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Sleeping on the Dreadful Wale had never been a challenge for Emily. Skulking unseen through the Karnacan streets stripped her off all the energy she had, making the call for sleep overpower every other need. This had been enhanced by the times she would wring herself dry of magic, falling asleep as Megan would steer the skiff back to the ship.
Now, five days out of Karnaca, she could find no rest.
They hit a patch of stormy weather, testing the ship for all it’s worth. The creaking and the groaning of the dilapidated ship would keep Emily awake, catching only a handful of winks in the hours when the waters would settle. She had almost taken Anton up on his offer of several glasses of Tyvian wine, but prudence won out in the end. She wanted to be in her peak physical condition when they finally reached Dunwall.
It seemed like nature itself was conspiring to keep Emily from coming back. The weather had set them back for days, if not weeks, and whatever radio signal they could catch did not deliver good news. Several ports have declared complete blockades of all incoming ships, out of an overabundance of caution, making resupplying a much more difficult affair. Not to say of the dwindling coin – the longer they travel, the more oil would need to be purchased, the less money they would have. If they are not careful, they could be stranded half-way to Dunwall on dead sails.
Emily dug her head back into the pillow and let out a long sigh. Speculating on all the ways it could go wrong wouldn’t be conductive to good sleep. Or any sleep at all, Emily groused to herself. She shifted, her body facing the wall of her cabin. Her hands clutched against the thread-bare fabric of her blanket, the material scratchy and stiff. The ship groaned beneath the onslaught of yet another wave.
She would need to find a way to force herself to get a modicum of slumber.
Running around the deck was out of the question, unless she wanted to wind up in a watery grave. Doing any form of exercise inside the ship would probably wake the other inhabitants. Using her Mark was out of the question – while Emily believed Megan’s good character, she did not want to let someone she had known from a handful of months know of her secret. Anton was an entire different beast altogether – if her father had no deemed him worthy of the knowledge of his own Mark, it must have been for good reasons, so she would follow his wisdom and keep hers away too.
Well, there is always the old-fashioned way to exhaust yourself.
Emily trailed her right hand across her naked thighs. She closed her eyes, and moved her hand closer to the line of her underwear. No, a devious thought skittering across her mind, his hand.
The image of a pair of obsidian eyes would follow her, as she succumbed to rest.
Emily woke with the startle, the blanket sticking uncomfortably to her sweat-drenched legs. She rummaged the recesses of her mind for whichever nightmare had decided to grace her tonight, but came blank. Maybe it would be for the best.
Swinging her legs from the mattress, she made for the make-shift shower in the corner of her room, intent on getting the day started with. The lack of rocking was a good omen, albeit it gave no indication of any kind of persistence. She turned the tap, bracing herself for the cold onslaught for water, but was greeted by the pathetic stutter of the pipes.
Internally cursing the ship, Emily made a slap-dash attempt at putting on her clothes, straining her hearing for indications of Meagan or Anton. She slid into her slacks, grimacing as the sweat caused the material to stick, like a second layer of skin. She stepped toward the door, and opened it.
She should have realized it sooner she was not on the Wale.
Broken pipes, lack of roiling waters, the silence replacing Megan and Anton’s good natured bickering – she had been called into the Void again. More importantly – this wasn’t the Outsider’s Void.
The metal floor of the ships’ hallway had been twisted and bent by thick vines. Emily tested the tensile strength of the vine with one foot, tapping across it gently – solid. She looked across the great expanse of nothingness. Through the fog, in the distance, she could just discern a tall column, supporting a large platform at the top.
Emily could feel the pinpricks of a gaze on her back, following her as she made her way through the Void. She kept her silence, knowing that Delilah would address her soon enough.
Right on cue, a voice boomed through her, penetrating to the marrow of her bones. “I do apologize, my dearest niece, for stealing you away when you were otherwise occupied,” Delilah’s tone took a lecherous tone. “I too suffer from lonely nights, my bed unusually empty of companions. You know all about it, do you?”
