Rinh Panipahr • Balmung

But she also just appreciates the sort of fellowship that seemed to exist between the Honeybees. She wasn’t a Honeybee herself, obviously, but she was in more or less the same line of work, and couldn’t help but envy the sort of solidarity they enjoyed, and the way that gave them just a little bit of control over their own destinies, made them a little less at the mercy of a single patron’s whims (only a little less, granted; this was still Eulmore, after all). They looked out for one another-- and Linawren fancied that they looked after her, too, whenever she happened to be around. She spent less time worrying about Shai-Hann or one of his shitty friends taking liberties with her. She could feel confident she wouldn’t be given the truly demeaning things that might be asked of her at more private engagements.

Tonight, the Beehive is quiet. It’s late enough that most of the guests have already filtered out. Someone is lazily playing a piano, more just to set a certain tone than perform a recognizable piece of music. Linawren’s reciting a poem for Shai-Hann and a couple of his friends-- Harald, a hume, a childhood friend of Hann’s who’s grown up to be every bit as coldhearted and spoiled as Hann himself and a lanky elf she didn’t recognize but whose name, apparently, was Godwyn. All three men are watching her intently, rapt with attention.

The poem in question-- Ode to the Night Sky-- is supposedly a relic of whatever far-flung land-- long since devoured by the Light-- Linawren’s distant ancestors came from before they arrived in Voeburt. Actually, though, it’s her own composition. Free citizens like feeling that they’re in on a secret, though, so Linawren puts as much effort into the tales of where her tales come from as she does into the tales themselves. All she really knows about her supposed homeland comes from her own fading memories of her mother and father, and all they had to work with was second-hand accounts of their grandparents’ childhood memories: A song or two. A few basic dance-steps. A scattering of contextless words of a language irretrievably lost. But when Hann became her patron, he was under the impression that he now possessed the world’s sole practitioner of an exotic cultural tradition scoured from the world by the Flood of Light. Linawren wasn’t about to disabuse him of this notion-- selling him that fantasy was part of what kept her from being sent back into a shack in Gatetown with nothing to look forward to but just enough meol to starve more slowly.

Anyway, she likes writing. She was particularly proud of Ode to the Night Sky-- trying to vividly evoke a world she’d never seen for herself was a fascinating challenge. When she closed her eyes, though, she could practically see it-- a wide and wild void, openness itself, decorated with a thousand thousand pinpricks of light, cradling the pale circle of the moon. Writing was transportive-- a chance to project herself into a time or a place better than the one she lived in, even if in the end she had to attribute her work to some long-dead and mostly fictitious ancestor.

When she finally finishes, the whole table fell silent for a few moments. Godwyn is moved to tears-- Linawren isn’t sure if he was actually that affected by her words, or if he just sees some advantage in appearing to be of sufficiently sensitive temperament to be so moved by poetry, but she doesn’t particularly care-- either possibility meant she’s earning her keep. Harald, as usual, is just trying to look down her top, but at least he’s not actually talking to her. Hann affects cool nonchalance, as if to say this is the sort of artistry I take for granted, but he has enough of an air of smugness for Linawren to know he was pleased.

Hann breaks the silence. “Beautiful as always, my treasure.”

She takes a bow, pointedly ignoring how carefully Harald’s eyes track her movement. She smiles warmly at the men. Learning how to smile the right way is a skill every bit as important to Linawren as singing, dancing, or writing. Free citizens can spot a fake smile that doesn’t reach one’s eyes from malms away, and they feel insulted by it-- they want you to be genuinely grateful to be in their presence. So she smiles-- encouragingly to Godwyn, coquettishly to Harald, knowingly to Hann.

“So!” Godwyn says, “Shall we call it a night, gentlemen?”

Harald groans. “Do we have to? Waiting for your eyes to adjust once you go out into the light after spending so long in here is quite disagreeable, and frankly I’d rather put it off as long as possible.”

“Not like we’ve got anywhere to be,” Hann says, laughing, “Why don’t we prolong the night’s festivities with a bit of friendly wagering, eh? Hide the High Heart, maybe?”

Linawren doesn’t actually look longingly at the bar-- her smile never falters-- but she does so in spirit. She’s going to be stuck here for hours, probably. Whenever Hann gambles, he expects Linawren to perform-- to distract his opponents enough to keep them off-balance enough for Hann to get the upper hand, but not so much they realize that’s what she’s doing.

