therefore, you should come home immediately. - but sarcasm does not translate well in short messages.

-- Certainly. Just don’t change. The rich are often bizarre.

…says the Mord’Sith. ☺ I miss you, Cara. This bed feels too empty, and there’s a chill rising from the river .

-- Where are you staying? Is it safe?

Safe as anywhere. A councilman’s family invited me (and my retinue of faithful guards) to stay overnight. We’re atop the water, in the old mill house.

Cara smiles, gladdened that Dahlia has seemingly forgiven her for sending three armed men to ride along on this “simple little business trip.” She swiftly changes the subject, lest the complaints of overkill and paranoia resume.

-- I’m mastering the Quatrain for the reception. Steps are difficult, but I will succeed.

Naturally, for you are unstoppable. Yet the Ansara is a difficult dance to learn from naught; I wish I were there to partner you. How are your toes?

This prompts a rueful sigh. Cara has been practicing with Zedd, who tramples her feet as a matter of course.

-- Flattening by degrees. I greatly doubt Richard will test our bond by forcing me to dance with some grubby official tomorrow night. I do this only to humor you.

Consider me humored, brave diplomat. Promise to dance with me when I get home?

That’s an easy promise to make. Cara closes her eyes and imagines holding Dahlia in the empty Palace ballroom. The singer hums the ancient Ansaran melody, and her voice vines around Cara’s heart like honeysuckle. She can almost feel their bodies roll apart and return, crushing tighter with each sequence as the Quatrain circles curl and merge.

She dreams for a few seconds too long, and looks down to find a series of pointy-looking question marks on the page. Her belated answer reaches across the leagues like a careful caress.

-- I am dancing with you now. Tonight, and always.

After several moments pass, Cara sees her own name appear three times in a line. Each word kisses the next with a plump ‘X’. Heat surges across her cheeks. She touches one rusty cross with a bare fingertip and brushes it against her mouth; the hint of thirteen day old blood from her quill tastes lively and fresh. Best to end this now, she realizes, before her thoughts slip the leash and run wild.

-- Rest now. Dream of better climes to warm your sleep.

I wish it was that simple. My dreams may touch beaches, deserts, summer fields... I’m only warm sleeping in your arms.

Cara reads the words twice over and immediately wants to ride through the night to Hargrove Mill, to fold herself around Dahlia in that cold borrowed bed and take her until sunrise... but she can't go. Thoughts of obligations and duties rush in, and the romantic impulse drifts apart like a windswept cloud. She stares at the page until a half-note caps the last line, indicating Dahlia has signed off for the night.

She twirls her quill and thinks to write more - perhaps only three words more - for Dahlia to find later, but Cara slowly veers away from the neatened sentiment. Upon consideration, the words always seem puny, inadequate to convey her level of commitment.

Dahlia never complains of her silence, and does not use the words casually herself to suggest some inequity of devotion; she would rather give love than speak it, and Cara is the same. She ponders the incalculable luck of being loved just as she is, by someone who understands the value of action and steadfast desire, and Cara feels a deep sense of gratitude.

The corner of her eye itches; she swipes her gloved thumb over the lid and it comes away wet. Cara hardly has time to feel foolish before her attention jumps to the second journey book: dire words form, and her scouts report that trouble is afoot.

“Richard,” she says, firmly enough to grab his attention. “They’re gathering.”

He drops his quill, levels a bright stare. “Where? And how many?”

“Greyfall,” she says, and her voice cracks slightly. She takes a steadying breath. “Intercepted messages say that twenty armed men will ride for Eringaard at first light.”

His face quickly sheds all signs of mature exhaustion, and Richard Rahl looks like the Seeker again, like a naïve boy setting out on a valiant mission. Cara is strangely happy to see him like this.

Kahlan, conversely, appears resigned to worry. “You’re going.”

“I don’t have a choice,” says Richard, although that isn’t strictly true. He rushes to her and kisses her hair, whispers private words into her ear.

Kahlan takes his face between her palms, kisses him goodbye properly, and watches him run from the room like a freed colt. She sniffles a little and turns serious blue eyes toward Cara. “He says he must go, then assures me this is nothing serious. How can both things be true?”

Cara can’t even remember the last time she felt like lying to Kahlan. She answers with speed and candor. “These men are among Darken Rahl’s hard loyalists, and they plan to assassinate you and Richard at the reception tomorrow night,” she recounts. “They may be dangerous professionals or deluded imbeciles - at this point, I cannot say. I do know that Richard will never trust your safety to others.”

Kahlan’s shoulders tremble as she appears to fight back tears. Cara approaches and kneels by her chair. “And you know that I will spend my last breath protecting him,” she whispers.

