Evening crept softly into the Manor as if to hide that Night was to visit again. The day had blurred by, her fingers felt bare from disuse. Grief stole her hunger and concentration, so she moved. Vera walked the halls in simple clothes -- pants, a tunic just small enough and a thin robe that tied at her waist. Her hair was in a lazy tie at her neck, warming the cool skin of her shoulder. Her weapons were left to be cleaned by others. Normally she would do this herself, but her heart made it impossible this once. There were dresses she could wear and mourning colors to display. Vera's tolerance was too destroyed. She longed to move freely. With all of her uniforms ruined, this was the only way.

( ... )

Vera did not understand why everyone came to her. She did not know how to organize a funeral. On the road, men were either left behind or buried. Caskets were not chosen, venues were not cleared and secured. She did not have to write four dozen letters to place a man in the ground or the sea. There was memory, regrets and good-bye.

( He deserved a funeral. )

That was way too fucking crazy for anyone to be alright with it. The problem was, of course, that all of them had been too shocked not only by the fact that Gola had been wounded, actually wounded, but that his arm had got up and crawled off on it's own accord, at his fucking bidding. Eithne had stood beside Eragos and taken on a dragon but that took the fucking cake on crazy things she'd seen. Of course, that didn't mean Eithne felt wide eyed or horrified, actually, she felt more subdued than she normally would. The anger wasn't a storm on the sea anymore, it was all calm waters. It was because of all the death, all of that for.. for this to happen. Arand was dead. Grees was dead. She was sad about those deaths. Tirad was dead but Eithne wasn't sad about that. She wasn't particularly happy about it either but it was already accepted in her mind. She felt shame over the fact that she'd been the one to do it, to betray their trust just as he had by going behind their backs. But that was further from her mind. All she had on her mind was getting a drink, two, three, really more like as much as she could consume without passing out or forgetting everything.

( First she needed to see a healer. )

Dinaden sprinted across the lawns of the Lord's Manor as if they were once again in the plains west of the Free Cities, Vera leaning forward and riding high on the saddle. The speed felt brutal even after being healed, but she wasn't slowing for the three Riders behind her. Not for the first time did the unease at leaving men behind cross her heart. Eragos and Sleeping Tiger both were core parts of their group now. Bahn was right to catch Eragos' arm. Bahn was right to keep the former knight under the Arches.

( So why did it still feel wrong? )

He didn't know where he was. He knew. Yes, he knew. The hard paved stone beneath the arches could not be mistaken for anything else. If Inalen had been here to see smoke pouring out behind them - what would she have said? And what would she have done? Something was happening down below. No one was getting out of there who was not already out. So it was relief which found him first when Eithne revealed herself to be sitting atop one of the medical wagons, sullen in her insistence on smoking even as they were trying to assess her wounds. The healers received more than one barking instruction from her. I can walk, she had shouted. Wordlessly she yelled in another man's face as the fellow tried to get at the wound in her side. Somehow she'd made it out. But there were two masks beside her, where there should have been one. Tirad was dead. That was what it must mean. Eragos realized with a sinking sort of sadness that Grees' mask had burned with him in that hellhole.

( If they could recover it, they would. )

That stinking, swelling stench of humanity filled his nostrils. A city was a living thing, thousands of them contributing to one massive organism that lived and breathed. Expansion. Contraction. All of it what a living organism would do. The city would not be without the people there to make it so, and yet he wished he could see these living organisms work without the humans who made them so. One of the most repulsive qualities they had was contributing to the smell of decay. He could remember a time when nothing decayed. When nothing ever rotted as it lived, died as it went on. He could remember a place where such a thing had been true. How long since the august time of those days? Days were an imperfect system. What if the whole world slept through one day, and though it was the previous day? None of them would consider the possibility.

( Soon it would not be a problem any longer. )

Vera's face was slick with blood that was not her own. She wiped both the crimson and the sweat with a glove she'd ripped off her hand, before discarding the ruined thing in nearby flames. She was running now, trying to keep low in the smoke despite the way her ribs protested -- likely bruised, instead of broken. She remembered the words of the Grey Rider as he grabbed her wrist with his burnt hand. She stabbed him through the neck, careless of the spray. The bubbles of liquid that made him choke as he opened his mouth were what made his words stick farther in her mind. The knife that she'd used to take the light of his eyes was now in her belt. She never lost her knives.