So while Hann pulls out a deck of cards and shuffles it, Linawren does a few stretches. When he deals the first hand, she begins to dance, an enticing twirl of flowing silks and lean muscles.

***

It is hours later-- if the sun could still be discerned through the thick soup of light blotting out the sky, Linawren supposes it would have long since risen.

It has been a disastrous night for Shai-Hann. Maybe it’s because Godwyn is an unfamiliar opponent-- Hann hadn’t taken his measure yet, hadn’t learned his tells. Maybe it’s because Harald is sick of being cleaned out every time the cards come out. Or maybe it was just plain bad luck. Whatever the reason, though, the mystel gentlemen has been hemorrhaging money in hand after hand. He quickly burns through the sack of gil he’d set aside for gambling, followed by the rest of the gil he’d brought along, and then anything else of value he had on his person— his lucky Voeburtite goldpiece. An electrum pocket-watch. The elven rapier he always wore at his hip.

Godwyn keeps his head above water and calls it quits after he’d turned a tidy profit-- he didn’t want to stay this late anyway, so he had no reason not to just take his windfall of gil and go. Harald, though, smells blood. He’s amassed a veritable treasury of Hann’s possessions on his table, coins and jewelry and golden bric-a-brac glittering in the lamplight. The two gamblers are locked in a death struggle-- the more Hann loses, the more urgently he tries to win it all back, the more recklessly he bets. Harald extracts the deed to Hann’s private airship berth, then the airship itself, then a series of promissory notes for increasingly astronomical sums.

“You should probably just cut your losses at this point, Hann,” Harald says, watching intently as Hann signs yet another check and slides it across the card table.

“One more hand,” Hann says, insistent.

“What, so you can write me some more bloody I.O.U.s?” Harald scoffs, “Past a certain point, gil’s just a number in a ledger somewhere. I don’t really feel the need to stake any of this on the possibility of that number getting a bit higher. At this point, I feel like some sort of… mercy rule, or what have you, ought to be invoked. To save you from yourself.”

Linawren is still performing half-heartedly, but she can tell neither man is paying much attention to her at this point. She gives her patron an appraising look; she can practically see the gears turning in his head as he works out what he could still bet that a.) wouldn’t run the risk of actually putting a dent in his obscene wealth compared with the vast majority of people in Norvrandt, but more importantly, b.) actually entice Harald into playing another hand.

To Linawren’s surprise, Hann meets her gaze. The look in his eyes is cold and calculating, even by Shai-Hann standards. He then directs that baleful gaze towards Harald, but Harald barely seems to notice-- his own attention seems to be fixed firmly on Linawren’s ass.

“I’ll bet Linawren,” Hann says, finally.

Linawren stops dancing mid-step. Through a superhuman effort, she manages to keep her face arranged into a pleasant expression-- she’s a professional, after all-- but she’s still visibly stunned.

“What?” Harald says, laughing.

“I know you’ve taken a liking to her ever since I took her on,” Hann says, “So if you stake the pot, I’ll stake her. I win, I get my things back. You win, I sign over the papers and she’s your bonded citizen.”

“Deal!” Harald says brightly, not hesitating a bit.

“Are… are you sure about this, Hann?” Linawren murmurs into Hann’s ear.

“Shut up,” he hisses, sweat beading on his forehead, “You’re distracting me.”

Harald winks at her.

As Hann deals the cards, Linawren can feel a cold, dead weight settling in the pit of her stomach. By the time Hann and Harald are ready to flip their last card, she’s standing stock-still, her heart is pounding. She felt as if all her scales were about to just vibrate off her body.

Hann flips first. It’s the ten of hearts-- a fairly respectable draw, all-in-all. Hearts trump the other suits in Hide the High Heart, so unless Harald has a hearts face card, the hand goes to Hann.

So of course Harald flips over the Lord of Hearts.

Like most decks of cards designed and printed in Eulmore, the Lord of Hearts is rendered in the image of the city’s honored leader, patron of patrons, Vauthry. Whatever bonded illustrator drew this tried so hard to flatter Vauthry with their likeness that it barely resembled the man himself-- he was an avenging angel with flowing golden locks, flanked by docile sin eaters in the form of semi-nude women with alabaster skin and golden blindfolds. With one hand, he’s dispensing a cornucopia of meol to the huddled masses of Kholusia. In the other, he’s plunging a spear of pure light into an allegorical figure representing the forces of darkness who would destroy the concord between man and sin eater which made all of Eulmore’s wonders possible. But the angel was still recognizable as Vauthry because it had the same insufferably smug air about him.

