All you have to do is keep out of trouble for the duration of this party while **** performs and makes contact with the captain you’ve told can get you off of this continent. That sounded easy enough, but it turns out you’re not the only ones at this event with an ulterior motive.
The stranger is beautiful-faced, lithe, graceful, and he’s paying more attention to **** and your hosts then you’d like. Considering you think you saw your former co-worker *** **** in the crowd, you’re not inclined to take chances. When the stranger slips off to the private quarters of the household, you take your tray of drinks and follow, taking refuge in the relative invisibility of the borrowed black linen servants’ garb you’re wearing.
Only now you realize the place you’ve followed him to: the rooms of the lord of the house. And the stranger is nowhere to be seen.
Shit. This definitely feels like trouble.
“I-is someone there,” you call, setting the drinks on a side table to leave your hands free. Places one might hide: the wardrobe? Behind the folding screen?
...under the bed?
You stoop to look—and he's out in a flash, rolling to a half-kneel with a long golden needle sliding from his sleeve, and you back up a half-step in surprise. "Stay quiet," he says, in a voice like silk covering steel. "I have no grudge with you."
"Ah—" You frown. If he's not here for you... "Who... do you have a grudge with, then?"
The man relaxes slightly, though he still holds his needle at the ready. "I should think that would have been obvious by now."
All right, fair. You stay quiet for a long moment, thinking it over. "How much trouble is this going to cause?"
He seems relieved at your question—or at least the fact that you don't seem to have much of a stake in stopping him. "Trouble tonight?" He shakes his head, sending his long, silken black hair swaying. "None at all. Trouble tomorrow? My hope is that it cures some of that."
You let yourself slump against the wall. Why does this always happen?
"Can you bring me Isymaias?" he asks, naming the lord of the house—the man whose room you're currently dallying in.
"Can I bring him to you?" You shake your head. "Uh—I'm not sure how, I mean... I don't know where he is?"
He furrows his brow in confusion. "You're one of his servants, aren't you? Can you tell him there's a disturbance elsewhere? Or can you get me near him?"
"I'm really only temporary staff, I—"
Footsteps in the hallway. You both freeze, and then he rolls back under the bed in one fluid movement, leaving you alone in the room. Fuck. You're not great at hiding—it's hard to hide someone of your height—so you pick up your tray of drinks to look vaguely like you're doing something legitimate.
It doesn't really do much for you, although you guess the stranger sure got his wish, because the guards flanking Isymaias pin your shoulders to the wall without you being able to get a word in edgewise. "I was just—"
The man himself gestures to an attendant for his sword. "You'll imagine my surprise when one of my guests tells me the bodyguard of my charming musical guest has wandered out of the kitchens and into my private suite." Silently, you curse *** ****; of course he wouldn't be content to watch you from afar. "Who are you really? I won't ask twice."
You flinch. "I'm no one," you protest. "Only who I said I was—I saw someone come in here and followed—"
"****? ****—what's my bodyguard done, Lord Isymaias? I assure you—" ****'s heard the ruckus, trying to elbow her way in past the guards, but to no avail with her delicate stature, though her voice commands the attention of the room.
Isymaias narrows his eyes at her. "I'll deal with you in a moment," he says. "Seize her; that one will make a pretty caged songbird if she's no escape artist, but this skulduggery ends now. I'd be a fool if I didn't know how the peasants plot against me." He raises his sword, and swings—
It comes to you as easily as breathing. You raise your hands, and something deep and dark answers your call. There's a clang of steel on steel.
The sword that wasn't in your hands a moment before is more than half your height, dark metal with an uncanny sheen across its pristine surface. Whispers rise to your ears, singing of bloodshed to come, of the glorious carnage you were meant for—but you ignore them as you rise to your feet in a defensive stance.
Isymaias takes a step back toward his bed, a thousand half-questions forming and dying on his lips—and then the real assassin strikes.
And the room falls to chaos.
Notable:
Shrike looks very similar to her current appearance in this memory—white-haired, red-eyed, pale and scarred, about the same age.
