Work Text:
Eve woke with a start. Her long brown hair was spread onto the table in front of her, pooled like a halo over the parchment and her quill. She sat up abruptly, disoriented. How long had she been asleep? Her candle was still burning –it could not have been for more than fifteen minutes. She let out a breath of relief and began to gather her hair back behind her head. She could have burned the library down, and this whole wing of the castle with it. She inspected the parchment in front of her. There was a blot and then a smear where her hair had dragged against the wet ink when she fell asleep. It could be a lot worse. She reached for her knife to scratch out the mistake, but jumped again at a loud clatter nearby.
It was late, and the library was in complete darkness except for the wavering circle of light that her candle cast. Eve’s stomach clenched.
“Hello?” she tried to call, but she hadn’t spoken for hours and her throat was tight with apprehension. It came out a hoarse croak. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Hello?”
No reply came, but as Eve strained to hear any tell-tale noise, she thought she could make out a faint flutter like the soft sound that the flame of her candle made as she stood and picked it up. Eve wondered wildly whether a bird had somehow become trapped in the library. She walked toward the sound, imagining that she would come upon a finch poised on the edge of the bookcase, moments from flight.
She rounded the side of the bookcase and was startled when the weak light of her candle instead fell upon a dark human figure half-slumped against the wooden frame. The figure’s chest rose and fell sharply, and Eve realized that the fluttering sound was shuddering breath. Was the person crying?
Eve stepped closer until her candle fully illuminated the figure, and she gasped. It was a woman dressed in all black, even the loose shirt under her tunic. Dark trousers disappeared into black boots, and her smooth hair was pulled back tightly in a bun behind her head. What made Eve gasp was that where her hands were clenched around her stomach, and even in the dim and uneven light, crimson flashed against the black.
The woman looked at Eve with wild, unfocused eyes. Eve recognized this person. She had seen her ride into the fief five days earlier with a group of huntsmen and their dogs. It was unmistakably her. Eve had been walking in from the village when they arrived, and she had paused in her tracks, arrested by the sight. She had seen plenty of women who rode and who wore men’s clothing, but she had never seen one like her. The woman was tall and moved with a feline grace. Her eyes were enormous and her gaze confident and focused as she swung down from her mount into the churned mud. There was a bow strapped to her saddle, though it was unstrung. Eve had gazed at her high cheekbones and was so caught up that she didn’t register immediately that the woman had also been gazing back at her. The moment had been broken when the woman’s gelding impatiently shook his head and she reached behind herself to pat him on the neck, but, still making eye contact with Eve, had missed completely and only swiped at the air.
Now here, in the close darkness of the library, the woman did not seem to recognize Eve. She looked up when Eve gasped, but her eyes were clouded and her breathing still labored. When Eve reached out to her, the woman jerked.
“Don’t come near me,” she mumbled.
“Let me help you,” Eve intoned calmly, turning her open palms toward the woman so as not to startle her. She thought of a shy horse as the woman flinched away from her hands. Her hair was golden like late dry summer grass and was streaked dark with sweat. The beds of her fingernails where they clutched at herself were gummy with blood.
“Don’t you remember me?” Eve asked. She moved the candle closer to illuminate her own face, and the woman stared for a moment before an expression of surprise appeared, her eyebrows knit together and she opened her mouth to speak.
Eve thought she would say, Yes.
But what she said, drowsily, was, “Beautiful.”
Eve flushed.
“What happened?” she asked. The woman’s eyes flicked around. She licked dry lips and winced. In the distance, down the hall from the library, Eve could hear the sounds of heavy footfall and men’s voices begin to echo in the stairwell that led down to this wing.
“They drugged my wine. I…” she groaned and clutched at her abdomen. “I’m lost. I need to…” she shook her head, seeming unable to grasp at a thought. “Run.”
“Don’t,” Eve blurted out. “You won’t make it. Let me help you. Come with me.” She hoped her tone sounded commanding enough to cut through whatever pain and drug induced haze the woman was experiencing.
She began to move away, and incredibly, the woman followed. Her steps were uncertain, but Eve murmured to her as they walked. “It’s not far, I promise. Come. That’s it.”