Linawren stares at the table. Vauthry’s awful smug fucking face stares back at her.

“Well,” Harald says, leaning back in his chair, “Suppose that’s that, then.”

Hann sulkily begins to gather up the scattered cards. “That’s that,” he says.

Linawren takes a stumbling step backwards, eyes casting about the Beehive, looking for-- help? Sympathy? Anything, really. But no one present-- not even the Honeybees-- deigns to even meet her eye.

“I’ll need to dig out her papers to make it official,” Hann says, “The Bureau of Registration will pitch a fit otherwise.”

“Fair,” says Harald, magnanimous in victory, “Remember that time I forgot to let them know I’d turfed out-- what’s his name, that fellow who did those little engravings of seascapes-- and within a day half the guard was out looking for him in case he was lurking in the bowels of the Understory, a rebel or an assassin or whatever. I can pick her up tomorrow morning, if you’d like?”

“All right,” Hann mumbles.

“One last night with her, eh?” Harald says, “Since you’ve been such a good sport about this.”

“Wow,” says Hann, unimpressed, “Thanks.”

***

Shai-Hann’s suite, perched atop the loftiest heights the Canopy has to offer, was decorated with the same gaudy abandon everything else in Eulmore was. Every table, every chair, every embroidered cushion and silk bedsheet, every porcelain plate and silver fork was a concrete manifestation of the blood, sweat, and tears of the bonded citizens upon whose backs Eulmore was built.

Hann was sitting at his desk (built by a bonded carpenter), dipping an ornate fountain pen (forged by a bonded silversmith) into a dainty-looking bottle of ink (made by a bonded glassblower) as he looked over the pile of forms and papers (filled out by a squadron of bonded clerks) which constituted the legal existence of Linawren, dancer, singer, and poet, bonded citizen of Eulmore.

He notices that Linawren is standing behind him, fidgeting apprehensively. He rises from his seat, turning to face her. The dazzling light pouring in from the window behind him throws his features into sharp relief-- the tufts of hair on his ears, his bright silver eyes, his classically handsome face. His tail swished this way and that in agitation.

“You know I wish I didn’t have to do this, my treasure,” he says, sadly.

“You don’t, though--” Linawren says. She hates how much she sounds as if she’s pleading, but she hates the idea of being sent into Harald’s household more. “Can’t you just-- you know-- call off the bet? I don’t think bets made at the Beehive at four in the morning whilst extraordinarily inebriated are legally enforceable--”

“If word gets around I don’t pay my debts, no gambling table this side of the Sea of Light’ll have me. So, as much as I really do value your company, as much as I’ve genuinely treasured our time together, I can’t back out of a bet just because I really want to.”

“If you value me so much,” Linawren says, trying her hardest to keep any anger from seeping into her voice, “why did you bet me in a hand of Hide the High Heart?”

Hann shrugs. “Ah, my treasure… you can’t gamble without gambling,” he says, as if this explains everything.

“Harald is clearly a boor,” Linawren says, changing tack, “Do you really think he’d appreciate me like you do? You’re a man of culture, of refinement, an appreciator of literature and the arts. His interests are considerably more… base. I--”

Hann stiffens. “Watch your tone. Whatever my opinion of the man, he’s a gentleman of quality and a free citizen of good standing. Someone like you has no right to refer to him like that.”

Linawren takes a step towards her patron, hands balled into fists so tightly that the fingernails digging into her palms draw blood.

“Remember that your presence in this city is a privilege which has been graciously extended to you by the free citizenry,” says Hann, fangs bared, his tone venomous. Behind him, the pitiless sky continued to blaze with light. “In return, your responsibility is to do whatever is required of you without question. Or would you like to go back to Gatetown?”

