SSCS 04: Installment 13 of 34
The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
This is Installment 13 of this year’s SSCS. If you want to start at the beginning of ‘The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress’, go here! If you want to know what the heck an SSCS is, go here!
(And the character list is here.)
Previously…
“The lady does,” Lot answered, and accepted the black token, tucking it into her bodice. “Draw a card.” The Great Hunger, and The Mercenary were again placed on top. But this time when the patron reached for the cards, Lot reached out as well, scratching their wrist with the poisoned needle tucked into her palm. They flinched back at the pain, but then hesitated, and Lot shifted over, tugging them down to sit beside her. “But I am not the Lady, you see.
“Breathe,” she added. And El’s conscript inhaled and exhaled once in compliance.
…The Heart of the Gull Queen’s Huntress
Installment 13: 22.0414
And once her chosen conscript was thus arranged, El came out from the shadows on the other side of the maze-way passage and settled into the place Lot had recently occupied. As she did, she drew Lot’s discarded cloak up over her shoulders, the hood covering her cropped braids and falling low to cast most of her face in cloth and shadow. Lot spared herself only a moment to watch her leader in this gesture of seating and concealment, made long ago into a ritual so old that Lot felt the feathery fingers of time brushing at her face each time she witnessed it again. It was long, and long and long, ago that they had learned El must hide her face when she practiced some of her oldest arts.
Lot turned away, to keep herself in the here and now. She let her tentacled hair unfurl and twine a bit more, to catch the gazes of those who would sometimes glance this way. She shuffled her cards again, and laid them out, each and each, watching the stories they told, listening for a pattern of heartbeats as her only means right now to keep watch out, and to keep her ears shut to the voices murmuring behind her.
Behind her, this first conscript breathed in and out once each time the girl in front of them spoke, and felt their own heart beating too slowly in their breast to match the fear they knew they should be feeling. Everything was moving too slowly, and they found that all of the sounds had gone away, except for the words of the girl in front of them, whose face had been young and open when she first approached them, but now was hidden by the cloak, all but shadows moving where her lips might be.
“Hark,” said the girl, and the conscript’s very skin seemed to buzz attendance upon her words. “Show me who you are,” she said.
And El raised her hands, still too small to contain the truth of her, but quick and supple in the knowledge of her work. She ran light fingertips over her conscript’s face, learning the shape of them as well as might the blind, and shivering their skin with her touch. “Open to me,” and she ran fingers over their teeth, probed gently at the shape and seating of their tongue, left a buzzing sweetness resting on their lips. Then the shape of their throat was felt likewise, the lines and texture of shoulder and clavicle.
“Hark, for I am the eye of the world.” El’s lips moved in the shadows. And her conscript did harken to her, all that they were opened and turned to face these shadows. “I am the line between truth, and truth.” And they knew that this was so. Small hands lifted larger ones, the talisman clutched a moment before being set gently to one side, and then traced the faint lines and soft hollows where blood moved from wrist toward elbow. The softest places, the tenderest fears, and the meat that lay beneath.
And then without warning El struck, hard, the heel of her hand into the hard point just above her conscript’s solar plexus. “Hark!” this time the word was hissed and commanding. But this time they could not hark, they could not…breathe. “Hark!” And just as suddenly there was sweet air again, as much as they wanted, more breath than they had drawn in months, in a year.
“You know who I am,” they answered, their words loosed at last with their breath. “What need do you have of me?”
“I have need of secrets. I have need of dark plans, of bindings, and heartbeats stolen. You can breathe now. In exchange for this you will tell me what you know.” And it was a good bargain. It was fair.
When all that could be learned had been learned, the conscript stood and walked away, breathing easily, knowing that they did not need to come to this place again. They left their talisman behind them, a scrap of button and cloth, well pressed and worn. They no longer needed it.
And as they left, El whispered to Lot the small bits that she had found, then rose and went out to find another. Lot settled herself back again, and laid out the cards. They were looking now for goods moved in secret, for goods that would ordinarily object. They were looking for port-ways kept well concealed.