( Look around you... )

A long time ago, when he'd still felt the sense of power in his knees, something like this would not have frightened him. Smoke and fire were the land of the soldier, where the living and the dead could meet and even share their experiences. A battlefield had been his home once upon that time, long ago, but now a battlefield felt as alien to him as it must have to a civilian. All the zeal with which you were filled as a younger man did not translate well to an older man's caution. Of course, he'd joined the army for a chance at a better life. Growing up as the son of a farmer - outside the reach even of Oisea, which was the lesser of all the Free Cities - did not appeal to a man who grew up reading historical accounts of High Lord Gavrie's great victories. To some the idea of war was repulsive. To him it was merely the means to an end; that end being his permanent removal from agricultural servitude.

( Even now, he hated thinking of farms. )

Midnight.

When the message came, she should have been sleeping. Over Agethlea, muted lightning ran through low clouds that shifted restlessly against one another and before sprawling across the tops of buildings. Twisting, thrashing, the storm threw rain against the glass panes of the Lord's Manor and the water clung to the windows, almost pleading to be let inside. Vera was already awake when Agethlea shivered under the harsh hand of the wind -- a violent variation of what blew out the candles of mourners. She couldn't sleep here. She could only lay staring at a ceiling with perfect paint and a spider too lazy to catch much other than its own floating web. That was when Vera felt that terrible burn inside her skin, the one the High Lord told her not to ignore again. A guardsman came with a brief, unsigned note not long after:

It is happening now.

( There was no meeting this time... )

Vera ran her fingers across the ring she'd been given just an hour ago. Occasionally she would slip it over her thumb and roll it back and forth over her knuckle. The ring belonged to High Lord Arand and bore the symbol of his House -- twin falcons -- carved over and over in gold. A large, bright garnet in the center was said to contain the blood of his ancestors. She felt uncomfortable with the ring in her hands, as if all of the sudden the metal would feel like flesh and begin to speak. Vera bit at her lip and stared down at the city below where mourners had gathered. On a light-less balcony, she was a phantom to all the people below. The High Lord had concern for assassins. Perhaps he knew the sick feeling in her heart, that she wished they would return so that she might fight them again.

At this height the mourners seemed like fireflies, spiraling over and over, stuck on the honey of death. Vera looked down and felt she should be on the street, that she should feel small after everything that happened. Yet instead she was with a Knight whose armor caught none of the light around him; instead the metal was as black as the gaps between stars. Ridgar who was not at all like the knights of storybooks. Nor was he a knight like Eragos had been. He was speaking to her in his dry brittle voice with eyes void of feeling for the mourners. Vera was trying to pay attention. She was going to take the Riders into the Great Libraries without assistance. She would guide them to a place she'd never visited.

Rotating the ring in her hand again, she began to wonder why not Ridgar? Why couldn't he be a guide? Why would the High Lord set her to this task when it might cost them time? She despised not knowing where she was going.

( Lady Vera, there are three Arches of Inalen... )

Their orange flames danced in time to the movements of the crowd, to the vagaries of the wind, and he was transfixed. In all the years he had been alive Eragos Feareborne had never seen anything such as this. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of bodies. Perhaps even more. All of them clutched between two hands a candle of one kind or another. They were all burning, and every person was hunched over that candle. In prayer, perhaps, or silent contemplation. Cobbled stone beneath their feet was still. The quiet of it was nearly unbearable; it made him want to act the ruffian. Shout something into the crowd. Thrust his arms into the sky and howl like a mad wolf. This was not the sort of event for which his sort was prepared, or for which his sort was meant.