Emily frowned. She had not expected the conversation to go into this direction. She sped up her pace, settling into a brisk run towards the column. The sooner she got there, the faster this would be over.
“I must admin, the silks of your bedsheets are conductive to more intimate thoughts. When I shared the bedchambers of Luca, we would not go a day without indulging one another. Now that both he and Breanna are gone, I have set my eyes on someone new.”
The column in the distance became more detailed as Emily ran closer. What she thought were indentations in rock separated in independent vines, tightly wrapped around one another. The platform at the top looked like the obsidian stones she had grown used to seeing in the Void. She gauged the height, guestimating the distance from the bottom to the very top – too tall for Far Reach. She would have to climb it.
Delilah’s voice continued, disregarding Emily’s silence, “Every single morning, I receive petitioners. Every single morning, Corvo Attano manages to distract me long enough to allow these upstarts that dare to face me to leave with their heads firmly attached to their shoulders.”
Emily gritted her teeth, fighting against a wave of disgust. Instead, she focused to the foot of the column, surveying the giant thorns sprouting the vines. She gripped the highest one she could reach, and began climbing upward.
“One cannot fault sweet Jessamine for her tastes. Corvo makes every single man pale in comparison. Thick shoulders and muscled thighs, but you don’t want to think about that, do you, girl?” Delilah’s voice turned into a sensuous whisper, slick like whale oil. “Oh no, but I have seen into your mind – did you think the hunk of meat you carry around can only transpose thoughts one way? I can hear your every single thought, every sexual fantasy you will not allow yourself to speak in the day. I see how you like your bed-mates – lean and pale.”
Half-way up the column, Emily froze. Delilah is lying, she desperately prayed, she cannot be telling the truth. Willing her jaw to stay shut, she reached for the next thorn, vaulting herself upwards, flinging her far reach towards the edge of the obsidian platform.
“But you see, I have noticed something quite, if I dare say so, scandalous. Year after year, you have exclusively taken women to bed – tall, pale, lean beauties, samples from the corners and edges of the Empire. You’ve been together with Ms Mayhew for most of your teenage years, shortly followed by a string of unsuccessful romances with a handful of court ladies. Then there is dear Wyman, but even she is being put aside now for a greater prize, isn’t she?”
Emily gripped into the stone tightly, hoisted herself upon the top. On her knees, facing the obsidian stone, she allowed herself a couple stabilizing breaths. Delilah couldn’t know...
A puff of breath caressed her ear, a mocking parody of closeness, before Delilah began to whisper, “But the last few weeks, as you held my spirit in your hands, I have glimpsed a desire so guarded, you may as well have sunk it into the depths of the Ocean to hide it. You’ve never desired your old companions like this – a starving woman being witness to a feast, but being barred from partaking in it.” Emily froze, her heart beat an unsteady rhythm against her chest. No, I was going to die with that secret in my teeth, on my hand.
Delilah continued, “In all your years, you have not desired men – nothing but peacocks and show-boats within your court. You thought that your heir would be a foundling, carefully selected to pass off as your own, as your Consort could not give you children. But then I sacked your precious capital, and he sought you out.”
Emily grit her teeth, and willed herself to find some composure. Delilah was toying with her, stringing her up and making her dance for her own amusement. If the witch is to be believed anyway, her court has been entirely decimated. She couldn’t do anything with that information even if she tried to. Emily stood up, and noticed a rectangular object on the far end of the platform. Her body burnt, anger running through her veins, when she truly looked upon it.
Leaning against a protruding vine, stood a painting. Shades of purple and blue watercolours outlined the figures of two lovers, lying upon a grand bed. The man, clad in but a pair of leather trousers, hovered over his female companion, his lean, pale back covered in sweat. His female companion lay caged underneath his arms, a well-manicured hand cupping his jaw, the other one lost in raven-wing tresses. Her dark brown hair spilled like ink on delicate cushions, body bear of a stitch of clothing. Her lips, parted, glistening in the shadow of a passionate kiss. Their gazes, equally hungry – hazel brown meeting obsidian black.
