Work Text:
The day after Laudna is revived from death, she is challenged to a duel.
Informally, of course. She is… free to say no, the Lord of Whitestone tells her, but his words come as though from a distance. “I’ve been asked to tell you that it’s only a request,” he’d said in that deep, royal voice. Laudna had been pulling herself down from the Sun Tree so many years ago the first time she heard him. They’d both been so afraid, then. There’s a different kind of fear in both of them now. “That being said… she would very much like to see you.”
Laudna swallows. It tastes, as always, like dead blood and scar tissue. Where is Imogen? “I don’t feel well,” she finally says, unable to meet the lord’s eye. “Not… no, thank you. I don’t want to spar today.”
She feels his eyes upon her, feels something that is too quiet for disappointment radiating from his skin like heat from a fire. Perhaps it is concern, the same sort of concern that Imogen drags like a knuckle over the surface of her mind. Laudna clings to that psychic presence like a lifeline. It is the only one she will ever have to feel again. “Of course,” Lord de Rolo says evenly. “The facilities of our Pale Guard are open to you and yours as long as you remain here, though I hear you will be leaving us soon.”
She nods, running a hand through her hair. Someone braided it for her while she was asleep under the Sun Tree last night, as though she were a much-loved doll. One of those words applies to her, she thinks, though she does not know which. The lord is silent a moment longer. “I do not have a message from her towards you, but I think that there is much she would not say to me.”
Laudna smiles a little, just a broken little twitch like an electrified carcass. She’ll remember how to smile properly soon. Death still lingers on her like a lover’s perfume the morning after sharing a bed. “You know how us girls are.”
Lord de Rolo smiles like he’s out of practice, too. “I do,” he says, the same double meaning on his breath. He lowers his voice. “If you mean to avoid her, she’ll be with the Guard until three.“
Laudna feels a lock of hair rip out from her scalp. She’s pulled too hard again.
Neither of them are saying her name, but Laudna’s felt eyes upon her since she walked through these doors. They don’t need to use her name. The ghost of Cassandra Briarwood haunts these halls, no matter how much her living form attempts to exorcise her. Windows are flung open, doors are unshuttered. It does no good.
Laudna knows this about dead things: they’re always hungry.
She goes back to her friends to make sure they’ll not leave anything in Whitestone and tries to put the conversation out of her head, but Imogen scratches her nails against it in a way that ought to be comforting. She sees when Laudna cringes. “Did he say somethin’ to you?” Imogen asks her as they take the great stairs up to the second floor. There’s an anxious tone in her voice, but it’s worried soft like an old charm or a leather strap. She’s probably been anxious for a while, since– since Otohan. Laudna’s stomach twists. “Are you alright? I’ll kick his ass for you.”
“He didn’t say anything,” Laudna reassures her softly, trying for dignity. She has to use the carved, swooping handrail to get up the stairs. “He– there’s someone he wants me to see.”
“A therapist?”
Laudna shakes her head and doesn’t laugh. “His sister.”
Imogen glances behind them, but Laudna knows that the lord is gone. She can’t glance away. She’s too focused on these goddamn stairs. Was she this sick the first time she came back? She can’t remember. “He’s got a sister?”
“Mm-hm.”
“A living one?”
Laudna laughs, but it sounds screeching and strange to her own ears. “As alive as I am!”
Imogen doesn’t say anything. Laudna’s laughter hangs awkwardly in the air before finally dissipating. “That’s not funny,” she finally says. “I’m sorry.”
“Laud, don’t apologize.”
Her legs are shaking. She clings to the top of the railing where it turns into a column solid enough for her to hug, and rests her forehead against the carving at the top. “She was there,” Laudna says, surprising herself. It’s easier to tell this to the wooden pillar than it is to Imogen. “When they killed me. She helped.”
Outrage floods her through that psychic tether. Imogen’s hatred boils.
Laudna shakes her head. She’s too tired for outrage. “I should go meet her.”