( He stayed in any case. )

Eithne peeked around the corner and watched the long corridor. She felt odd being in her uniform while contemplating all of this. It was a question no one wanted to ask themselves. Was a friend betraying them? Eithne had already lived through a dear friend betraying her, and murdering anyone close to her that he could. She didn't want this to happen again, not that Tirad was exactly her friend, but it would have the same fallout with the rest of them and she wanted to make sure it didn't come down to.. if he was selling them out then they could all be dead before they even suspected. Eragos didn't want to suspect any one of them, but with the enemy always being two steps ahead of them.. There was no other answer. Someone had to be doing this and Tirad seemed..

( It was now or never. )

Morning's yellow light was slipping through silver clouds in slivers. Patches of light created shapes, oddities and curiosities of light on the cobbled streets they walked. And they did walk. For all that horses might have been faster, he did not want to lend any sense of urgency to what they were doing. Between the incident at the waterside cells, the ruin and magic that had befallen the Caserton stables, that wagon of Illos that had flown through the streets in pursuit of White Riders, and the fall of the Lower Courts, Agethlea had turned into something of an outlaw's city. Soldiers were still working with White Riders to restore order - but panic was the order of the day. Theft was on the rise. Violence was as well, and not nearly so polite as the theft. Bathia had tried to describe what had happened. Eragos had lost interest after only a moment of the fellow's mad gibbering about thousands of fates living inside his mind.

( Elden had scribbled furiously. )

The cape pinned to Vera's shoulders was the proper color as dictated by the uniform code all Riders followed, but against her back the fabric felt too light and too smooth. Her cloak had been lost in the battle for the Lower Courts; while her uniform was saved, it was only so that another could be made. In truth, she only wore bits and pieces of the white that she'd ridden into Agethlea with. Vera's gloved fingers moved briefly over the emblem of the Free Cities that was stitched in black at her chest, before she fiddled with the foreign bit of silverwork that kept her cape in place. The same Dwarven hands that made this pin had made the knives now resting in the wide leather belt encircling her middle. How Elden managed to afford weapons from a Dwarf's forge was a mystery, but that fit in line with the sorcerer's nature. They had been gifts to help her, to cheer her up. And that was another mystery. Vera had not known Elden very long, but he'd managed to see how much she'd needed her uniform back.

( Sun warmed her hair through her hood... )

There were infinitely more important things she could be doing and just as many pointless things that wouldn't be as pointless as this, but Eithne liked drinking. It kept her minds off the things that were bothering her. The death of one of her only friends, the death of thousands of other people in two swoops that she had witnessed with her own eyes, the revenge that she sought but didn't know where to begin, and of course there was that thing that almost appeared more important but... wasn't, was it? She hadn't been drunk when she'd spent most of the night talking to Nieve, but now she was half way there. She wasn't about to stop either.

Cols would have scowled at her, but at least he would have joined her. He would have sat there, maybe had one or two ales and then stuck to water. Of course that didn't mean he ever beat her at cards. She could almost picture the look on his face as she fanned out another winning hand for him to see. But he'd never see it again, and she would never see his face again. At least, not while alive. The thought had crossed her mind that in the end she'd be seeing Cols and Martine.. probably sooner rather than later. The way things were going..

Her anger bubbled away whenever she thought about the fact that someone could have stopped this before it'd gone as far as it was now. Could have stopped it at the beginning if it were not for their desire to stick to rules and laws. If they had stopped it.. years ago, some people would have been jailed, some killed. But more than this? More than these numbers which seemed impossible on paper, but were real. Real people who were now dead. As much as Eithne thought she deserved to wear her uniform she was staying as far away from it while out. The entire city hated them, if not the entire country. White Riders couldn't even stop a man from leveling a building.. Sourly she took another long drink from her glass.

( Which would run out first, the money she had or the ale in the Drunken Rat? )

Vera used to believe he truly was so absorbed in the papers he studied. When she was a child she would wait patiently at the edge of the office desk, covered in parchment and leather-bound manuscripts, until High Lord Arand finally peered at her and invited her to sit.