Eve’s chambers were adjacent to the library. It was only across the room to the door to her study, and on the far end of the study was her small bedchamber. “Stay,” she ordered the woman, leaving her candle, then closed the door and ran through the library. Her scholar’s robes billowed behind her and her slippers slapped against the flagstones as she ran blindly through the room, her heart racing. She slipped out the entrance into the hallway. There was still a lit torch sputtering in its sconce near the stairwell, where three men appeared wearing the silver and green of Lord Marten’s livery just as Eve gathered the threads of her thoughts.
“I need your help,” she breathed without preamble. The men hesitated and glanced at each other impatiently. One had a horizontal gash on his sleeve that was drenched in blood; all of their chests heaved and they clearly vacillated between needing to be respectful and their urgent task at hand. Eve was not the lady of the fief. She did not have authority over them, but she was also a woman, and even if she wasn’t a noble she was entitled to their attention.
“M’lady, there’s an assassin about,” one of them began, and though a slight shock ran through Eve, she did not pause to take in this new information.
“I’m not a lady,” she interrupted, gesturing at her robes. “I am a scholar. A woman came here and threatened me with a knife.”
Their eyes widened and hands darted to sheathed knives at their hips.
“Where did she go?” a thickly bearded man growled.
“I showed her the servant’s door in the back of the wing,” Eve replied, allowing her voice to shake. “She ran toward the stables.”
The smallest, leanest man who had the cut on his arm began to run down the hall without another word. The other two hesitated—one looked tired and sweaty, and the other was still trying to be chivalrous.
“Stay here, m’lady—er, scholar. We will—”
“Go!” Eve urged, flapping her hands, and they pattered reluctantly down the hall for a few steps, then turned away from her and jogged in earnest, taking the sour smell of their sweat and fear with them.
Eve watched them go. The torch on the wall guttered, and when they were out of hearing she turned on her heel and strode back through the library toward her rooms. She went more carefully this time. The darkness seemed thicker and more treacherous after the light of the hall despite her familiarity with her surroundings.
She opened the door to her study, but it was empty.
She found the woman on her bed, lying on her back with her legs dangling off of the end, still breathing raggedly. Blood had run down her leg and pooled in her left boot, and was leaving a dark stain on the stone beneath her foot. There was thin brown vomit on the floor next to Eve’s clothing chest.
“Quickly now,” Eve said. She said it as much to herself as to the unnamed woman dying in her bed.
She wished desperately that she had a servant as she went to light a fire in the grate. There was too much work for her alone. She poured a cup of water from a pitcher and brought it to the woman, who only brushed her lips against the rim of the cup and then winced away.
Eve undressed her, firmly but gently, and was amazed that she was allowed to. She untied the laces of her tunic and tossed it aside, sitting next to the woman in bed and bracing her up with one decisive hand on the small of her back. She pulled the shirt off next. The woman’s body was ridged with muscle and striped with scars. Some were dark and looked newer, like the vertical line under her collarbone and the puckered scar on her left bicep, but underneath there were others, thin and pale and faint like silken threads. It was a palimpsest of fights, and Eve itched to look closer, to read what stories had been scratched out on the surface of the woman’s skin. Her forearms were taut, and the skin was mottled from the sting of her bow string against it. She had been stabbed under her left rib, and was pinching the skin together with her fingers. She swayed in place, fading quickly, held upright mostly by Eve’s firm arm.
Eve worked as fast as she could. She laid the woman down and used hot linen rags to wipe away the crusted blood around the wound, then packed several rags tightly on top of it and bound it all the way around her ribs. She brought the cup of water repeatedly to the woman’s mouth, but she only drank a little, and it wasn’t long before she fell completely unconscious. Her lips were pale around the edges, and her face had a bluish tinge.
Eve stood back, a linen rag dangling from her hand. She felt a sinking in her stomach and a mounting panic. This woman was going to die in Eve’s bed, and what then? How would she explain that? But there was her chest, bound in linen, still somehow rising and falling, and there were her eyelashes, drawn down over her arching cheekbones. Eve couldn’t look away. She crept forward again and unlaced the boots, tugged them off of limp feet. They were sweaty and the left boot was soaked in blood. She considered throwing them into the fire, but knew that the stink of burning leather and blood would be horrific. Instead she placed them near the hearth to dry out and set about scrubbing the small pool of blood off of the flagstones at the foot of her bed.