The inscription, in the looping hand-writing of an artist read I Saw Their Passions, In My World Delivered.
Delilah’s voice pierced through Emily, awakening her from her stupor, “One shouldn’t really be surprised at this series of developments – another Marked desiring to bed a God. Except you will not be satisfied with a romp in the sheets. The Outsider would make a lovely Consort, wouldn’t he? The quick wit, the intelligence, the ability to bore a listener to tears are fine qualities to have.”
Emily clenched her hands, fingernails digging into the meat of her palm. She wanted to turn away, close her eyes and ignore the image Delilah was painting on the back of her mind, turn the scathing words of the witch against her. But that would only goad Delilah further, so Emily kept her tongue behind her tightened jaw.
“No wonder you wouldn’t want this dream to see the light of day. Whose wrath do you fear most – the Abbey’s, as you violate the Scriptures by bedding the one they hate so ardently, or your father, who would have to call a void spawn his kin? Would sweet Jessamine bless this union of madness and might?”
No, Emily fought through the urge to snap at Delilah, I will not consider your ridiculous impossibilities. She tore her gaze from the painting and looked around, trying to spot an exit back into the waking world. The obsidian platform seemed as if it floated in a sea of nothingness, the Void fog obscuring any other outcroppings. Outside of Delilah’s voice, she couldn’t hear anything else. Emily peeked across the edge, trying to look for the impression of the Dreadful Wale in the distance, but all she could see was an expanse of nothing.
There was no way out. Unless you count jumping off as one, she thought, grimacing at her own suggestion. Only as a last resort, she decided. It was not like Delilah to trap and antagonize Emily for her own entertainment, so it must be for a greater purpose. Tampering her anger to a simmer, she took the bait.
“What do you want?”
“Ah, she speaks,” Delilah’s voice rung out. The vines, limp and lifeless, criss-crossing across the platform, began to move, coalescing into a lithe, feminine form – the thorns sprouting into human features. The witch walked out, swaying her hips ever so slightly, and stopped, almost cautiously, just outside of Emily’s reach. “I’ve come to offer you a bargain,” she said, no trace of the earlier mocking tone present. “I know that you are on-route to Dunwall, carrying my spirit within my sweet sister’s rotting flesh. I know that you intend to depose me by forcing my mortality back upon me. I know you wish to reclaim your rightfully-taken throne, and assert yourself as the true Empress. But, I can offer you something more than the rotting scraps of this Empire.”
Emily nodded, urging her to continue. Didn’t she want to be the Empress? A far-away thought, tickled the back of her mind, beseeching remembrance; the memory of a reverberating masculine voice softly breathed into her ear. What could be greater than having an Empire at her beck and call?
Delilah continued, her words carefully measured, “I intend to remake the world, as it should have always been – me, as the recognized first-born heir of Euhorn Kaldwin, ascended to the Throne in 1825. Under my rule, the Rat Plague would have died before it had the chance to start. There would be no coup, no Daud to steal your mother away, no Burrow and his cronies lusting after the helm of the Empire.” She paused, her gaze drifting towards Emily’s left hand, “The Abbey of the Everyman would be nothing but leashed and muzzled dogs, a pale pathetic shadow in the face of my coven.”
“And what is my role in this world of yours, Delilah?” Emily asked, plainly.
“You would still be born, Emily Drexel Lela Attano, a legitimate child of your parents’ marriage, the second heir to the Throne. You would grow up not knowing grief, and would never shoulder the responsibility of leadership – by all accounts, a perfectly content high-born Dunwall woman.” Delilah turned, the heel of her boots scraping against the obsidian rock, striding towards the forgotten painting. “I would make it so the affections of your heart’s desire would be returned in full, and you could spend the entirety of your natural life pinned beneath a God.”
Every single word had been like oil on embers, setting the flame higher and higher. Delilah had grown bored of being an Empress in the space of a handful of months, and now sought to remake the world to fix all the perceived slights against her. Emily tried to not let her anger show, the mask of the Empress asserting herself over her face with a practised ease.
