There was a promotion waiting for Jheraal when she got back to Westcrown. It was the third she’d received for success in a high-profile investigation, and she was beginning to hope there wouldn’t be another. Praise was rare from her superiors, and promotions rarer. This one, to a lecturer’s position in Citadel Demain, was a considerable gift. It would mean much less danger, and much less unpredictability, than her work as an investigator. It would put her closer to Indrath, too.
Nevertheless, Jheraal preferred to remain in the field. At this stage in her career, promotions meant politics, and that was a game she didn’t care for. Better to stay on the streets, where she could serve with clear conscience, and where her talents might actually matter.
There was also a commendation signed by Queen Abrogail, although quite likely the document had been written by a lesser functionary copying from a form. Still, it had been personally signed by Her Imperial Majestrix—no one would dare falsify the queen’s signature—and that was an honor that few Hellknights received in their careers.
Beyond that, she’d received invitations to a dozen dinners and parties being hosted by minor nobles of Egorian and Westcrown, a handful of discreet inquiries wondering whether she might be amenable to hiring out for private investigations, and a letter from Indrath, sealed with a thumbprint in candle wax.
Jheraal tossed the invitations and inquiries into the wastebasket beside her desk, placed the promotion and commendation aside in a position of respect, and, with great care, opened her daughter’s letter.
Dear Jheraal! Did you really fight Lictor Shokneir? And win? In Citadel Demain they say you’re a hero, that you stormed Citadel Gheisteno with a paladin and the Lady Thrune and killed all the graveknights and saved the souls of hellspawn. Is it true? Really? I want to know everything …
She read the letter, read it again, and then pressed the paper to her chest in silent joy.
For once, Jheraal knew what to write back. For once, she had a story that flowed freely from her hand. A gift she could send her bright-eyed daughter, with love. And truth.
Dear Indrath, she wrote, her pen moving with a speed and confidence she’d never felt before, it is all true, and I will tell you everything …
About this. About this, she could.
“I have a proposal,” Ederras said, late at night in his vaneo.
“Do tell.” Velenne folded a hand under her cheek, watching him with avarice and appreciation. She was smiling, slightly, in the heavy-lidded way that she had when she was well content with the world. And with him.
He didn’t doubt those smiles anymore. After all they’d endured, and all they’d shared, he had few doubts of any kind remaining where she was concerned.
“Stay with me in Westcrown. Become the lady of my house.”
“Oh.” She laughed, rolling onto her back and letting her hair trail across the pillows. “Are you proposing marriage to me, Ederras Celverian?”
“That’s a terrible mistake.”
“It might be.” He curled a dark lock around his finger, drawing it to his lips.
“It really is, dearest. I warn you now out of love and affection. This was predicted a month ago in Egorian—you don’t need to know by whom—and I was authorized to accept. From which it logically follows that any such proposal is advantageous to House Thrune and therefore, probably, not so much to you.”
“You can always decline if you’re afraid of hurting me.”
“Yes, that’s always been a paramount concern of mine. You’re as delicate as a summer peach.” She regarded him with great amusement, tracing her nails along his wrist before digging them into his inner arm, hard, without warning. “Did you learn nothing from Kelvax’s folly?”
He let go of her hair and caught her hand, bending it back until he saw the strain, and the satisfaction, on her face. “I did learn a few things, actually. Assuming, of course, that the paravicar wasn’t just lying.”
“Let’s assume she wasn’t. What would you say then?”
Ederras released her wrist. “That Kelvax should have kept her close, if that was what he wanted. You can’t just lecture at someone for a few years, let them go off into the world, and expect all your teachings to be retained forever. The cultivation of virtue is ongoing. It has to be. Every day it’s an effort, or else it fails. And he should have been honest with himself about what he wanted, and why. Then, I think, much grief might have been avoided.”
“Or not.” Velenne’s smile took on a reflective, wistful cast. She rubbed her wrist where he’d bent it. Less, he thought, to relieve the ache than to accentuate it. “You won’t always be able to keep me close. I do have duties elsewhere. Other allegiances, other obligations. I cannot reconcile those with you. With what you are. I won’t ask you to try, either.”
“You’ve managed it these past few months. Is it really so impossible?”
“Months aren’t years, and Westcrown isn’t Nidal.” She leaned up on an elbow to kiss him. “It’s tempting to imagine, that I’ll grant. But I’m not sure it’s anything I can promise you. Understand, please, that these are my own reservations. My superiors don’t care so much about preserving your fragile virtue. It’s control of your house they want.”
He touched her cheek, marveling at the grace of her, at the play of shadows across her skin and the fine beauty of her bones. She was such a strange creature, so fragile and so ferocious. So different from what he’d first thought of her, and yet so much the same. “What about what you want?”
“I want many things. They don’t all fit nicely together.” Velenne pressed against his hand, briefly, then pulled away with a sigh. “Allow me time to think on it. If I agree, we’ll have to negotiate terms. Including a house in Egorian. Westcrown is too much a backwater for me to stay here year-round.”
“A house is fine. I’m not getting you another ring, though.”
“No. Of course not.” Languidly she lifted her hand over her head, letting the diamond catch the moonlight. “I’m quite fond of this one. I always have been, you know.”
“I know,” he said. “I do know that.”
A young man in an alley, relieving himself of too much wine.
There was a courtesan in the house waiting for him, and two guards posted by the door. But the night was too cold for the lady to venture outside, and the guards stood in a spill of lantern light that left them blind to the dark. None of them would interfere.
Even if they’d seen her, and even if they’d heard, there was nothing any of them could do to stop her. If they tried, it would simply mean four deaths, not one.
The courtesan stayed in her warm feather bed. The guards stayed in the light. And Sechel unfolded herself from the alley’s shadows, and death came to the night.
She took the youth’s signet ring when it was done. A heavy piece of gold, its face engraved with some house sigil. Napaciza, maybe, or Charthagnion. Sechel didn’t bother keeping track. Her employer had wanted it, and so she had taken it, and that was her only concern.
Maybe he’d been an inconvenient heir. Maybe he’d been an unwelcome suitor. Maybe he’d just made the mistake of slighting someone’s favorite racehorse or gladiator or scented dancing girl. It didn’t take much to die in Cheliax sometimes.
Who the young man was, and why he’d been chosen, made no difference to her. Sechel didn’t care who the corpse behind her might have been.
She didn’t care who she might have been, either, except that it hadn’t happened, and so a road had been closed in her life.
But what did that matter? Many roads were closed to her, and none of them were of consequence. Each mortal was given only one path to tread, anyway. One set of choices. One life, one line.
Hers was one she knew how to walk.
There was a peace in that. In knowing. In accepting. It had been foolish to imagine anything else. To pretend.
I am what I am, Sechel thought, wiping the blood from her knife, and what I always will be.