It was extremely late by the time Eve had cleaned up the blood and vomit. Her eyes felt swollen with exhaustion. She looked at the tiny wooden chair in the corner of the room with apprehension. It did not look like a comfortable place for a woman of her age to spend the night, yet she hesitated to crawl into bed next to the unconscious woman as she considered with a sick tilt to her stomach what waking up in bed next to a corpse would be like. Finally, she changed into her bedclothes and curled up into as small of a ball as she could manage on the edge of the bed.
It was only four hours until sunrise. Eve woke twice, once because her limbs were cramping—the woman was tall and took up a lot of space on the narrow bed—and once because the woman called out in her sleep in a strange language. When Eve opened her eyes again it was to the predawn sound of birds arguing in the thickets underneath the tiny windows of her room. She turned uneasily to look at the body next to her but found with relief that the woman was still breathing. Eve reached out with her hand to brush the woman’s smooth forehead with her fingers. Her skin felt cool and clammy.
Eve dressed quickly, pulled on boots instead of slippers, and made the long walk toward the village. She had to cross the grounds and leave the walls of the manor, the guards at the gates only looking at her impassively when she nodded to them as she strode past.
The air was cold and damp, the footing muddy and strewn with gravel and straw. It was spring, though only the barest of buds were beginning to show on the trees, whose thin bare branches still laced finger-like across the low grey sky. Bony dogs padded around the periphery of the village, gathering in the direction of the butcher’s. Eve could smell its reek even before any sun warmed the blood on the ground. She heard two of the dogs begin to fight, a snarling and snapping of teeth accompanied by high yelps. She hurried herself along, and soon came to a low thatched dwelling with an impressive garden that overflowed with greenery despite how early the season was.
She rapped at the door and was rewarded by the appearance of a middle-aged woman with deep wrinkles around her eyes and grey-streaked hair. The woman beckoned her inside, where there was the strong scent of garlic and mint.
“Scholar,” the woman said, “you have another cough? This has been a bad winter for you.”
“God forbid,” Eve replied. “I need something for a wound.”
The woman raised an eyebrow at Eve, looking her up and down for a moment.
“What kind of wound?”
“There is a cat,” Eve found herself saying, “that I am quite fond of. It got in a fight of some kind. Tore its stomach open.”
The woman stared at Eve for a long moment, then grunted and busied herself with some ceramic jars in the corner. She scooped a sharp-smelling paste out of one and placed it into an oiled cloth, tying it closed with twine.
“This will help it heal,” the woman said, handing it to Eve. Eve took the small parcel but hesitated.
“What if it were…very bad?” Eve asked.
“How bad?”
“It will probably die.”
“Then let the creature die.”
“I…am quite fond of it,” Eve managed.
“Well,” the woman shrugged and turned away again. She returned with a hooked sewing needle and linen thread. Eve’s stomach sank but she accepted them.
“Thank you,” she said, pressing coins into the woman’s hand and hurrying away.
It was lighter by the time she returned to her rooms, and the woman in her bed had not seemed to stir. Eve carefully rolled back the bandages to inspect the wound. The bleeding had slowed, but it was still leaking dark blood slowly. Eve tried to smear some of the paste over the cut quickly. Nevertheless, the woman gasped at her touch, making Eve jump. Her eyes flew open momentarily and her hand reached toward Eve, but she failed to sit up.
The woman said something in that strange language again.
“I don’t understand,” Eve replied, pressing fresh cloths quickly over the cut and holding them down with her hands.
“I’m going to be sick,” the woman mumbled, in English this time. Eve brought her the pot just in time, and the woman rolled onto her side and vomited twice, then moaned and spat. Eve brought her the cup of water again, and this time the woman drank the whole cup and asked for more before falling back to sleep. Eve clumsily rebound the bandages, unable to bring herself to even consider the needle and the thread yet. She wondered what the woman had been drugged with. She had been so muddled the night before that she had called Eve beautiful. Eve blushed again at the memory, her ears going hot.
Despite her exhaustion, Eve left the room to work on her manuscript. She sipped hot tea and ate a crust of bread before continuing the transcription from the previous night. It wasn’t until hours later, as she rose from building up the fire in her bedroom grate again, that she saw the woman’s eyes were open and following her around the room.
They were green, Eve noticed for the first time as a silvery beam of light from the narrow window hit them. Green like the tangles of herbs and mud in the village woman’s garden. Eve was not sure how long the woman could have been watching her for. She looked back in silence, taking in the wide stare.