Delilah touched the painting, tracing the obsidian eyes of the Outsider. “I could even make him a man again – hot blooded, virile.” The painting began to shimmer, as Delilah’s magic swept across it. “What do you think his eye-colour is, beneath the black sclera?”
Somehow, this had been more infuriating than anything she had uttered through their entire encounter.
“Stop,” Emily snapped. “You’ve taken my people, my throne, my father -” her felt her hands shacking, the Mark burning as she tried to keep her composure, “- and that is somehow not enough? Now, you wish to transform the world into some macabre doll-house, for you too play as you see fit? What will you seek when that won’t quench your thirst? How much more will it take to fill this vacuum where your heart should be, Delilah?”
“Ungrateful brat,” Delilah’s placid expression, turned into a sneer. “I give you everything you want, in the palm of your hands – your mother, your father, the Outsider himself – and you dare accuse me of being greedy?”
“I do not wish to see the people I love speaking with your mouth!” Emily shouted, feet unwittingly moving towards the painting. “I do not want these pale apparitions of reality – these hand-strung puppets.” Her Mark burned more fiercely with each step, the stone doing nothing to muffle the sounds of her shoes hitting the obsidian surface. “I would suffer a thousand deaths before I see my mother done in your rendition.”
“Then you have made your choice,” Delilah spat, her body disintegrating into bright, red shards. Her voice, venomous and cold, slithered across her spine, “Make your peace now, for when I finish my masterpiece, you will know nothing but love for me.”
Emily stared at the space where Delilah used to be, her rage abating, but the embers still hot. In the distance, she could hear the song of a whale – barely audible, but soothing, nonetheless. Her unbound hair, tousled from sleep, gently swayed in the air currents.
Wait, air currents? She raised her right hand, trying to keep it very still, like Samuel used to show her when he took her into the open sea. Except, it wasn’t wind that she felt – no gentle caress streaming through her fingers. Her hand was being pulled backwards, away from the ledge, into the direction of the painting.
Gravity, the sudden realization struck Emily.
She turned towards the imagine, allowing herself to drink it in.
Up close, she couldn’t deny it wasn’t a stunningly accurate rendition of herself and the Outsider. His pale shoulders were broad, brushstroke rendering each tensed muscle as he held himself above her. His eyes were pinched – just so – in pure adoration. His lips tilted just close to be a guarded smile. This was not even close to being a man maddened by lust.
Her own visage displayed an easy affection. Her hair was spilled all over the silken pillow, as if she had just been wakened from deep sleep. Her Marked hand tenderly cupping the Outsider’s jaw, pointer finger running over his pronounced cheekbones.
Emily’s heart gave a painful squeeze – this was not meant to be, an impossible desire. He was a God, beyond the interests of the pleasures of the mortal world – not even an Empress could command him. Star-crossed lovers, Emily mused, just like the plays Mother used to take me to. Their lives have intersected briefly – a pivotal moment in her life and nothing but a blip in his – and they will part their ways once Delilah is dealt with. She had accepted she would only ever desire one man, and he would be beyond her reach.
Emily touched the painting, her fingers tracing the edge of his eyes, and her vision went white.
The ceiling of the Dreadful Wale greeted her. The ship creaked beneath the roiling waters.
The months following the end of Delilah’s end passed in the space of a breath. Her court was in shambles, the number of noble families could be counted on a single hand. The higher echelon of the Abbey had suffered similar casualties, however, instead of seeking the assistance of the Crown, they have cloistered themselves from the public at large, claiming some revelation from their sister order which required immediate attention.
The Rat Plague which ravaged Dunwall for six months did not hold a candle to the destruction wrought by Delilah and her coven in half the time. Entire districts soaked in dark magic and bloodbriar outgrowth, railways shredded to ribbons, the funerary piles billowing smoke, chocking the city in grief-flavoured tar. Major repairs would need to be done on most of the districts surrounding the Dunwall Tower, though Emily doubted the Crown could afford anything but a handful of planks right now.