“I do… but guard your own safety,” she says, squeezing Cara's hand and glancing toward her golden inkwell. “I expect you both back here by tomorrow night, intact and clean, if possible.”

Cara gives a weak smile. They stand together and she cannot help staring at Kahlan’s growing belly, evidence that two fated lovers had been unable to wait until their wedding night. A Rahl child will come this fall, a daughter born of the Mother Confessor and the Seeker of Truth.

A tiny ache flares inside Cara’s chest at the thought of this innocent babe and all the joy it may bring, and all the heartache and suffering such a child will surely endure. She will need a citadel full of protectors just to survive her own heritage.

“I’ll bring him back,” Cara promises. “The little one will know you both, for many years.”

“And you,” adds Kahlan. “And maybe Dahlia?”

Cara rolls her eyes and lurches for the door. “Pregnancy has made you a busybody.”

“My friend, you really have no idea,” Kahlan mutters. She unearths a journey book from beneath a stack of tariff agreements, cheats a dip of blood from that endless golden inkwell, and draws an intricate symbol atop one blank page. Soon, a half-note appears alongside, and a secret correspondence resumes.

**

Cara stands near the dewy bank of the Lleyton River and thoroughly ignores the water. For her, in this moment, there simply is no river. Concealed behind a stout oak she looks steadily east, up slate cliffs toward the dawn-lit silhouette of Greyfall, a former Mord’Sith temple which now houses an ignoble nest of rats.

These ambitious rodents are unaware that their mission of murder was sniffed out weeks earlier. Cara has waited patiently for them to pick a rally point and mass up so that she might boil all the vermin in one pot.

The barest shuffling of leaves underfoot alerts her to Richard’s presence. He huddles close, peering over her shoulder. Cara withdraws fully behind the tree and whispers an update. “Scouts still number them at twenty, mostly regular infantry with a few civilians.”

Richard tries to squelch his eager grin. “Are the corpsmen in place?” he asks, while stroking the leathered handle of the Sword of Truth like the weapon is a beast he’s trying to gentle down.

Cara nods. Her handpicked thirteen-man Dragon Corps squad waits invisible on the temple grounds, and a dozen second tier troops are fanning around the perimeter to capture any runners. They should win the day handily, but she cannot help worrying for Richard.

“Your presence here is strategically unwise,” she announces. ““You have a child on the way, Seeker, and half an empire to manage. Not to mention a powerful wife who will crush both of us if you suffer a hangnail.”

“The manicure was Kahlan’s idea,” Richard grumbles, checking his cuticles and overtly ignoring her salient points. “Sometimes I miss the road. I never once thought about my fingernails when we were traveling.”

Cara didn’t expect him to turn around and ride home, but she had to make one last appeal to his good judgment before letting it go. “A little grooming is good for a man,” she opines, while the last of her backline infantry squad creep into position near the courtyard boundaries. “You do smell different these days.”

He chuckles and shakes his head. “Thanks.”

“I said different, not better,” Cara reminds him. “Any more of that pretty cologne and we’d have to approach the tower through a headwind.”

Richard surreptitiously sniffs himself and makes a grumpy face. Cara nods, confirming that he does indeed smell like a prowling catamite. “A little grooming,” she reiterates.

With all their men in place, she flashes a signal to a lookout perched near the cliff edge and he cracks one sharply whistled note. Buried Dragon Corps raiders rise from the ground all around the main tower, shedding their cover of stones and soil like resurrected Banelings. These silent dusty shadows breach the tower at multiple weak points plotted by their Mord’Sith commander, who served two tumultuous years in that bleak institution of learning and knows every crevice which might permit a roach into Greyfall.

“No! They’re going in too soon!” Richard hotly whispers. He squints for a single confused moment, and then shoots a suspicious look at Cara. “You told them to advance without me?”

“Of course I told them to advance without you,” Cara replies, as if this is the dumbest question she’s ever heard. “Don’t hold your breath waiting for an apology.”

Richard grits out a frustrated smile, acknowledging that no one has that much breath. “Cara, those who remain loyal to my brother must see that I can still fight my own battles - and win. They are less likely to attack if they respect me,” he says. “Now let’s go!”

He claps her on the back and sprints for the cliff path, voicing prayers that the fray will last long enough for him to join in. Cara frowns and lopes after him, sure-footed and quick upon the loose rocks.

All the while, her eyes avoid the water. This is no time to send her thoughts downstream.

**

They race into the temple side by side and splash through a blood pool deep enough to cover their boot soles. In the front hall, a near score of D’Haran traitors are already gutted and spilling across the stone floor; some groan for help, others beg for a merciful death as their pain lingers on.