“What is your name?” the woman asked softly. Eve looked down at her own hands. They were smudged with ash from the grate and the beds of her fingernails were black with ink.
“Eve.”
The woman’s chest rose and fell steadily.
“Why did you help me?”
“I don’t know,” Eve answered honestly after a silence. “What is your name?”
But the woman had fallen asleep again.
It was night before she finally sat up and accepted a bowl of bone broth from Eve.
“You are a scholar,” she said, eying Eve’s robes.
“Yes.”
“What do you study?”
“Languages.”
The woman blinked tiredly. There was a constellation of freckles next to her eye.
“You know I was here to kill Lord Marten.”
Eve pursed her lips.
“I gathered as much.”
“You have no love for him?”
Eve shrugged.
“He is not my lord. I am a guest.”
“A guest who would be hanged for helping me.”
Eve stood from where she was seated on the edge of the bed.
“I haven’t helped you much. I can’t…I can’t sew it up.”
“Oh.” The woman looked down at her bandages. “It needs sewing?”
“Yes. But I don’t think I can.”
The woman drained the broth, the muscles in her arms tightening as she lifted the wooden bowl to her face. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand and nodded, sharply, once.
“I can do it.” She held out her hand and for a moment Eve thought she meant for Eve to grasp it with her own before she realized that the woman was waiting for the needle and thread. Eve hurried to bring it to her.
“I don’t want you to watch,” the woman said.
“What if you pass out again?”
“I probably will. That’s why I don’t want you to watch.”
Eve hovered nervously.
“Go. Do whatever scholars do.”
“Transcribe,” Eve murmured.
“What?”
“I am making copies of documents. To take back to my home library.”
The woman frowned at her, then looked away. As Eve reached the doorway, the woman spoke again.
“They call me Villanelle.”
Eve looked back. The woman was unwinding her bandages determinedly and did not glance up again.
Eve had been deeply asleep, drained from the previous day’s events, when she felt the arm start to snake around her. She opened her eyes to only see the blank darkness of her bed chamber. There was a warm body close to her, too close to her, and breath against the nape of her neck. A prickly thrill washed down her skin. Her heart leaped as she felt the sharp edge of a blade meet her throat, softly. She took a slow and deep breath, then let it loose.
“Why are you helping me?” the woman asked, and though they were alone in the wing, her voice was a hushed whisper.
“I don’t know,” Eve repeated. As her throat bobbed she leaned back almost imperceptibly to ease away from the prick of the blade, but the movement only pressed her closer to Villanelle’s body. Eve lifted her chin and turned her face slightly, though Villanelle’s arm flexed where it was wrapped over Eve’s shoulder and the knife’s pressure continued.
“Why aren’t you afraid of me?”
Eve’s heart thudded. Villanelle’s chest was pushed against Eve’s shoulder blades and one sharp knee dug into the back of Eve’s thigh. The air felt too thin to breathe, like Eve was in the high mountain pass.
“I am,” she replied. The moment stretched on and on. Eve’s muscles ached to move, but she didn’t dare, and she was sure that Villanelle must be able to feel her heart beating through her back. Wasn’t that enough? Villanelle’s breath was still coming fast and thick against her neck, but since Eve could see nothing and though she felt wide awake, she closed her eyes again.
“No, you’re not,” the woman finally said. “You don’t smell afraid.”
They lay breathing. Eve steadied her lungs into a long and sweeping rhythm, and she soon found that Villanelle’s slowed to match. After a long time, Eve thought the woman might have fallen back asleep. The knife was still at Eve’s throat. She reached up slowly and wrapped her hand around Villanelle’s. She drew their hands down to her chest so that the knife was clasped between her breasts, a safe distance from her throat. They could keep it if it made Villanelle feel better. Sleep closed over Eve again like a door shutting.
“I remember you,” Villanelle said the next morning. She was sitting up in bed, eating bread that Eve had drizzled liberally with dark honey. The color of it matched Villanelle’s unwashed hair. Villanelle gave no indication that she had held Eve at knifepoint the night before. “You watched me shoot.”
Eve had been staring out the window at her second-floor view of the grounds, deep in thought. She put her fingers to her chin as she turned toward Villanelle.
“Yes,” she admitted.
