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The image of Persephone maimed and hung on that tree in the Orchard haunted Ashen. She couldn’t blink without seeing the agonized face of the goddess she helped betray. Sleep was always a nightmare.
“We’re all haunted,” G assured her from across a lavish desk of polished walnut. A collared man poured her tea and left the room. When Ashen held the fine china her hands trembled so much that she feared she’d break the cup. G wouldn’t miss it, he had everything, but she would hate for him to think she was weak and set the tea back on the desk without drinking. “But you can’t obtain a gift like we have without paying a heavy price. Look at everything we’re accomplishing. It was necessary, it’s for the good of everyone in the House.”
Ashen made a face. She wasn’t so sure. “You’ve bolstered the slave markets in the south,” she said critically. “The Seven Cities have mounted four crusades in the last century. Kennedy Yard is more of a gulag now than a refugee camp. Are we really helping people at this point?”
G squirmed uncomfortably and smoothed down the front of his velvet jacket. “We’re trying to make this cursed House safe to live in, remember? Usher in an age of prosperity. That requires sacrifices.”
Unimpressed and sick to her stomach with what she had really come to talk to him about, Ashen sat back and looked idly around at the luxurious palace G had built with his amassed riches. “’Can see you’re sacrificing a lot here,” she said drolly. Finally, she steeled herself with a breath and told him “I think we were wrong. We should end it, all of us.”
Sputtering and purple with one of his many, many strong emotions, G stood from his chair and thumped a fist on the desk. “Are you mad?”
“I’m tired.”
“We’re all tired! And if we disappear now, everything we’ve built will collapse.”
“That’s what I’m hoping--”
“No! The Seven Cities need us, the House needs us. If we walk away chaos will consume this place.” He looked absolutely livid. He looked like a coward gorging himself on his own lies.
“That a no, then?”
“Obviously it is!”
Ashen rose to her feet with a heavy sigh, hands shoved in her pockets. She had at least hoped that G would listen but she wasn’t surprised. “’Lright. Thanks for the tea, G. I’ll show m’self out.”
“Ashen,” G snapped and she paused, turned to face him again. “Don’t do anything rash. We shouldn’t be enemies.”
She pursed her lips together and regarded him coldly. There was one more thing she ought to try before leaving. Just to test the terms of their arrangement. Her fingers curled around the cool metal hilt of the knife in her pocket.
“Thanks for the reminder, G,” she replied and chucked the knife with practiced precision.
It stuck in his lower gut with a squelch noise and he doubled over, crying out in pain and fixing her with a look of deep reproach. “You’ll regret this,” he hissed as several guards poured into the room. Two of them grabbed Ashen by the arms and were already dragging her out of the room when G yelled “Get her out of here!”
They threw her out into the street, which was much better than where she thought she’d end up after a move like that. It was only once she was pushing herself to her feet with a bitter laugh that she noticed the blood seeping through her clothes. Once she saw it, the pain started deep in her side. She slouched against a brick wall, suddenly woozy, and twisted around to see the dirk buried to the hilt in her side. One of the guards must have stuck her with it on the way out.
“Not bad, G,” she grimaced to herself, “Not bad at all.”
She reached for the handle almost without thinking and only just stopped herself short of yanking the blade out when she remembered: Death will come only at your own hand.
Ashen hesitated. Would it count if she pulled the blade out herself even if she hadn’t put it there? There was only one way to find out and it’d be all too convenient for her now-former colleagues if she tried it and bled out. G would no doubt have a doctor attend to him. If Ashen wanted to see how her little experiment turned out, she’d have to do the same. At least she’d have a clearer answer to just how immortal they all were. All nine of the Perennials were certainly immortal as far as longevity but Ashen doubted any of them had actually tried getting murdered. If she and G both survived the night, she’d know assassination wasn’t an option. And so would the rest of them.
She dragged herself to her feet, gritting her teeth at the sharp pain of the knife, and made her way through the city to a doctor who removed the knife and expressed enormous concern at what it had done to her innards. Light-headed and fading, Ashen told him to do his best before she passed out cold.
Hours later, he was shaking her awake. The pain in her side was still intense but not nearly as bad as she would have expected. She suspected the doctor had employed some sort of occultism. Or else a ton of aesthetic. Possibly both.
“You need to leave,” the doctor was saying.
Ashen looked up at him, her mind and body sluggish. Definitely anesthetized. “What?”
“Word’s going around that anyone who takes your business is blacklisted,” the doctor explained hurriedly and Ashen finally noticed the panic in his eyes. “I cannot afford that so...please, just leave. Use the back door.”
Ashen sat up slowly and hissed in pain. With her hand she felt the bandages wrapped around her middle covering the packed wound. It wasn’t bad work. “That pig… Don’t you want me to pay you first?”
“I want you to leave!” the doctor nearly shrieked and then recoiled when Ashen cut her eyes at him.
After a moment to collect herself, she stood. “Fine. Back door?”
“Yes, yes. Down that hallway, please. Don’t let anyone see you.”
Ashen grunted and pushed past him, ducked out of the office. So they’d both lived and she’d shown her hand a bit prematurely. She hadn’t expected G to blackball her so quickly but when she made it back out to the streets she saw truth in what the doctor had said. None of the merchants she was familiar with would make eye contact with her. When she approached they waved her away or shuttered their shop until she kept walking.
Obviously this was only the beginning. It seemed she could never escape the consequences of her actions. Instead she did the next best thing and kept walking, following the bridges down to the lower city where the structure of polite society frayed and folks were more willing to ignore each other. She made her way down down down until she found a dark place to sit where they would sell her a finger or two of undrinkable whiskey and let her be by herself.