Linawren freezes in place. She feels her immediate surroundings slough away; Hann’s voice is nothing but a murmur of white noise. She’s somewhere else entirely. She feels the sharp terror of eaters swooping down from the sky, the grinding pain of constant hunger no meager ration of meol could banish. She sees her mother, hears her last words as she pressed a dagger into her daughter’s trembling hands. She feels the weight of decades with nothing to hope for but this bearing down on her. She--

The world snaps back into focus-- an opulent study, a bay window with a splendid prospect of Kholusia’s white cliffs, a stack of papers authorizing a man to trade her away like a bird in a gilded cage, and the man about to do it. “If Harald wants you to lick his boots, you should do it and feel grateful for the opportunity to earn your keep. If he asks you to lick something else, you—”

Linawren shoulder-checks him into the window. She’s stronger than she looks, with a dancer’s speed and a dancer’s grace.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he says, flailing as Linawren presses him against the glass, “Let go of me, you crazy bitch—”

The window shatters. Its fine glass and slim panes were built to look pretty, not stand up to sustained force; it had been a century since a storm last marred Kholusia’s brilliant sky.

Hann, desperate now, grabs hold of Linawren. He kicks and screams. He sinks his teeth into Linawren’s bared shoulder. She knees him in the groin and suddenly his hands have nowhere to gain purchase but empty air.

The highest levels of the Canopy to the choppy seas below is a long, long way to fall; a sharp cry fades into silence, punctuated by a quiet splash.

Linawren stares out the broken window, aghast. Her eyes are wide and she’s shaking like a leaf. The pale blue speck that used to be Shai-Hann, free citizen of Eulmore is caught in the riptide and swept out to sea.

Linawren exhales sharply. She sinks onto the ground; she realizes too late that she’s kneeling in the broken glass littering the parquet floor, but by this point the pain barely registers.

I just killed someone, she thinks.

I just killed my patron, she thinks.

She scrambles towards the window on all fours, leans over the edge, and throws up.

***

Darkness.

A dark room-- impossibly dark-- lit only by a paper lantern. A drahn woman sits-- no, kneels-- at a low desk. She’s writing something with a brush in an elegant, vertical script Linawren can’t read. The woman turns towards the lamp and her features are illuminated by a soft, warm light. She has Linawren’s face.

Brightness-- not the choking light of the skies Linawren knows, but a wide blue expanse punctuated by fluffy white clouds. The landscape below is endless rolling green steppes, continuing as far as the eye can see. Endless-- receding into the horizon, with no great wall of Nothing constricting it. She sees the drahn woman again, her red silk robe billowing in the wind, wielding a thin, curved blade. The expression on her face is impossibly confident. Across from her stands another drahn. She has dark skin, close-cropped white hair, black scales and horns, an improbably large greatsword in her hands.The women move towards one another, swords flashing in the sunlight. They look to be fighting a duel, but both thoroughly enjoying themselves. Eventually, the other woman knocks Linawren’s twin to the ground, and gently-- tenderly, almost-- places her boot on her face. They both burst out laughing.

A steel cell in a steel fortress. The woman who looks like Linawren is sitting cross-legged in one corner. Her expression is blank, but her eyes defiant. The door flies open. The corpse of a soldier in black armor clatters onto the metal floor. The woman with the pale hair strides into the corridor, her sword slick with blood. The woman in the cell grins ear to ear.

An impossibly huge city. The stars above echoed by a constellation of lights below. Linawren-- or whoever she is-- is standing on a high, arched bridge in a garden. The duel’s victor approaches, a swaddled infant in her arms. They both look a little older, now.

They’re standing on the deck of a ship. Linawren’s holding the child, this time. She now has a long, thin scar cutting through the scales on the side of her face and neck. Her companion is next to her, a hand on Linawren’s shoulder. The familiar silhouette of the spires of Eulmore looms over the horizon, but they’re somehow more austere-looking, more severe. The decks on the lower levels are bustling-- even from this distance, dozens of ships seem to be coming and going. Soldiers in red uniforms are crowding around the side of the ship, excited for their first glimpse of home in months--

The color red. The color blue. The color black. The color gold.

***

Linawren opens her eyes, groggy and disoriented. She looks up at Shai-Hann’s antique clock-- she’s lost an hour or so, somehow. The shining sky framed by broken panes and shattered glass betrays no sign of time passing.

For the first time since she was ushered out of Gatetown and into Eulmore, she doesn’t know what her life will look like a month from now.

Or a week from now.

A day, an hour.

But what she does know is that if she sticks around here, the question of what happens in the rest of her life will be moot.