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It’s pristine.
No dust, no wrinkled sheets, no tool out of place.
The old pocket watch was still on the desk, open and ticking.
Like nothing has changed.
Like its owner was coming home.
“…I’ll give you a minute,” Patches says, almost under his breath. Rose thinks he’s saying it to himself more than he’s saying it to her, but there’s no proving that. She’d learned her aunt was working for him only in the last year—well after the Black Hand was dismantled and defeated in hushed news and whispers around Mar’Zahn.
Gone the way they came, and Auntie Tipper was essential to its downfall.
Somehow, she felt small again—eight years younger and a storyteller at best. She remembers the tools and the boxes of scraps, the old watch, the bare bed.
She remembers Tipper messing with her sister, and Lieutenant, and juice.
Her own steps seemed dull in the space. Tipper had that metal syncopation to her gait, and Rose’s leather boots were too soft and too worn to carry anything but a subtle thump.
She can feel Patches watching from the doorway, and she’s sure he’s looking at the bookshelf. It was her aunt’s favorite place in her entire room—the remnants of her life before the Order, and before the Skyfall. Her friends’ old notebooks and sketchbooks, diaries she’d found in the rubble, Circlet’s picture book. Everything that was once Ko’Ravis, at its very heart.
“We should keep these,” Rose says, surprising herself.
“Dagas is making a case,” Patches says, almost immediately. “Glass.”
Rose nods. “Of course.”
It feels weird, talking logistics. Somehow it makes it all feel more like a dream instead of like reality. Half of her still thinks the window will open and her aunt will sneak in, smirking and coy, with that bright white-blue arm and leg and those pulsing veins running up her skin.
Entire and unshattered.
Unlike how they’d found her.
Rose turns to the doorway. “Has…” she pauses. She’s not sure who to ask, but she doesn’t want to wander and Patches is already here. “Has my sister…Did my sister…”
“Kyon,” Patches starts, bowing his head, “wasn’t there.”
Rose feels her throat throb. She didn’t say…
Patches clears his. “I like to think she didn’t want her there for that.”
Rose’s eyes sting. She sniffles, blinking back whatever might try to escape, and pulls herself away from the shelf. She walks all the way to the closed window, almost hating that she can faintly hear animals outside.
Alright, now the fun part—you should step back. Bit farther. Little more, Rose—that’s it.
Rose shook her head. That was a good day. One of her favorites.
So why did it make her so sad?
She feels a tap on her arm, by her wrist. Patches passes her a small cloth. “For your…” he says, gesturing to her eyes, “…yeah.”
“Thank you.”
Ahem . “Don’t worry about it, kid.” He pauses, hesitating. “I…There’s…something I want to show you.”
Rose frowns, confused.
Patches reaches under the bed and tugs out a long chest, covered with broad patterns of flowers and leaves. It’s—
“Like the bear house,” Rose breathes, her fingers lightly skimming the engravings.
“It was important,” Patches nods. “To her.”
The chest is scraps welded together and glass blasted on where sand must’ve sprinkled. It’s copper and brass and silver, polished and beautiful. The lock is metal and glass—it hooded, the form of an open rosebud in an arc above, with the bottom half giving off a faint, white glow.
“It’ll only open for you,” Patches says.
He seems very far away right now.
Or maybe she feels very far away right now.
Rose touches the flower. She feels it give in, a pulse of energy fanning out to her fingertips. The rosebud slides down then clicks up, turning in place with a clink, clink, clink. The lid pops open, lighting the floor.
Rose can’t breathe. “This is…”
She feels a hand on her shoulder—too small and too light to be whose she hopes it could be. Patches sounds more like his usual self this time: “A sword. She didn’t forget. Had it ready months ago.”
It looks like her sister’s, in a way. Elegant and with its own tassel, almost not matching the chest it came in.
But there are other things.
It’s a hand-and-a-half by tahndi standards, and when she holds it, the secret etchings pulse into view—a rose, a thornbush, and two bears at the base of the ricasso and around the guards, sitting like a crest or a pair of protectors. The blade has little circles in descending size on both sides rising from the ricasso, up the fuller, with the fifth from the bottom a translucent red. Upon counting, she realizes it’s her family—all of them accounted for. Even Kyon.
“The sheath is the chest,” Patches says after a moment. “I’m not sure how it works, but she built it with Dagas and Ophelia, so you can ask them.”
“Does it have a name?” Rose asks softly.
Patches lets out a chortle, shaking his head. “No. She said you’re good at naming things. Didn’t want to take that away from you.”
Oh. “Oh.”
Rose stares at the blade, taking it all in. It’s hers, but it’s also her aunts—history woven between them and around them, forged forever in enchanted steel.
It’s a gift.
And it’s as complex and as simple as the one who gave it.
“The General’s Gift,” Rose says, rising and raising the sword with her. It reflects and absorbs the light from outside the window, dragging it down into the blade.
Thrust, she hears in her head. It’s her own voice. Instinct. Training.
Rose thrusts the Gift forward, digging the blade into air. It almost feels like she makes contact—there’s pressure at the point, and energy thrumming up and down the blade. She feels it drawing up into her arms, white magic wrapping around her.
Slash.
Swing.
Parry.
She flourishes the blade like it’s been hers since she’d started weapons training—like it’s her shadow and her core all in one.
Like someone is calling out movements from the sidelines.
Step to the side, Rose. Right—left. Find the triangle before you redirect. That’s it! Step and the back of the knee—nice!
Her chest is heaving, and the floor around the chest is wet.
Saltwater, not blood.
She can hear that voice beside her, still: lilting and hiding a smile.
Well done, kid.
Rose doesn’t realize how long she’s been sobbing on the floor until Patches finally puts a hand on her shoulder.
“You’ll be okay,” he says.
“Sorry,” she says.
“Nothing to be sorry about, kid.”
“We should… I should probably look for Ophelia and Dagas,” Rose says, standing. She looks out the window one more time—she’s drawn to it, even if she can’t fit through the frame like her aunt could. Maybe more like a release of her own pain out to the world.
Maybe passing it along.
Maybe hoping it doesn’t come back.
She wonders where Kyon is right now. Rose arrived earlier than expected, hoping to surprise her, but the warrior was away.
Delta had said she’d been away most days, lately.
I wonder if she’s okay. If…anyone’s watching her and making sure she’s okay.
There’s a loud noise outside that cuts through her reverie—a roar or similar, and the sound of something falling hard. Rose opens the window, just enough for the sound to carry through fully.
Patches winces, pivoting on his foot. “We’d better go. The captains should be at the forge.” He picks the chest up for her and heads out the door without even checking if she’s following.
(It takes Rose until the staircase to remember:
Sometimes her sister could scream like an animal.)