The Minister of Finance, a tall, dark woman, distantly related to the Boyle’s (though Emily could never remember in what way), had narrowly escaped the slaughter. The news she delivered were distressing to say the least – empty coffers and emptier predictions. The city would have to starve before any help arrived from the other Kingdoms, if they did not decide to abandon Gristol to it’s fate altogether. Outsider knows her reign had not been universally accepted to begin with.
It was that strange hour between the depth of the night and the shallow dregs of the morning, though Emily couldn’t begin to care about the time of day, not any more. She’d dismissed whatever constituted her inner circle of advisors hours ago – was it midday or sundown when she did that? Time blurred. Corvo had opted to retire early, still recovering from Delilah’s magic, leaving Emily to making heads or tails of the Kingdom’s predicament.
Well, not entirely alone, though she doubted her father would approve of the presence of her guest.
She looked up from her desk, neck creaking in protest, to her companion. The Outsider, perched on the arm of the leather sofa, had been engrossed in a tome, his shadowy aura flickering like a candle.
In a strange, but not entirely unwelcome, change of events, he did not disappear from her life. He stayed, like a persistent shadow in the corner of her eye. She had yet to understand his motivations, but refused to demand an explanation.
In some ways, it reminded her of their time spent in the Void. In between his long-winded monologues tinted with secrets and truths, they found camaraderie. He had taught her how to read the runes – though she had no way to pronounce the words – and channel their strength. He had shown her how to become a being of shadow and dust, without losing herself to the maddening song of the Void. He directed her hands – so tanned, contrasting starkly against his pale ones – on how to bend, never break, the whalebone to her will.
Even the veil of Godhood couldn’t hide a gentle, but so very tired, soul. Maybe that was why she stopped considering him as other – just another monarch, of a different dominion. Delilah was not wrong in her assumption, in another world he would have been an ideal Consort.
Though that ship had sailed the moment Delilah had been trapped in her painting, so Emily shook herself before her trail of thoughts decided to take her to forbidden fancies. Certainly not in his presence.
Emily sipped at her tea, long gone cold, grimacing at the bitter taste – anything to keep the need to sleep at bay. The words on the report had started to swim hours ago, although that did not stop her from powering through her work. She sighed, hands rubbing against her eye-sockets, willing blood to flow. She heard the sound of a tome being ceremoniously closed, and the creak of leather rubbing against itself. “Does her Imperial Majesty plan on testing how her will fates against the needs of a body?” the voice of her guest piercing against the haze of sleep.
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” Emily responded, parroting the words she had heard Corvo use a thousand times before.
“A dead ruler is an ineffective ruler, your Imperial Majesty.” The Outsider said, either in admonishment or jest, though she couldn’t parse his tone. “Unless you decide to plunge the world to chaos once again by causing a crisis of succession by absconding something as basic as sleep.” He shifted, coalescing next to her desk. He spared a quick glance towards the litter of paper, but made no comment on the matter.
“My need to sleep is immaterial right now. Our main reservoir of potable water is drenched in black magic, food is scarce with supply lines in disarray, not to say anything about access to any qualified medical help.” Emily pulled at the stray wisps of hair, in clear frustration. This did not even begin to cover the issues plaguing the Empire – she had only a handful of staff, and could delegate only so much of her work. The Parliament was fractured, the old guard grumbled at the new blood, even in the face of unparalleled tragedies. “I must apologize, but the line of succession is the least of my concerns right now.”
The Outsider, unconcerned with the mounds of letters and petitions, leaned against her desk. “That is not how the populus will perceive it. A royal birth in the times of strife had always had a way to create a spark of hope – fields of rye growing after bloodshed, another day of feasts on the calendar year.” He turned his head, facing the window. The Sun was peaking on the horizon. “Plenty of orphans, especially now.”
