#senwe

But Fen’Sulahn fought for them; for Senwe and her mother, who had been a loyal subject for centuries. Lady Fen’Sulahn had stopped her father’s Peacekeepers at the gates of Adahlan and made them turn back, stood up to the Lord Elgar’nan in Arlathan and incurred his rage for them, so that they could remain within her territories.

Senwe will never forget that.

She hears the whispers sometimes, from the other dyers and weavers when she goes to visit her mother. That the reason The Lady Fen’Sulahn saved her is because she is one of the rare few that knows how to create Adahlan’s famous red dye.

Senwe knows better. She knows how kind and just and compassionate Lady Fen’Sulahn is. It is why she trained so hard to become one of her warriors. To be granted a hound by the Lady herself and to gain her favor.

The happiest day in her life was the one in which Lady Fen’Sulahn gave her Femen. An honor. One she had worked so hard for. To know she had proven herself and had been noticed. Not for being the daughter of a traitor…but someone worthy of Fen’Sulahn and her hounds.

It is all she has ever wanted, to have Fen’Sulahn’s eyes fall upon her with interest and admiration and…and more, if she is honest with herself. But she knows she does not look like those that Lady Fen’Sulahn prefers, and her gifts have never been in the realm of shifting features.

But if she just…if she just works harder and shows herself to be a worthy companion, perhaps—

And then the construct appears. Broken, ruined, hollow of all things. It follows Lady Fen’Sulahn around like a lost puppy after its mother, until Sympathy manages to tear the thing away from her side. Her Lady is kind, and pities it despite its inability to feel, and does not strike it down.

And for all its offenses, somehow, somehow it seems as though the Lady Fen’Sulahn likes its company.  It is because it was crafted for her, Senwe knows. By Ghilan’nain or Dirthamen or perhaps even June, though the last seems the most unlikely. And it keeps its secrets—lies to their Lady about its origins.

It is a spy, undoubtedly. Meant to evoke feelings of pity, to make Fen’Sulahn let her guard down because it is only an unfeeling and ignorant construct, and then it will strike.

Senwe will not allow it to happen. She will not allow her Lady to be put in danger by this…this…thing.

She is not the only one who is unkind to the construct, not the only one who is disconcerted by the hollow air around it, or the uncertainties of its background. She is not even the most vocal, but somehow..somehow she feels as if she hates it the most.

One night, she sees the construct sitting beside the banks of the Valan. The river is large, separating the city in half; its waters can run deep and wide, and Senwe knows that it becomes rough and unforgiving, once it leaves the boundaries of the city itself.

It would not be difficult, she thinks, to push the construct in. It likely cannot swim. She could pull it out to one of the deeper areas, and leave it there. Or she could hold it down beneath the shallow waters near the riverbed.

It is to protect her Lady. The construct is dangerous.

Hemen wines beside her, and the construct looks up, and a large mass on its other side shifts; what Senwe had mistaken for a boulder is Haurshos himself. His eyes glow a bit in the dim light, and it feels as if he knows what she had planned to do. As if he can sense it. But only Hemen has ever known her so well. Surely…

The element of surprise is gone, regardless. And Haurshos has likely been ordered by his Lady to protect the construct. Senwe knows she would not get more than three feet with a blade drawn before Haurshos snapped her body in half.

It is not fair.

She has done so much, worked so hard. She has pulled herself out of the shame her memae made her suffer all by herself. While her mamae locked herself away in the dye vaults, and spent half a century with her head down and her heart closed. Distant and uncaring about the whispers, refusing to better herself, content to remain an object of derision.

Senwe will not do the same.

She will make them all see, make Fen’Sulahn see, that she is worthy. That she is needed. That she is not the next in a legacy of traitors.

The Lady Andruil organizes a hunt. A hunt large enough that Fen’Sulahn calls on nearly half of her hounds. She stands proud and tall and beautiful, and Senwe looks down at her feet, so that she is not caught staring. Impulse had seen it once, and had only recently stopped teasing her over the matter.

And then her Lady calls for her. Her. To join the hunt with the others, despite her age. The youngest in Adahlan aside from Eloen, who is still a baby at 50.

This is her chance to prove herself once and for all. She will take the hunt; she will outdo Andruil’s hunters, and her Lady will finally notice her. The construct is not allowed outside of the city, and even Senwe knows how badly things would go if Andruil were to discover it. So there is nothing to deter her, or dampen her mood, as the party sets out for the eluvian to meet with Andruil’s hunting party.

It is her fault.

She had been faring well with the smaller prey, before the last day when they had finally tracked down the large beast that Ghilan’nain had crafted for the occasion. She had seen an opening, seen a chance to claim glory for herself in front of her Lady.

She should have remembered that Andruil was there as well…and that Andruil does not allow another to claim her kill without consequences.

The arrow was meant for her.

But Hemen took it instead; an arrow with a poison that would have killed her in minutes leaves Hemen in agony for hours, as they trek back to Adahlan in the hopes of saving him. Fen’Sulahn and Cymael the kennelmaster had done their best to stop the poison’s path to Hemen’s heart, but Cymael claimed that Sympathy could do more, and would be needed if they were to save him.

She knows the look in Sympathy’s eyes, the way his shoulders sag when he looks Hemen over, and she begins to sob as the hounds around her begin to whine and whimper, feeding off her own despair. No no no, this is Hemen, he cannot die. He is her dearest friend, he is…he is…

This is her fault.

She does not remember much of the night. She curls up on the bed beside her hound and weeps, and falls asleep with tears still leaking from her eyes, too exhausted to keep them open.

It is the construct that saves him, in the end.

When she awakens to Hemen licking her face clean, she throws her arms around him and cries all over again, before she turns to see Cymael sitting at the table near the door, grinding bitter smelling herbs in a mortar. “What…?” She manages, before coughing, and then swallowing to wet her dry throat. “What happened?” She does not let go of Hemen, as he tries to wriggle off his own bed and onto hers.

“Sympathy left a few hours ago,” Cymael replies, not looking up from his work. “He said that Hemen needs to eat the antidote once more, to fully purge the poison,” he shakes his head as he continues grinding, “it’s a miracle that the construct recognized the poison.”

Senwe pauses. “The…construct did this?” That can’t be right. Why would it help, even if it were able to?

“Sympathy made the antidote, but the construct Kel was the one who pointed out the poison used,” Cymael explains.

Senwe’s fingers tremble, as she buries them in Hemen’s fur, and she’s overcome with more shame than she’s ever felt in her entire life. More than when she’d been called ‘the traitor’s daughter’, or when one of Elgar’nan’s followers had poured acid into one of her mother’s dye vats and she’d refused to say a thing when Sympathy had asked what could have stripped the skin from her arms.

It was never the construct’s fault that Senwe has gone unnoticed. It has always been her own. She has not behaved in a manner worthy of Fen’Sulahn. Hemen nearly died because of it.

The construct—her, her name is Kel.

I will need to apologize, she thinks, as she presses her face into Hemen’s neck, and her hound gives an encouraging woof. She will never like Kel, she thinks. But she can…she can at least behave in a manner that does Fen’Sulahn proud.