They will be granted neither favor by Cara. Richard seems equally unmoved by their pleas, as his eyes fix hard on a round of dead men wearing his armor and colors.

In the room center, six Dragon Corpsmen lay in a wide circle, as if they surrounded one foe and fell to the devil’s blade. These men were all gravely wounded and then cleanly decapitated. The single stroke through muscle and bone betrays the presence of at least one very skilled killer - a killer who knows the Breath of Life is quite useless to the beheaded.

Cara lifts a brow and tilts her head. “Their numbers were confirmed. We misjudged their abilities.”

“I should’ve been here,” Richard snarls, gripping his sword. A faint glow shimmers at the blade’s center, light born of his anger.

A few other corpsmen lie partly hidden amid the traitors, though the status and whereabouts of their heads is unknown. Richard gestures toward the visible boots and greaves of his soldiers. “If you can revive them, do it and then join me,” he orders.

Leaving Cara no time to argue, Richard bolts down the central staircase, chasing the sounds of battle into Greyfall’s sublevels. Cara holsters one agiel and swiftly checks four bodies. While they have retained their heads, their throats are slashed wide and their veins are dry and flat. She cannot help them.

By her count, eighteen of twenty D’Harans fell here, along with ten of her thirteen highly trained fighters… and Richard is running headlong toward their killer. Cara follows his path toward the lowest level of Greyfall, a stifling, slate-tiled bathing chamber which now holds the hot beating heart of the melee.

Along the western wall furthest from the bathing pool, two headless corpsmen and one slashed D’Haran gush life onto the floor. Mere feet away, Richard and the lone remaining Dragon have cornered a cyclone - a stocky and shirtless murder machine twirling two slender swords with the skill of an artist.

Shoeless and bald, he wears only torn and rusty trousers and appears no more fit than the average farmer. A plain and wide iron band guards his throat from collarbone to chin. His dark eyes move independently, like some goggling lizard tracking two separate targets with equal perception.

In Richard’s hands, the Sword of Truth glows brightly now, and the sight makes Cara’s agiels burn like coals in her fists. She is smiling, in her element, and racing downstairs to help separate man from soul, even while she senses that something is very wrong. Cara has a foggy familiarity with the assailant’s hypermobility, his acute spatial awareness, and that iron collar around his neck, but she can’t stop and think long enough to put it all together.

The fighter has Richard fully engaged with a right hand blade while the corpsman struggles to keep pace with his equally dexterous left. Sparks peel off and die fast in the steaming air. Among these three men, blows are dealt and parried in smeared motion, and steel on steel rings out fast as a military tattoo.

The Dragon ducks under a headsman’s swing; the slim blade clips his helmet and sends it flying. Cara then recognizes the young man as one of her best - a black-haired firebrand called Caleb - and knows a flash of pride at his survival.

Yards away and closing, Cara spies the faded broad scar which vertically bisects the swordsman’s bare torso, neck, and face. On seeing this scar, all mystery dies - she knows what killed those soldiers upstairs, and knows this thing will kill Richard if she doesn’t act quickly. Cara leaps from the staircase and dives into a headlong slide across the damp, rugged floor, grinding to a supine halt with her upper body between Caleb’s feet.

With one hand, she slams both agiels against the enemy swordsman’s groin, and he roars in fury. With her free hand, Cara focuses her subverting energy to pull and twist the centerline magic powering this frenzied fighter’s body, but the energy is buried deep and dodges her grasp like squirming snakes.

Besieged and pressured on three fronts - one of them supernatural - the scarred man breaks off battling Caleb and arcs one blade toward Cara’s arms. Richard swiftly parries the blow away, and the deflected sword tip slices through Cara’s gloved palm. Blood mist sprays her eyes and she does not waver.

In his one freed beat, the Dragon Corpsman rips his sword across the beast’s belly, raking open a gaping wound. In the next beat, the swordsman jabs his left blade straight through Caleb’s undefended chest, piercing his heart in one stroke.

The young man’s trained body resists death, fights and denies it for as long as possible. Caleb wobbles for a few moments and clutches at the slim blade buried in his chest, trapping it to buy Cara precious time. He looks at the swordsman’s belly and grunts angrily - the wound is not even bleeding. Discouraged and spent, Caleb slides off the sword and falls away.

These costly open seconds allow the Mord’Sith to tear at the enchantments stitching this unreal swordsman together. When his midline scar glows like a fresh burn and his left arm dips and trembles, Cara pivots onto her feet. She blocks one weak sword hack and drives both agiels against his heart, instantly frying it inside his chest.

