Darkenhold is a fortress, by most conventional reckoning. It is also an exercise in hospitality - if one's to judge the traffic its gates have seen in recent days. Only a week returned to Myrken soil, and still the swordswoman had found it necessary to welcome most of these arrivals with personal attention; their circumstances required this, even when their voices did not.
The green-eyed boy marked himself immediately as an exception to this rule. The pale-faced youth who'd a night ago put a box into her hand and quiet caution into her bearing - but not enough that she'd thought to ask his name before she sent him from her home. Not nearly enough that she'd thought to have him
followed. Many hours later, these were her only regrets. Many hours later, when she'd unfastened a clasp and folded back rich cloth, an unwitting Pandora -
Her student, clever Glenn Burnie, wondered if this gift hadn't been unlike the actions of his troublesome drow; if villainous hands might commit monstrous deeds when not better occupied. Three men fell one morning to Jirai's cruel daggers, after all. Mightn't the same be said of what had awaited Ariane beneath crimson velvet? He'd offered her an easy frame for comforting faith, this youth who'd once
frowned so as she told him a story of two children, of the exotic growth of children who'd once glimpsed a vengeful
God.
Everything, she'd told him that day,
everything begins there.
"I think we are equipped with a great many capabilities, though whether we utilize such things depends on the history and the present hour." A different voice; a different conversation. Removed by years from this one, its words have not lost their immediacy. "It depends on hurts which have come before, or inclinations too... as a mind learns what is cruel and what is gentle, what generates fear and what generates comfort."This was no kindness which she could accept. Twelve months spent locked in battle with the Order of the All had taught her some caution with acceptance at all, had taught her to value unflinching honesty above nearly all else, and this is what her student had from her this morning. With two eyes witnessing - once green, one violet, both isolated from their sockets - they spoke of such things as cultists and serpents and
nightingales; spoke of Michael Renne and his sister Fawn. Of Thadius Dhrin and the monstrous Baie, and when their talking was done she folded cloth back over those eyes, laid a fistful of crimson hair atop
that, and fastened the box closed again. A handful of scattered sugar fell in its wake -
delicate petals and leaves had shone like coarse crystal upon rich fabric hours ago; had shattered beneath her touch as well which was never meant for fragile things and here lives here dies the proof of it- but only that. Only sweetness and the echo of their own words, and.. Perhaps these are not his, she'd suggested; this swordswoman who'd been given a corpse before, and lies before
that. And.. What will you do? had wondered a student who'd seen what compassion would sometimes buy. Who'd read of pardons and trials and
faith, his teacher neck-deep in each.
"When next I see Michael Renne," she'd answered him, "I will return to him his dagger.
And afterwards, I will wipe it clean and place it back upon my belt."