The woman attempting to vouch for her is the girl from Memory 1 and Memory 3, perhaps five to eight years older than her appearance in Memory 1. She's gotten incredibly striking.
The name the woman uses to refer to Shrike is redacted, but seems to be fewer syllables than the one she previously used.
The former co-worker seems to be the lean, murderous man from Memory 4.
A thing Shrike is aware of: that what she did at the end there was definitely not normal or natural, and that she channeled Essence for it.
memory 006
The stranger is beautiful-faced, lithe, graceful, and he’s paying more attention to **** and your hosts then you’d like. Considering you think you saw your former co-worker *** **** in the crowd, you’re not inclined to take chances. When the stranger slips off to the private quarters of the household, you take your tray of drinks and follow, taking refuge in the relative invisibility of the borrowed black linen servants’ garb you’re wearing.
Only now you realize the place you’ve followed him to: the rooms of the lord of the house. And the stranger is nowhere to be seen.
Shit. This definitely feels like trouble.
“I-is someone there,” you call, setting the drinks on a side table to leave your hands free. Places one might hide: the wardrobe? Behind the folding screen?
...under the bed?
You stoop to look—and he's out in a flash, rolling to a half-kneel with a long golden needle sliding from his sleeve, and you back up a half-step in surprise. "Stay quiet," he says, in a voice like silk covering steel. "I have no grudge with you."
"Ah—" You frown. If he's not here for you... "Who... do you have a grudge with, then?"
The man relaxes slightly, though he still holds his needle at the ready. "I should think that would have been obvious by now."
All right, fair. You stay quiet for a long moment, thinking it over. "How much trouble is this going to cause?"
He seems relieved at your question—or at least the fact that you don't seem to have much of a stake in stopping him. "Trouble tonight?" He shakes his head, sending his long, silken black hair swaying. "None at all. Trouble tomorrow? My hope is that it cures some of that."
You let yourself slump against the wall. Why does this always happen?
"Can you bring me Isymaias?" he asks, naming the lord of the house—the man whose room you're currently dallying in.
"Can I bring him to you?" You shake your head. "Uh—I'm not sure how, I mean... I don't know where he is?"
He furrows his brow in confusion. "You're one of his servants, aren't you? Can you tell him there's a disturbance elsewhere? Or can you get me near him?"
"I'm really only temporary staff, I—"
Footsteps in the hallway. You both freeze, and then he rolls back under the bed in one fluid movement, leaving you alone in the room. Fuck. You're not great at hiding—it's hard to hide someone of your height—so you pick up your tray of drinks to look vaguely like you're doing something legitimate.
It doesn't really do much for you, although you guess the stranger sure got his wish, because the guards flanking Isymaias pin your shoulders to the wall without you being able to get a word in edgewise. "I was just—"
The man himself gestures to an attendant for his sword. "You'll imagine my surprise when one of my guests tells me the bodyguard of my charming musical guest has wandered out of the kitchens and into my private suite." Silently, you curse *** ****; of course he wouldn't be content to watch you from afar. "Who are you really? I won't ask twice."
You flinch. "I'm no one," you protest. "Only who I said I was—I saw someone come in here and followed—"
"****? ****—what's my bodyguard done, Lord Isymaias? I assure you—" ****'s heard the ruckus, trying to elbow her way in past the guards, but to no avail with her delicate stature, though her voice commands the attention of the room.
Isymaias narrows his eyes at her. "I'll deal with you in a moment," he says. "Seize her; that one will make a pretty caged songbird if she's no escape artist, but this skulduggery ends now. I'd be a fool if I didn't know how the peasants plot against me." He raises his sword, and swings—
It comes to you as easily as breathing. You raise your hands, and something deep and dark answers your call. There's a clang of steel on steel.
The sword that wasn't in your hands a moment before is more than half your height, dark metal with an uncanny sheen across its pristine surface. Whispers rise to your ears, singing of bloodshed to come, of the glorious carnage you were meant for—but you ignore them as you rise to your feet in a defensive stance.
Isymaias takes a step back toward his bed, a thousand half-questions forming and dying on his lips—and then the real assassin strikes.
And the room falls to chaos.
Notable: