[P] we all live in a house on fire-

[Seraphina]

TRY TRY YOUR WHOLE LIFE TO BE RIGHTEOUS AND BE GOOD
wind up on your own floor, choking on blood

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The streets of Solterra are quieter than usual.

It is midday, and hot. It is always hot in Solterra – even in the winter, in spite of the rare gusts of cool that come and go from time to time, in spite of the blizzard that ravaged the landscape only months ago. Flies buzz. In the distant, the low, hissing hum of the wind across the sands is barely audible. A few months ago, you would not be able to hear this howl inside of the walls of the capitol. Now, Solterra is hushed – her people muzzled by the monster that sat on the throne, wearing horseflesh. (They speak of him in whispers. He has aligned himself with the Davke. He sunk an entire ship of people, didn’t he? And his lover, that fire-girl. They say she burnt up on Veneror, burnt herself. Someone found what was left. Heard it in whispers. He exiled the Regent, didn’t he? Where did she go, that golden-girl, that Bexley Briar – to lick her wounds? He killed her lover. Did he make her bleed? He makes everyone bleed. And what about Denocte? Does he want us to go to war again? And we remember how it looked, how people would disappear and never come back; how the stalls in the market grew empty. How you would see people drift, on the sides of the road, skeletally thin. And our children. What did it do to our children?)

Everywhere there is residue. People grow thinner. They disappear altogether.

And she is the jackal at his heels, ravenous. She stalks his spies. Kills his soldiers, his guards – without much remorse, save maybe a few tears shed in the dark, when no one is looking. These are her people. Perhaps they are only trying to survive. She is a knife, well-carved and cutting as steel, colder and redder by the day. Violence erodes her like sandpaper; it grates her nerves. She – a girl, delusional – had thought, for a moment, that the violence might be over, eventually. If she fought for it. If she only did enough. But any faith that she had when she began this venture has disappeared like ashes on the wind, leaving behind nothing but an ugly black stain and the memory of smoke; her idealism lies like broken glass all around her, sharp and reflective. There will never be anything else for her, and, even when this is over, she will never be free from what she has done, or what she failed to do. More people are dead; more people are dying. Disappearing. Gone, far from her, out of her grasp – and, every day, it seems that fewer are willing to stand against the blood king, the silver shadow in the throne room.

Then they will die like cowards, perhaps she thinks, because she knows that he will never stop, not with Denocte, not with his supposed allies, not with Solterra – not until he has seen the world crushed to dust beneath his hoof, and it will be no different from the deaths of the brave. She wishes that she could be like Isra, to proudly and blatantly fight the Blood King and his followers; she has heard about her stint in the market. Even with her magic, with her sharp objects and her training, which has never saved her from horrible things before, even with all her years of experience as a leader, she is still too weak to stand alone, to stand in the light; she is resigned to the darkness. (She knows that she will not be Solterra’s savior. She was its ruination. She. Raum. There is no difference; she let him in.) She has no illusions about her own heroism, or the heroism of her followers; she has already seen some of them dead. (Or turn traitor. The thought of Caine makes her skin crawl with disgust, her lips curl at the tips with a tension that borders on resent – almost at herself for being so easily deceived, rather than at him. Still a foolish girl, so easily twisted up and in on herself. Perhaps she’d compliment him on it, before she slit his throat.) At best, he will die. It will not undo the damage that he has already done, will not bring back all the things she struggled to create, will not salvage the lives that have already been lost.

(She thinks of Rhoswen, and something inside of her begs to sob, but she is far too numb to cry. She cannot cry. If she cries, she has already lost. She buries the heart inside of her and smothers it until it is quiet.)

Hope takes years to build. She watched it waver, then fall apart entirely, in the space of months.

She will find a figure that she is seeking on the streets, and she will scribble up a note, sheltered by the relative safety of alley walls; she does not want to provoke the guards. Once written, she will let it drift, twisting her mind around the thin scrap. The slip of paper will slink like a snake on the wind, twirling and sinuous; if offered nothing more than a passing glance, it certainly appears that it is merely being buffeted by the breeze, but, if you follow it with your eyes for a moment or two, you might realize that there is something deliberate to those serpentine movements. The letter will bob and drift until it hangs suspiciously in the air in front of El Toro, lingering tentatively for just long enough for him to grab it.

A look at its contents will provide a simple:

Look up.

If he does as the letter requests, Toro will find himself starting at a dark figure in the middle of the alleyway, shaded by hanging canopies and tall buildings; though she is wrapped in a great expanse of golden scarf that largely obscures her features, if he meets her eyes from across the crowded street, perhaps he will recognize their bizarre, jewel-bright hues. She stands like the reaper, deliberate and solitary, then turns on her heel, disappearing down the alleyway with the slightest nod of her head.

The implication is clear. Follow me.


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tags | @El Toro
notes | my curse continues

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