“You don’t have to meet anyone,” Imogen growls. Laudna reaches out a hand, and Imogen squeezes it hard enough to hurt. “You don’t have to go meet her.”
“I should,” Laudna says again. This, too, surprises her. “I really should.”
Imogen is silent for a long, tense moment. “Take Ashton,” she finally says. “If you do go meet her.”
Laudna finally peeks out from behind the curtain of her hair. “Why Ashton?”
Imogen smiles coldly. “Cause they’re scary,” she says. “And they owe you.”
So it is that a short while later, Laudna finds herself trudging towards the stretch of land where Whitestone’s Pale Guard is trained, leaning heavily on Ashton for support. He’s surprisingly gentle with her, but then, she supposes he knows more than anyone else what it’s like to come back from the dead. He’s very nearly a proper gentleman, except she can feel him glaring balefully at anyone who looks at her sideways. “Are you sure you want to do this?” they keep asking. “We can ditch. We can totally stand her up, if you–”
“I should go see her,” Laudna repeats, trying to get her feet to behave. Her legs are still shaking. Forward motion is… rocky. “I don’t want to stand her up.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I want to stand her up for you.” They slow down for a moment so she can catch her breath, their hand broad and rough around her own. “I don’t like it here. I hate these people.”
“You hate everyone,” she murmurs. Even her fingers feel strange, like they’re more fragile than they should be, liable to break like thin porcelain. She doesn’t usually have to breathe, but right now the sense memory is a comfort. She closes her eyes, and Ashton pulls to a stop next to her. “Sorry.”
She feels him shrug. “It happens.”
Laudna struggles for a moment– she has to remind herself how to breathe. “Imogen says you owe me,” she finally rasps. Ashton’s hand tightens around hers. “Is that because you ran?”
He’s quiet. “Probably.”
She nods, and takes a last deep breath before giving the whole activity up as a bad job. “I should have run,” she tells them. “We all should have run.”
They don’t say anything to that. For once, Laudna is glad she can’t read minds the way Imogen can. She doesn’t want to know how her body looked when she wasn’t in it. “We’re almost there,” Ashton finally tells her. “Then you can sit down.”
“I don’t want to sit down,” she tells him, more pleadingly than she intends. She opens her eyes and stares down into the cobblestones as though from a dizzying distance, as though there is still a rope around her neck. “I don’t want to sit down.”
She can feel his eyes on her. His voice is almost patient when he speaks. “What do you want?”
She wants to not have died again, but she doesn’t say that. She can’t. “I can keep going,” she says instead. “Let’s– let’s just keep going.”
Ashton walks her the rest of the way to the training grounds for the Pale Guard, whose uniforms look exactly as they did when the Briarwoods commanded them. Some of them wield firearms, now, a strange and novel digression from the original topic. Some wield swords instead. They all have thick veils over their eyes, and so Laudna cannot tell if there are eyes upon her until she sees Lord de Rolo standing by a stone bench, leaning on his cane. He is looking at her, so she looks back, and neither of them look away. “You came,” he says as they get closer, seemingly paying no attention to Ashton. Again, that strange radiation– though not, she believes, directed at her, given the way Ashton’s hand has tensed around her’s. “I was not expecting–”
Laudna’s eyes move. His words float away on the wind. She’s not listening to him anymore. She is preoccupied with the Briarwood sitting on the bench.
Lady Cassandra’s hair is mostly still dark, except for that skunk-shock of white, as though the rest of it has seen the consequences for failure and now obeys her every command out of fear. Her jaw is sharp, her lips a stern rosebud that refuses to open until the rain deigns to cease. Her eyes are hard and bright and distant, the way they were across the fine table the night Laudna first encountered her, and she watches the Pale Guard as though choosing which of them she is going to eat when they are finished training, the way a wolf watches a flock of quail. Something in Laudna’s chest aches with familiarity, horror revealing itself anew. The Briarwoods are dead, she was told, but not this one. Not this one .