He bellows wildly as his port side goes lax and dies; that rolling eye spins white, and the left hand blade clatters to the floor. Sympathetic tremors sweep through his right side, and that winged starboard sword finally slows against Richard’s blade.

Cara lunges for the man’s live arm, smashing his weapon low with two batons and opening a clean route for Richard to take his throat. In a flash of red, the irresistible Sword of Truth swings free, slicing through iron collar and neck like a thick-rind melon. His second thin blade, freshly stained red, clangs to the floor, followed by the bastard’s hideous head.

Cara spins away from the standing corpse, and Richard kicks the body down among the dead. He takes a few deep breaths and turns to Cara with a dumbfounded expression.

“Guess the scouts couldn’t have warned us about… whatever that is,” he says, pointing at the swordsman’s severed head. The right eye is still turning, tracking Richard’s every move.

Cara takes one long step and punts the head away into a corner. Her left hand drips red. She keeps one arm tucked tight against her ribs to stanch blood flow from a second wound, received while smothering the swordsman’s dying stroke.

“It’s a Cobbled Man - a composite created when two dead warriors of timeless skill are welded together with dark magic,” she says. “The elder sisters told us stories about them, but it was said they all died fighting for Kenton Rahl. Either this one survived, hidden away somewhere - ”

“Or my brother has gained access to dark magic,” Richard finishes, and neither he nor Cara looks happy about this prospect.

She kneels beside the last Dragon’s body and summons strength, giving him the Breath. Caleb rouses back to life in a flurry of fists and feet, but calms when he looks up into Cara’s steady eyes.

“General?” he says, seeking direction.

“Caleb. You fought well,” she says, with a hinted smile. Cara raps a fist against the split armor over his mended heart. “Summon the perimeter guard and secure the tower. Burden the traitors’ horses with our dead.”

He nods and rolls onto his knees, crawling until he encounters one of the Cobbled Man’s fallen swords. Caleb turns to Cara with a clear question on his face. She holds up a finger, signaling permission to take one fine, slender blade as a souvenir of his first death. He bows to his Lord and exits the chamber with his back straight and head high.

“If this creature was powered by very old magic - Rahl magic - what’s the source?” Richard wonders.

Cara thinks for a moment, ponders and dismisses secret possibilities that Richard would not know to consider, and settles on the most likely option. “Nicci took your Han. If she couldn’t create a Cobbled Man, she could probably locate -”

“Nicci is dead,” Richard snaps, bristling at the mention of her name.

“I only put an arrow through her neck,” Cara reminds him. “We both know such a death can prove impermanent.”

Richard doesn’t respond. He’s gone to thoughts of death and failure, of the forced betrayal and violence Nicci wrought in her last misadventure. The woman was unstable, and when her own magic combined with Han she obtained from Richard, her terrible power subverted Confession, made Mord’Sith butcher each other, and pushed Kahlan to murder her true love. It’s hard for Cara to believe a single arrow could lay the bitch down forever.

“Maybe this creature was mere happenstance, an isolated incident,” Cara says, trying to jar Richard from his brooding.

He snorts and shakes his head, unable to embrace this sunny interpretation. This is usually the reaction she gets for attempts at positivity, which is why she rarely bothers. Cara shrugs and turns away.

She lifts a dagger from a fallen soldier and slices off her ruined glove. One agiel is gripped tight, screaming and smoking as her palm wound closes. Like dousing wrought metal in a smith’s water bucket, she bears the hurt away deep inside and quenches the pain in cool thoughts. She breathes in slowly and her nose wrinkles; no amount of inner strength can sweeten the smell of burnt flesh.

“You’re really hurt,” Richard belatedly notices, wincing at the long gash across her torso.

“As are you.” Cara steps closer and taps the dagger against Richard’s bleeding thigh, arm, and shoulder. “And there’s a split low on the back of your vest. Take it off, let me see.”

“I think I’m okay,” Richard says, though he’s still so keyed-up and tense that Cara doesn’t believe him. He’ll feel it soon enough. Meanwhile, she needs to take care of herself.

Blood has soaked her suit; she slices the ties along the right side of her leathers and peels them open. Even the visible cut terminus is deeper than she thought, and sealing it will hurt like a son of a bitch. This new wound, combined with the aggregate of mended tears and splits from a year’s travel and combat, has effectively trashed her suit. No point in mourning the loss, since even durable Mord’Sith garb wasn’t meant to last forever.

Cara hurriedly cuts more ties, sheds every stitch, and stands naked and gory before her flummoxed Lord Rahl. Richard’s eyes yank toward the ceiling. “What - what are you doing?”