“Wouldn’t my own flesh and blood be more suitable as a royal heir?” Emily asked, paperwork finally forgotten. She drank the vestiges of the cold, bitter tea and stood up from her desk. “The reason why the coup happened because grandfather decided that his own wed-locked child was more worthy of the Throne than his bastard. Who could say the exact same thing will not play out with an adoptee?” She made her way to the window and opened it, letting the cool morning air seep through.
He cocked his head, a flash of confusion passing his features, before disappearing behind the mask of godhood. “Would you be willing to forswear relationships with people you are romantically and sexually interested in, and settle amicably with an inoffensive man of well-breeding for the sake of the Empire?”
Wait, whatever Emily had planned to say, staggered to a complete halt, does he not know? If Delilah could see through her mind, through her heart, surely he must be aware of her feelings?
She turned, facing the Outsider. Steeling herself, she asked “In lieu of answering your question, can I ask you one?”
The Outsider, perched on her desk like a bird, nodded.
“What is the extent of your omniscience?”
His lips into a crooked approximation of a smile. He shifted, shards and shadows coalescing next to Emily. Mirroring her pose against the window, he glanced at the cresting dawn. Finally, as Emily considered retracting her question, he began talking.
“There is an understudied field, in natural philosophy, about the nature of repeating patterns. It’s practitioners make a careful study of the incidences of events, and make predictions of outcome using complex arithmetic – the coin flip, the likelihood of an Empire-wide economic collapse.”
“Statistics,” Emily realized. The Outsider nodded, and continued. “Behaviour can also be observed, tabulated and predicted. An observant mortal could master the skill in a handful of years, but even they would be limited by the breadth of experiences someone could see within a generous life-span of 70 years. Several thousand, on the other hand, is enough to see almost everything.” He paused, ringed hands drumming against the window pane in an unsteady rhythm. “I am not all-knowing, and not entirely all-seeing. Just burdened with the experience of millions of mortal lifetimes.”
“Not entirely all-seeing?” Emily prodded further.
The Outsider shrugged, a graceless gesture for a God. “I cannot see into your mind or anyone else’s. I cannot predict the events which will proceed the end of my tenure in the Void. Even certain areas of the Void are outside of my reach.”
“Such as the places taken by Delilah?” she asked, cautiously.
“Among others.”
Oh. That certainly explains it.
He turned his gaze away from the sunrise, his inscrutable countenance giving way to a strange curiosity. “How is my omniscience related to the topic of heir-bearing?”
Emily stifled a laughter, hiding it beneath sleeve of her woollen jacket. “You may consider it strange but, directly.” The Outsider’s brow creased in a confused frown, a glimpse of something too human passing across his face – a slip of the mask, a shallow, unnecessary intake of breath. But he did not press her further. He turned his face towards the view beyond the office, and let a companionable silence settle, like dust on moth wings.
The sun had peaked over the horizon, illuminating her study in bright, piercing light. Emily squinted her eyes against the glare. Another morning spent in her study, though she was glad for whatever brief distraction the Outsider’s companionship provided.
In a moment, Corvo would barrel into the room, a carafe of strong Karnacan coffee in one hand, and freshly delivered post in another one. Another day of pleading fellow rulers of scraps of kindness in the wake of Delilah’s reign, between catching cat-naps on the cleanest mattress she can find.
Emily turned away from the window, facing the Outsider proper. Within the blink of the eye, the world tilted, just a couple degrees of the axis.
It’s strange how day-light revealed that which desired to be hidden. Wyman’s forgotten tobacco box in a crack between the floor-boards, the chicken scratches on the wooden panels of her walls which read a mangled version of her first name, the whalebone charm beneath her sofa. Pair of coloured irises staring from beneath an ink-black gaze.
Green, Delilah. Emily thought, unabashedly, openly – even if only to herself. A litany of impossible desires raced through her mind, one more preposterous than the next. She and Delilah, whether she had truly been Jessamine’s sister or not, had that in common – an impetus to reach things outside of their domain. Whether that was the Mark they shared, or Euhorn’s blood, she could not fathom.
His eyes would have been green.
She would have to learn to live with that knowledge.