One of her fingers pops as she squeezes Ashton’s hand, and they look away from the lord to see her face, which must only be vacant and terrified the way she had been in the hollows of that nightmarish Sun Tree. She has found herself in a new nightmare, now, and all the sense memory of living has abandoned her, as if she was created to be this dead thing that stands now in the grass. “Laudna,” Ashton interrupts the lord, and then again, “Laudna?”
Lady Cassandra turns that horrible gaze towards Laudna, and she presses herself into Ashton’s body, hoping that they are intimidating enough for both of them. She cannot speak. She cannot even open her mouth to try. It’s too much. It’s…
Ashton steps forward, putting himself between Laudna and Lady Cassandra in a motion reminiscent of Orym’s bait and switch. She trembles in their shadow, as Lord de Rolo looks her over. His voice gentles before Ashton can say anything. “Ah,” he says softly. “Yes. Cassandra, would you mind–”
The lady bows her head and turns her face towards her lap. Her hands flutter for a moment, and then begin to remove weapons– first a rapier with a dark hilt, then knives hidden in shoes, in thigh holsters, in white lantern sleeves. Laudna sees her take a deep breath, as though preparing herself, and then she removes a long, sharp pin from her hair and stabs it into the dirt by her feet with the knives. She does not look back at Laudna, though this seems to be more out of respect than fear, and her chest heaves as though the display had required more effort than it appeared to. She does not say anything.
Laudna peers from behind Ashton’s elbow. They glance towards her, and she can hear the thought in their eyes: you don’t have to do this. It’s okay.
Everyone keeps telling her that. Everyone keeps telling her that it’s okay, that it’s over. Laudna knows better. There are some things that don’t end.
From the set of Lady Cassandra’s jaw, Laudna thinks that she must know this most delicate of facts, too.
Lord de Rolo looks down at the pile of weaponry, and then at Laudna. He doesn’t say anything, and she realizes with a jolt that he’s waiting for her to tell him whether or not this is acceptable. She swallows, and then says in a voice barely above a whisper, “Take off your rings.”
Lady Cassandra hesitates, her eyes flickering towards her brother, but whatever she sees in his face gives her no quarter. With faintly trembling hands, she removes her rings, all four of which are thick and set with stones. Laudna watches her put them on the pin in the dirt. She remembers being punched with one of those rings, once. The signet broke her nose. Lady Cassandra looks back out into the distance, and remains silent, as though she is attempting to coax a nervous dog into her immediate radius.
Nervous dogs are known for biting. Laudna feels her shears hanging heavy at her waist, and lets go of Ashton’s hand.
Lady Cassandra has left room for her on the bench, but Laudna barely sits, only perches like a bird with her feet dug into the grass so that she can run if she needs to. They both stare out at the Pale Guard, who are running blade drills against a league of invisible enemies. Their faces, or what little Laudna can see of their faces, are grim with focus. She glances at Ashton from the corner of her eye, and sees their face set with the same determination. They will not fail her again.
That reassurance does little to ease her nerves. Laudna looks to the pile of weaponry by Lady Cassandra’s feet, inspecting it. She settles her hands in her lap, rubbing a thumb over her knuckles as though they are prayer beads of some ill-practiced religion. “Why did you take out your pin?” she finally asks.
Lady Cassandra does not look towards her. Again, Laudna is reminded of handling a strange dog. She was always fond of dogs as a child, but her family only ever had one, and that was when she was very young, indeed. He had gotten into something bad and died slowly, and they had not had any dogs after that. “I could have hurt you with it,” Lady Cassandra says, her voice the same as it was on that fateful night nearly forty years ago. She still sounds afraid. “That’s why I keep it. No one suspects a noblewoman to attack them with a hairpin.”
That’s rather ingenious, actually. “I wouldn’t have known,” Laudna says, watching the Pale Guard. Their swords swing in unison, and she can almost imagine the breeze off the field is made by so many weapons acting in tandem. “If you had kept it.”