“Exploiting available resources,” she says. “Without this bath, Greyfall is a glorified storage closet. The enchanted mineral waters interact with the agiels for faster healing.” She lays her weapons at the pool edge and steps off, splashing in up to her chest. “You should try it.”

He swallows, looks around the room populated with dead men (and one cobbled together head with a roving eye - but that’s facing the wall), and starts to waver. “Yeah, but… we don’t really have time?”

“It’s a long ride home,” says Cara, splashing and scrubbing blood off her face. “The Palace will soon fill with very important people longing to bask in your regal presence. Do you really want to show up filthy, bleeding, and smelling like a kept boy?”

Richard sighs, conceding the point. “Kahlan would kill me.”

“Unlikely,” Cara sniffs. “At worst, she would chastise you and refuse intimacy.”

“Then I’d kill myself,” he says, grinning and quickly shedding his clothes. Richard finally feels that back wound, for he grimaces and grunts while removing his vest and shirt. Once naked, he shyly covers his groin and jumps into the pool, making a crazily obnoxious amount of noise.

It’s an effective tactic. If Cara had any lingering designs on her Lord Rahl’s lean young body, the sight of him cupping his balls and plunging clumsily into Greyfall’s sacred bathing pool would have iced her libido into deepest winter. She feels only a clean, fraternal affection for the man, and it’s very freeing.

“This is neat,” Richard says, pointing out the overflow drain and feeder spouts which keep the water cycling clean. “And necessary, I guess, for a communal bath.”

“Indeed. If the baths aren’t clean, the Mord’Sith aren’t happy. And when the Mord’Sith aren’t happy...”

“It’s a pretty typical day?” Richard guesses, and ducks under the water as Cara whacks a splash his way. While he’s under, her frown inverts to a tiny smile.

As Richard surfaces, Cara reaches for her agiels and gives him a look of warning. She submerges both weapons and a wave of noxious magic tickles through the pool. When the sensation - a cross of oil-burn and wicked nausea - hits him, Richard’s eyes widen, but he gestures for her to proceed.

Cara grits her teeth and looks down. Blood plumes from her torso, floating red clouds through the water. She traces the agiel points slowly across her split skin, grafting it back together with far less anguish than such a wound merits.

When it is finished, she lays the agiels aside and clings to the side of the pool, breathing shallow and willing away a need to vomit. Richard’s hand lights on her back, a spot of warm comfort amid the pain. He doesn’t speak until Cara steadies and lifts her head.

“I'm a little out of practice enduring the agiels, and Kahlan told me once how much the mending hurts,” he says. “So… don’t tell her if I get sick. That’s an order.”

Her mouth flattens and she can't help rolling her eyes. With no warning, Cara lances one agiel underwater and lays it against his deep thigh wound. Richard gasps and clenches his jaw, trapping agonized rumbles in his throat. The nicks on his arm and shoulder are not so deep and mend more easily. The savage slash across his lower back is another matter.

“Saved the best for last, eh?” Richard’s voice sounds like he’s eaten sand.

“Sorry,” Cara says shortly. “Turn around and lean over. I’ll be quick.”

“Always the romantic,” he jests, right before the teasing gives way to screaming. The agiel digs into his nerves and uproots a raw and honest cry of hurt, which echoes off stone walls, up stairs, and into the ears of every loyal soldier in the temple.

When the wound is closed and Richard shakes himself quiet, Cara leans close and whispers in his ear: “Just so you know - Kahlan didn’t scream.”

Richard only lays his cheek against the tiles and loudly moans profanities.

At this opportune moment, a fast gang of six soldiers arrives in the bathing chamber with their blades up and ready. Instead of an enemy warrior threatening the Lord Rahl’s life, they find him naked and bent over the edge of a pool, with his trusted and equally nude Mord’Sith second raising an agiel from the water near his backside.

The soldiers look away with such speed that some of them sprain neck muscles. Then come the apologies, the pleas for mercy, and the awkward retreat upstairs.

“This isn’t what it looks like!” Richard calls out.

Cara scrubs up a bit and exits the bath, laughing silently. Richard keeps trying to tell her this isn’t funny, but she knows better. By the time dinner is served at the Palace tonight, the new Lord Rahl’s sexual peccadilloes will be quite a hot topic.

“Kahlan won’t believe it,” she tells him. “That’s all that matters.”

He shuts his eyes and hides underwater. Cara looks around for something to wear and imagines Dahlia merrily lecturing her about the convenience of robes and dressing gowns. She slips on Richard’s discarded leather vest, which covers her to mid-thigh, and sets off to procure clean clothing. A shouted order to Caleb secures military garments for Richard, but his smug Mord’Sith dominatrix has more specific needs.

Part Two