She always came here when she wasn't supposed to. Over time, Vera would enter his libraries or offices and begin to pick at the texts he had fanned out over his tables, reading without permission. The longer Vera stood there, waiting for his eyes, the more questions she had. Inappropriate questions that her mother would later scold her for ("I can not believe you questioned him on the pay he receives..." or "Why on earth would you ask High Lady Linde's age?") were the ones that always made the edges of the High Lord's eyes crinkle. It took time to learn that the crinkling was a form of a smile. Even when it wasn't stretching his mouth upward. Eyes could smile. Vera always thought it strange until she began to see such smiles in others. Until he taught her to smile that way too...

"Be careful with those smiles of yours," High Lord Arand told her with mock sternness, "You never know what havoc they could cause."

She tugged at a piece of paper on his desk tonight. Her fingers bent the edge back and forth. The large fire in the hearth to their left disguised the sound of the parchment so that it did not disturb the High Lord. Vera saw the text, but did not have the heart to read it. Instead she listened to the sharp edge of the High Lord's pen scraping along thin paper. Harsh, quick, precise and without pause. Normally Vera would play the game of guessing what he was writing. This would ease her heart. Instead she kept thinking about...

( What would you like for your Birth Day? )

It seemed as though the entire castle was packed with fearful citizens who would rather stay within the grounds than to venture out into their unprotected homes. Nieve couldn't help notice how much of a landscape could change within the span of two days as she left the meeting chambers with a bitter taste at the back of her throat. The corridors stood full of cowering bodies that shrank away as she walked past, her head bowed low away from their anxious gazes. Some even sought to touch at her uniform, still asking if their loved ones had been found even though rescue operations had come to a halt for the night.

Despite her scant experience, Nieve couldn't bring herself to tell the truth that the chances of the missing people grew fainter as eAch minute drew by. All she could do was to focus, to draw a deep breath and walk as fast she could through the corridors without acknowledging their plainitive looks and the sporadic grief-laden wails of yet another whose loss she could not face.

( Her feet took her out of the castle )

Enough people heard his name on her lips to know; she did not need seek Eragos any more. The yarns that bound her concentration could only take so much, not unlike the stitches that held the skin of her arm closed. Elden, who had returned from the rubble of the Lower Courts and the corpses there, had tried in earnest to heal her wound. She viciously refused and felt with every word she used to stab at the poor sorcerer that there was little rationale involved. "They have already taken the sleeve that was cut, but this flesh is mine. You can not wash this away," she said. She owed Elden more respect. He had pulled her out of a pile of stone. Yet Vera guarded the wound as she had been willing to guard a corpse. Elden left her alone after that.

( Memories were important, but she was being foolish... )

For the first time in his life, he felt as though - even if it was just for a moment - he put the concerns of the people above himself. Always it was revenge he wanted, or "justice", that word that could mean almost anything in the mind of the wronged - that word whose meaning was never wrong, even though no two people had an exactly similar idea of what justice was. There was no pride in such a decision. In fact, it was an uncomfortable sensation that was running through his limbs at that moment. Not just because he had been - up to that point - a selfish sort of fellow. Not just because he should have been putting their needs ahead of his own all of this time. But because it meant putting her in danger. When he could not resolve what she meant to him, when every glance in her direction was a tangled web of thoughts and emotions, he was willing to send her into harm's way and ... nothing about that seemed right.

( Perhaps it was not right. )

The memorial had been markedly brief. There were men working in the square at all hours. Priests and soldiers and White Riders alike, clearing away rubble. Searching for anyone who might have survived. And so the site itself had become a memorial. Estimates and rolls of the court's staff listed casualties at nearly three thousand. Perhaps as many as one thousand dead. Eragos could hardly credit such numbers - but the tower itself had collapsed into dozens of other structures, which had not been evacuated, and the tower itself had still been conducting day-to-day business. Some simply ran and hid with the start of the commotion. Those were the rolls he studied with a stone face. Emotions kept in check only because he did not know what would happen if he failed. Tanist and Thiele, missing. Presumed dead. Cols, dead. Birloch, dead. The Lower Court's judges, dead. Frozen Pond, dead. That poor girl, dead. Sarta, dead. Again. Every living soul who had witnessed anything - any living soul that could be trusted to be impartial - was dead. And their work was for nothing.

( This was what the Red House made of public announcements. )