All three of them sat on a thin plain bench, shoulder to shoulder, looking out at the tent before them through a curtain. It was an uncomfortable way to sit. The fabric had been visible when Eithne asked Faxril where they were wanted, but Vera had no idea he'd kept two armed guards behind here. Her brother explained, in the simplest way he could, that he rarely trusted anyone. Mages in Trone had been paid enough to make a fabric that seemed sheer on one side and solid on the other. Faxril asked them to sit and let the two guards stand in front of them, just in case.

( It was an uncomfortable way to sit. )

The rain started when they broke out across the edge of the Acierran Plains, heavy and violent as it was wont to do in the southern half of the Free Cities. Vera was glad for her cloak, which caused the water to roll off her back rather than weigh down her clothes. The skies had waited until the tall flags of the Southern Army were in sight. Navy blue, red, black and white blurred together as the rain ripped fiercely at the cloth. Rain threatened even the stakes that held the poles to the earth. Yet the flags were driven into the ground by hands used to worse winds, worse rains. Faxril's men were, at their core, men of the sea.

( ... )

Twilight was a peculiar time to be on the road. Diffused light softened the night's darkness into a sapphire blue but did not yet collect on the horizon. The moon was still preferred by the heavens and yet drooped, as if fatigued. Night was often cold in Agethlea, especially at the turn of the seasons, and a low lying fog settled in anticipation of the sun. As the White Riders made their way out of Agethlea, the fog spread into the trees surrounding the road. The heavy clouds clung to the bases of trees and occasionally reached up to tangle in branches and vines.

( Conditions of the road made for a somber exit... )

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. )

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. )

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 )

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. )

Each patch of cobblestone in the square was covered by a pair of feet except the band of space that Grees emptied with six other men. They were large-muscled soldiers with intimidating swords on their hip and dark, distant eyes. Occasionally they stepped forward to gently press a common man back from the foot of the court steps. Yet the space in front of Grees remained untouched. He stood not far from the High Lord Arand with arms crossed and a sneering frown marred what Vera often considered to be a gentle face. He had left his mask hanging at the side of his hood, probably to express his no-nonsense attitude about his duty a little better to the general populace. None of the common folk interpreted gentleness in Grees. One woman clutched her young son's collar when Grees looked their way and grunted, scolding the boy for simply pointing his toe in the large Rider's direction.

Vera might have laughed, once. Instead she quietly moved between people towards the next point in the crowd she had to inspect. Nieve was following High Lord Arand as he emerged from the doors of the Lower Court, passing between the enormous bronzed lions that guarded the entry way. The ferocity those statues portrayed was echoed in the quickness of her own blood, the eagerness of her own fingers to stop whatever evil snaked through those gathered. She felt insecure, leaving the younger Rider at the High Lord's side, but knew that if she was in Nieve's place she would not see what needed to be seen. Nieve looked every part of the invisible bodyguard as the High Lord took his place at the front of the crowd, pushing back the long sleeves of his robes. Maybe she wouldn't be considered green for too long.

( If she survived... )

She could have gone to Eragos after the meeting and she could have asked after his injuries. She didn't. She'd seen him limping into the room that doubled as a ward not long after the meeting, and had left him alone. He was doing what was right, just then. She decided to do the same in looking for Nieve. Vera found her on one of the lesser balconies, one that was made to awkwardly overlook a courtyard of little consequence in the Lord's Manor. It wasn't a place that normally attracted people. Bare of decoration or books, there was no bench or table to invite someone to take perch. It was just a dead end or a quick escape from the hall, which perhaps was why the younger Rider had chosen it. Vera didn't try to read too much into where Nieve chose to rest. The more one read into people, the more room there was for misinterpretation.

Far better to ask, she had learned.

Vera made her footsteps heard as she walked out onto the balcony. She didn't want to surprise the girl or scare her. Girl. Nieve wasn't a girl, or young really. Thirty four summers might have bloomed and died, but Vera was still no ancient thing. The only reason she felt old was because she honestly hadn't expected to survive this long. So it was wrong to think of Nieve as young in terms of years. The term girl seemed so belittling. She'd been dealt it on many occasion and it drove her temper in too many battles.

She came to lean on the stone rail not far from where Nieve stood and looked down at the dull courtyard below.