“No,” Lady Cassandra agrees. “You wouldn’t have.”
They’re looking in the same direction. Some conversations are easier that way, when you don’t have to look someone else in the eyes. Lady Cassandra points into the sun, towards one of the drill sergeants, a wiry brown elf with long, dark hair and a pair of obsidian cutlasses sheathed at their waist. They seem unimpressed by the soldiers, but that may be a purposeful act. “That’s Morrie,” Lady Cassandra says softly. “My partner. Fae was my bodyguard for a time, before fae moved to captain the Guard.”
Laudna doesn’t say anything, but something terrible and jealous growls deep in her hindbrain. How dare this woman be in love? How dare she have a partner ? “Congratulations,” she says instead, because that’s what you’re supposed to say when someone tells you happy news, and she has not forgotten her lines. “How long have you been together?”
“Seven years now,” Lady Cassandra tells her. There is something trembling and fond in her voice, and it is not drowned out by the dread that pounds relentlessly in Laudna’s head. Her next words come out in a sigh. “I do not know what you were doing seven years ago, but it seems indecent that I was falling in love.”
Laudna does not respond.
“I asked you here to spar,” Lady Cassandra continues on after a moment. “Though I understand that you are suffering from resurrection sickness.”
“I am.”
The lady nods sharply, and her jaw works as she decides what to say next, as though she is rolling the words in her mouth like a chewy bit of lobster. Surf and turf. “Truthfully,” she finally says, “I did not want to spar.”
Laudna looks over at her. A false pretense from a Briarwood? How shocking. “What did you want?” she asks, clenching her hands in her lap until her knuckles pop. There’s a note of hatred in her voice that she does not attempt to conceal. She smiles grimly. “Dinner?”
“Gods, no.” Lady Cassandra closes her eyes. “I just wanted you to hurt me.”
Oh.
The woman sitting on the bench with her looks so much older than she did the night Laudna first met her, but she looks less tired. The suffering takes up less room on her face. She wears a low collar, and Laudna can see that Sylas’s bite marks have faded over the decades the same way the rope burn has not faded for her. She had not eaten at that dinner. She had drank like she was trying to fill herself up with courage, but she had not eaten, and after dessert, she had taken Laudna to a room and helped her dress in a beautiful blue dress, and then she had broken Laudna’s nose with her fist, and with the fine de Rolo signet ring she wore upon it. Her face had been bare with agony, and there had not been enough time in Laudna’s life to hate her. She was just a girl.
Laudna looks the same as she did that night, broken nose and all, but there is a light in her eyes that Lady Cassandra does not possess. Laudna had been killed, but she had not been extinguished. “Do you still want that?” Laudna asks softly. “I…”
Lady Cassandra shakes her head. “I don’t know what I want,” she says. Her voice is a shattered thing. “But this seemed like somewhere I could start.”
She may not look it, but Laudna is not the same woman who died that night, so many years ago. She is sick and aching in a way she remembers, but she is not the same. Gently, slowly, so as not to spook her, Laudna lays one of her hands over Lady Cassandra’s where it rests on the bench. “How lucky we are,” she says simply, “that we need not hurt each other anymore.”
She is surprised to find that she believes what she says.
Lady Cassandra takes a deep, shaking breath, and finally turns her head to look at Laudna, as though she has just now found the strength for the action. Her eyes are dark and boundless, and though there are flecks of hazel deep in the irises, they are not the shining gold of Sylas Briarwood’s control any longer. Lady Cassandra turns her hand over to clutch at Laudna’s own. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “Thank you. I’m so sorry.”
Laudna smiles. The action is almost effortless. For the first time in a very long time, she thinks that it might be the sun that warms her skin, like a shadow has melted away at long last. “Thank you,” she tells Lady Cassandra, this woman who helped to kill her, once upon a time. “I’m sorry, too.”