Work Text:
“Why weep, woodcutter?” Earth asked him. “I see no hurt.”
“Oh, Lady,” said the woodcutter, “my hurt is overwhelming, because it is someone else’s pain that makes me cry.”
-The Birth of Eugenides, the God of Thieves
Irene kills, and becomes Attolia. It is not the natural order of things, but there is no natural order when the gods alone know the stakes.
Attolia kills only when she has to. Perhaps this could be called justice. Perhaps it is merely the same rage that coiled like a serpent in Irene’s chest, when the barons were deep in their wine and her betrothed’s eyes raked her over like a bed of coals, as if she were nothing more than a serviceable hearth to warm the ambitions of men.
If only he had known.
The rage, and the killings, and indeed, Attolia herself—
All these things are cold, and in cold blood.
Later, when the Thief is her husband and her king and yet still the boy who watched her from a tree-top, she will force herself to count his scars.
This is where my dogs set upon you, isn’t it? she will whisper, fingertip tracing an irregular pattern of dents along his thigh.
And this is when he will close around her hand the only hand she left him, and tell her, Enough.
No, not enough. Not until I know how many times I hurt you.
They are all the times I hurt myself.
Irene will cry, but it is Attolia he wanted so perhaps she cries too. She will close her hand around the emptiness of the hand she took from him. Even this?
Sparks, she knows, catch and reflect in the depths of his dark eyes. Now those same eyes shine with tears. I’d do it again.
Lose a hand, he means. Lose a hand, love the sword that took it.
(She is the sword.)
Consider this: she knows what she is. The mask that turns to whatever light will chase away shadows. The serpent that rears its head to bear a crown.
Attolia kills only when she has to.
There is more than one way to kill a man, when the man is the only one of his kind. There is no need to dangle him from a high wall, nor is there a need to strike his heart.
Heart and hand, for this man, are one.
(Or so she believes, when she kills him, when she gives the order in a dress the color of living things, all in a dead room.)
“My Queen.”
“My King.” He looks rather weary around the eyes, but he smiles and kisses her. He has to tilt his face up to do it. She wants him to hold her. Today, there is no time.
“You have an executioner’s face on,” he jibes. “Were the apples at breakfast spoiled?”
His were. She shakes her head. “There are parts of yourself that you keep from me, are there not?”
“Only that which is ugly, when it is,” he answers, smile unfailing. She watches his right arm when he says it, but the arm hangs calm and easy, as though it is still whole.
The thaw of a cold heart is painful. All heat is furnace-ready, and all love is heat.
Attolia sinks into the chair he keeps by the window. She can see mountains, but she wonders if that is all he sees. “Eddis wrote. She does not ask if you are happy.”
He turns so that only the set of a slim shoulder offers proof of expression. “No need to ask a question that has already been answered.”
Her hands knot in the fabric of her gown. “So you are not happy.”
“You are my only happiness,” he says, all boyish sincerity, and he sinks down beside her so that he can hide his face in the folds of her skirt.
She runs a hand through his unruly hair and dares not thank the gods.
Someday, they will want a child. Someday, they will lose one. It will tear them apart in equal measure, and in that there is some surety amid such grief.
So, she will whisper, as he strokes her hair, by her side for another longest hour. So. I am human after all.
He will not answer. He will not leave her.
Irene was never a child. Always, she has blamed the times and tempests that took those years away—it is only after she has stood outside the Thief’s cell night upon night that she realizes: the fault was in herself.
There is no child in that head or heart. There never could have been.
She counts his sobs, searching for the answer of her rage, but the serpent in her chest is silent. It has deserted her, and that can only mean that it was fear all along.
But fear of what? The bleeding boy on the other side of the door?
Sometimes she tries to tell him she loves him before he even wakes, so that no one will hear but herself. But always, always, he smiles with his eyes closed.
He is a light sleeper. Thieves have to be, and her Thief has nightmares.
She would know.
(They are hers.)
“And the Earth had no name. The gods knew themselves and have no need of names. It is man who names all things, even gods.”