"You haven't said very much. Not that I really expect you to in a meeting like that."

There was a long silence. She was trying to string her words together in a more meaningful way, but was too tired. So Vera spoke frankly instead.

"I feel responsible for having you kill as you did."

Kill. It was a harsh word, despite the L's. Vera was the leader. She had urged Nieve to take a life. She had treated them all like soldiers that night...and they weren't soldiers. They were enforcers, witnesses, guards, defenders of citizens. But not soldiers. Eragos' outburst to the High Lord was a reflection of the conflict in them all. Reconciling the need for them to kill versus whether or not they were meant to was not an easy thing. And it wasn't Eithne or Hasna she thought of when she thought of this. It was Riders like Nieve. Like Throstle and Gawain who had died. They were all so ready to do what was right. That didn't equate to dealing death, did it? This had been what she and the Captain had been trying to avoid for so many years. This was what she had been doing when she was sent to her death in secret. Vera had always fought this way. So these people would not have to.

She pressed her knuckles into the stone and continued.

"Most people react badly, when someone speaks into their mind," she said. "It's a delicate...intense thing. I do not use it often. And I am sorry that I had to communicate with you that way. You held up well in battle."

Peace could not be found in the company of the dead. He tried, for hours, staring at the corpses covered by sheets. Until his eyes were blurry and he could not think he sat with them. Eragos tried to think of something - anything - that he could say. Who would tell their families? What would that person say? That they had died defending the only surviving witness to another, far greater, massacre. That they had done their duty honorably. That this was a risk all White Riders faced. Yet he could not help but think that they wouldn't be dead if not for... if not for... but the answer would not come in his mind. Long hours that he spent there, by candlelight, drinking water from a fine porcelain cup when he remembered that his throat was dry. More deaths to lay at the feet of the House of Beit-Orane. At the feet of Gavrie, and his own brother. An entire civilization ruined, but these deaths troubled him more for what they meant. Who they were. He should have kept them back, kept them away from the fight. He should have protected them. As much as it pained him to admit, he could not, and that fact soured his spirit most of all the thoughts he endured. A letter would not be enough. But when it was done, when this madness was over, could he face their families?

( An empire of death was the future they built for themselves. )

The crystal edge of the game piece scraped against a glass game board with lazy ease by the hand that led it. Scratching sounds weren’t enough to pierce the quiet level of conversation in the room nor the crackling of the fire, but they did force High Lord Arand to raise his eyes and lift his brow. Vera’s smile was half hidden by shadows created by the mask that hung at the side of her hood.

Although the moon was high in the sky above the Lord’s Manor, Vera remained in full uniform with her staff propped against her chair. Other Riders had given up on parts and pieces of that white hood and tunic, arranging themselves around the High Lord’s Den as strategically as boredom would allow. They had barricaded themselves in the western wing of the manor for most of the night. Vera would let no one rest until the sun rose, not after being told the assassins would make their attempt now. Hasna sharpened her sword by the fire, humming what Vera could have sworn was a tavern song. Raed made himself busy by shuffling cards again and again in an attempt to entice a skulking Eithne to play. Birloch was in the halls, on patrol with the High Lord’s guard. And that young Rider, the green one. Nieve. She kept quiet for the most part, staying to her own corner. Maybe her pride was still smarting from the blow it’d been dealt earlier. Vera refused to let her go on rounds like other Riders had before Birloch. Instead, she made Nieve stay with the High Lord. She was too young to go out on her own and know the signs assassins would give. Too green. Vera didn’t care who trained her.

She drew her gloved fingers from her crystal piece to the onyx figurine sitting diagonally across from her own. Four other crystal pieces sat in an arrow shape behind her own and she touched them as well before leaning back in her seat. “I’ve trapped you now,” she said, confidently. “You can’t escape.”

High Lord Arand rested his chin against steepled fingers, his amused blue eyes falling back to the table as he hovered more intently over the game. He was inspecting her strategic handiwork, trying to find what holes she might have left behind. “Your moves were almost too perfect.”

“Are you suggesting I cheat?”

“No,” the High Lord said slowly, dryly. He tapped his fingers at the edge of the game board. “Extreme cases of luck have been known to occur…”

( I don't believe in luck or fate. You lose only because I have bested you at last. )