The group of huntsmen had been quartered in the fief for two days when Eve had caught sight of Villanelle for the second time, this time early in the morning in the practice yards. Eve had been walking to the baths, which were situated near the practice yards, when she noticed the tall catlike woman seated on a bench with some of the knights and pages, stringing her double-curved bow. Eve had stayed to watch. Villanelle had buried several arrows into the target before turning and making eye-contact with Eve. She had winked .
“You’re very good,” she said to Villanelle.
“Yes,” Villanelle replied, stuffing more bread into her mouth. “I am hungry ,” she added.
A sad thought crossed Eve’s mind.
“They’ll have taken your bow,” she murmured.
Villanelle shrugged.
“It wasn’t mine. I stole it.”
Eve tilted her head.
“Is the horse stolen, too?”
Villanelle frowned.
“No. He is mine. Or he was.” A dark look slid over her face, and she swallowed. “Where are we?”
“In my rooms.”
“I know, I meant—where in the castle?”
“The south wing, almost at the end. The library is through those doors.”
Villanelle nodded, though she was staring unblinkingly at the wall, calculating.
“And the stables are to the southwest,” she added.
“Yes,” Eve replied cautiously.
“…how did I get here?” Villanelle whispered after a moment.
“I found you in the library,” Eve replied. Villanelle’s green eyes finally turned on her.
“I remember that. I meant…I don’t know how I got to this wing. How I made it this far.” She chewed on her lower lip thoughtfully. “No one will find me here?”
Eve rested her forearms on the stone windowsill.
“No,” she replied simply. “No one comes here. And no one cares. I am already considered an eccentric loner.”
“Why?”
“Because I am a scholar and a woman and I don’t care for most people’s company.”
Villanelle drew her right knee, on the good side of her body, up toward her chest.
“I like your company,” she said. Eve nodded.
“You’re different.”
Two days later, Villanelle was managing to fully stand up to use the chamber pot, had struggled through washing her hair and most of her body in a bucket of hot water, and had insisted on sitting in Eve’s study with her instead of in the bed.
“It’s boring in there,” Villanelle had complained.
“It’s boring in here,” Eve retorted, removing the top to her inkwell.
“You’re in here,” Villanelle replied, and Eve glanced at her apprehensively. There had been no more knife incidents. The knives were both tucked safely back into Villanelle’s boots, which was where they had been hidden. Eve had not noticed them the first night during the initial shock.
“Yes, well…” Eve grumbled, fiddling with her hair. It was harder to work when Villanelle sat in the room. Her presence was distracting, and she always wanted Eve’s attention. Eve had to admit to herself that it was hard to direct her attention elsewhere.
“What are you writing today?” Villanelle asked.
“I am making copies of recipes,” Eve replied.
“What are recipes?”
“There is a woman who lives in the village. She is very skilled in herbalism—she is the one who made the salve for you—” Villanelle nodded. “I was very sick this winter and she created a tea to help. It was incredible. And herbalists, women, you know, keep everything in their heads. I thought, if I could write down what she did, then I can bring it back to my home.”
“Why not just memorize it?” Villanelle asked curiously. “Like everyone else?”
“Because…” Eve smoothed a hand over the paper in front of her. “The words will live when I die.”
Villanelle gave her a strange look and there was a long moment without any words at all.
“That is not the main reason why you are here, though? Recipes?”
“No,” Eve admitted. “Lord Marten graciously invited me to live here this winter. He has one of the most extensive libraries in the realm, outside of the royal library. He allowed me to make copies of what I wanted, and in exchange I have translated several works for him. I am meant to leave soon, in fact.” The passes had only recently opened up in the spring thaw, and the roads, although treacherously muddy and grueling, were active again. Traders had begun to trickle into the village, and—of course, that was why it had not been unusual for Villanelle to ride in with a group of huntsmen.
“Where will you go?” Villanelle asked.
“Home.”
And Eve told Villanelle of the oceanside keep where she was born. She told her of the windswept and rocky shores where the surf beat against slick cliffs and seabirds cried, wheeling in the salt air. She told her of the green foam that washed up on dark sand, the twisted logs covered in barnacles, and the seals. She told her that on a dry summer day the wind coming off of the ocean could still be cold, but that you could lie in a depression in the sand and the wind would pass over you, only the thin warmth of the sun would reach you, and the low crashing of the waves and the dry smell of the sand could lull you into sleep.
