Narrative: Escape Who: Azabeth Kordura, some guards Where: Denerim When: 9:45 Dragon, Eluviesta. Summary: Azabeth has been betrayed. Rating: T for some cussing
Valeré's dead.
Those two words rang through her mind over and over like churchbells, numbing her quick fingers and keen senses with grief. The woman who had brought Azabeth into the world didn't give two shits about her fate - that much had been clear, when Mama didn't kick up any fuss whatsoever when some strange arlessa had come down and taken her child away - but Valeré had raised Azabeth like her own. Valeré had taught her so much, had nursed her cuts and scrapes and shown her how to be strong, how to be clever, how to listen and to see and to remember.
And now the closest thing Az had ever had to a real mother was cooling on the floor of her chambers in Denerim's Shatterglass district, Lelahai weeping over her body, the heir-apparent, surrounded by what must have been the entire staff of Valeré's personal guard. There could not possibly have been a worse moment in which to enter the window, could not possibly have been a more horrific scene awaiting. There had been no time to think, no time to plan; when Lelahai, tears streaming down her face, lifted her blade and decried her sister a murderess, Azabeth Kordura, reeling in heartsick pain, merely turned and ran.
I've been betrayed. One of my own must have done this, she thought numbly as she rather more fell than jumped from the window to the roof of the wing below Valeré's suite of rooms, staggering to her feet only after great effort. Lelahai's screaming and the shouted orders of officers were all that reminded her to move, all that impelled her to run as fast and as far as she could. For a woman who knew the labyrinth of rooftops as surely as the back of her own hand, that was pretty far, and pretty damn fast.
She'd almost made it to the Archwolf district before alarms pealed out across the city of Denerim.
Suddenly, it was a chase, and that close to the noble quarter and the castle, Denerim was crawling with guards.
Long strides took her across the battered shingles of a set of rickety shacks, guards close behind, both on the street and among the eaves - she could hear them bellowing from everywhere, prayed none of them had thought to bring a bow - because if they did and she had to climb, then she was a sitting duck and might as well scraff her ass now on the cobblestones. From the shacks she leapt a six-foot gap across an alley, to land on her feet on the flat roof of a warehouse on the other side, somersaulting on one shoulder to disperse momentum before she was once again sprinting. There were shouts of dismay from the far side of the alley (and sod them all, she wasn't going to wait around like a nice little girl for a dozen men in armor to either try the jump or climb down and then back up) but Azabeth kept running, kept moving. Death lay in stillness; that lesson was one learned early and well, when one was raised underfoot of horses and thieves alike.
The next building in the row was a dovecote with a conical roof and open, narrow windows, and as she wriggled through one, there was a dull impact against the bricks near her head - throwing stones, or knives? Was that an arrow? She could hardly go back to be sure. The pigeon-loft was dark and quiet and full of the anxious shapes of birds, a three-tiered affair packed with nesting boxes and decrepit catwalks, and she was about to hop the railing to the floor below when she heard heavy bootsteps on the other side of a dimly-outlined door below -
The soldier kicked in the door like so much tissue paper, a sword in one hand and a torch in the other, causing a flurry of pigeon-wings to fill the air and buffet the thief hiding in their midst. Azabeth fled, around the loft to the other side, and in a panic she dove through the window opposite the one used as an entryway, emerging on the other side in a cloud of plaster-dust and feathers. The sloped and straw-thatched rafters of a tannery greeted her searching feet, and just as she was about to crest the roofline and spy her next line of escape -
The thatch collapsed under her foot, the woven straw half-rotted from snow and spring rain, and she plunged through to the knee, then the hip. Bad luck; gambles didn't always pay off. A desperate glance over her shoulder - the soldiers weren't upon her yet, but they soon would be - and scrabbling for purchase and cursing a blue streak a mile wide, she dragged herself up and out and put her boots to the rooftop again. It held the second time, praise be to the Maker, though Az knew that if she had been a much taller woman, she would have been treated instead to a sharp journey downward. Once she gained the high point of the tannery, she became aware all at once of a rushing, sloshy sound, like some great beast asleep in the earth was turning over in its dreams.
The river. Andraste's frilly pink knickers.
Shatterglass and Archwolf would have eventually bled into each other, were it not for the boundary the river presented; bridges spanned the gap between the two, both covered masonry-tunnels and precarious structures barely more than a few boards lashed together. The river would be a formidable barrier to pursuit, and Archwolf was a maze - if she could reach it, she could disappear, maybe make her way to some safe haven....
No time to second-guess, once the decision was made. Az bolted for the next rooftop, a more sturdy-looking structure topped with clay tiles, and headed for the river.
The first rooftop bridge she skipped, on account of it looked like a squirrel couldn't have crossed it whole; the next one that appeared staid enough to hold her weight she made a mad dash for, and shouts went up from the ground, from behind her. A quick glance proved that at least two agile soldiers had scaled the dovecote and were navigating the tricky bits around the tannery roof (good luck with that in that heavy armor, she grinned wordlessly over her shoulder, scarlet hair blowing into her face) and she made one, two, three strides across the narrow plank-bridge between one rooftop and the next, wind making the structure sway and bend dangerously, the thief strung out over emptiness with the anger of the river three stories below -
Something moved on the far roof amidst some stone gargoyles that served as rainspouts - some twitch in her peripheral vision that did not belong.
Az came to a hard stop, crouching on the unsteady boards, exposed to wind and all and sundry who cared to look upwards, but another lesson learned early and well was to trust her gut, the prickling at the back of her neck. All such klaxons were blaring now, and with the city guard behind her and the river below, she was in no rush to run headlong into an ambush.
The arrow, white and streaking, must have been upset from its intended course by the gale coming in off the river; it whiffed through her hair instead of burying itself in her shoulder or throat, and Azabeth immediately flung herself flat to the plank-bridge, arms thrown up to protect the crown of her head. Prudent gesture - an entire volley of the damn things soon followed, and though none found their mark, peeking through the shield of her forearms revealed at least three archers, perched among the gargoyles like roosting birds.
Ambush, she gasped mentally, reaching for mental purchase much as she clung to the wind-tossed boards of the bridge; with a start, Azabeth realized that this was far too convenient to have been an accident, far too well-planned to be coincidence.
She'd been herded, like a common thief, by someone who knew her tactics all too well.
Lelahai, you bitch.
The soldiers gained the roof behind her, all a clamour of metal and noise; none of them were quite so brave as to risk the bridge yet, but they were prodding the foundation of it where it met the roof, and once they loosed it, into the river she would go, if the archers did not make of her a feathered pincushion first. It was the proverbial rock and the hard place. There was no going back into Shatterglass to be tamely captured, that much was clear - and if she made a mad dash for Archwolf, an arrow would find her throat before her feet found the far side of the bridge.
No man's land. So close, and yet so far -
The rush of the river seemed to grow even louder in her ears, drowning out the cries of the guards, the soft edgeless sounds of arrows skirting overhead.
Well, damned if I do and damned if I don't.... Lady Luck preserve me. I choose don't.
She let go of the planks and rolled to one side, and for a moment, flew like a bird.
The plunge could not have taken more than a handspan of seconds, but it seemed like an eternity, and the water of the river was colder than a Templar's heart. It hit her like a suckerpunch, knocking the breath from her lungs, making her fight to gain the surface; the cries of the soldiers faded away, overwhelmed by the water in her ears, by her heartbeat throbbing in her temples. She managed a choked breath, then a deeper one.
Then the river took her, and Azabeth fought only to survive, unable to find the strength to guide where the river took her, unable to summon the will to care.