And in turn Villanelle told Eve of the country to the north that was her home. She had never seen the ocean but she described instead a measureless frozen lake that stretched so far that the other side could not be seen, and the pale coldness of the sky that bled into the pale blueness of the snow so that the horizon could barely be picked out of the blank and chilled expanse. She told Eve that vast herds of elk would cross the grasslands, stamping and chafing and steaming from the nostrils and leaving everything beaten down behind them, and that Villanelle had learned to ride with her bow hunting these elk, and she described the hunts too.
Eve wished to write this down, also. She wanted to scratch Villanelle into a page like the scars that were scratched into Villanelle’s skin. She could write what she knew about Villanelle and Villanelle could carry it with her, and when she died an assassin’s death, an arrow through the throat on a forest road, someone would find the parchment she carried with her and someone could read the things that could not be read from her limp body. They could know that she had held Eve from behind in bed, that she smiled first with the left side of her mouth, that she spoke another language in her sleep, that she had named her horse after the swift dry winds that blew across a tundra.
But Eve would not write these things, nor mention that she thought of them. And, of course, Villanelle could not read.
“Of course not; do I look like a noble to you?” she asked, disgusted when Eve brought up the subject. Eve did not say, yes , you are exquisite, you are more beautiful than any lady I have ever seen . Eve had only shrugged.
“I just thought I’d ask.”
They were sitting in bed cross-legged, facing each other, deep in conversation. It never ended with them; it seemed like a pond without a bottom, yet they both felt the time together drawing tighter and tighter like the strings of a purse being cinched shut.
Eve found her hand gliding forward to grasp one of Villanelle’s bare feet gently. She guided it into her lap and began to smooth the arches with her thumbs. Villanelle twitched, then relaxed and pushed into the touch.
“Your feet hurt,” Eve murmured, not pausing to think.
“Every part of me always hurts,” Villanelle replied, and her eyes were an inky black, dilated in the dim light of the room, and Eve found their gaze to be too wide, too expansive, that she could not look away. “You can stop helping me now,” Villanelle pointed out.
Eve paused. She was not sure if that was what she had been doing. She suddenly felt embarrassed that she had touched Villanelle; her cheeks flushed red and she released Villanelle’s foot, looking away.
Villanelle seemed cowed; she pursed her lips and looked down at her lap, plucking at the blankets with her slender fingers.
“I didn’t mean—”
“No, it’s alright—"
It was in the darkness that Villanelle moved against her again; no knife this time. Eve had been lying awake also, and the long minutes of their labored breathing next to each other in bed felt so painful that she wanted to writhe, she wanted to beat the wall with her fist. She could hear her own pulse throbbing in her ears, a static sound, and she knew she could no longer sleep in the same bed as the other woman. She would lie awake all night.
But Villanelle moved against her again. Her body covered the sparse inches between them and her warmth preceded her as she inched into Eve’s back. Eve felt a soft prickle over her skin, even where Villanelle was not approaching. It rippled over her breasts and her stomach and crawled between her legs. She stifled a sound that started deep in her throat.
Villanelle’s touch was questioning. Her fingers danced up Eve’s arm toward her neck, and when Eve did not respond, down again to her elbow. Back up they slid, and this time Eve arched her back and opened her neck, inviting the hand in. Slender fingers raked the side of Eve’s neck and combed into her curls. Eve inhaled sharply through her nose. She turned her face, rolling her body toward Villanelle’s.
“I’ve killed a lot of people,” Villanelle whispered hesitantly against her jaw, one hand in Eve’s hair.
“I know,” Eve replied, and kissed her. Her lips were hot and tight and loose all at the same time, and the sweep of her hipbone pressed against Eve’s, and Eve was lost. She was without words. She was climbing and slipping down at the same time. She was sure that nothing had ever been written nor could ever be written about this: her tongue, finding Villanelle’s. Their hands, clashing together and lacing. Something so sweet and so wet and so good. An endless herd of elk stampeding through them. Waves, breaking again and again.
When Eve woke in the morning, Villanelle was gone. The castle was in an uproar. Lord Marten was dead, his throat cut in his bed. Three guards and a stableboy had been stabbed, and only one had lived.
The assassin had stolen back her white horse, stormed the gate and fled.