Arancia Thurnald

"Lost in thought, my love?" Johan whispers tenderly into my ear. "You've gotten quiet."

"Ah!... No, just... Yes. Yes, you know me. I was thinking about you. About us." I answer coyly. "Our wedding will be soon, and then I suppose I'll be moving to House Mephei. I fear I'll miss it here..."

We're sitting together in the House Thurnald gardens. The gardens have dwindled in the eve of their winter, but they remain beautiful... for a time. They have served me well over the years, a place of play, of frivolity, or of quiet reflection. Tonight might be the last night I ever see them...

"We have gardens twice as grand back home, my love." Johan tempts, punctuating with a kiss on my temple. "I'll see to it that you get your own wing."

"Ha. I'm sure you will..."

Not a minute of silence has passed before he's touching me again, grabbing at my breast, his fingers kneading my flesh through my clothes. I stiffen, uncomfortable, and I have to look away to hide my darkening expression. Johan, Johan, Johan... You really can't keep your hands to yourself, can you?

"You dirty, dirty man!" I admonish, laughing and swatting him away. "And I thought we were having a moment!"

"I'm sorry! You're too beautiful, Arancia!" he protests playfully. "I should consider myself the luckiest man alive that you've been promised to me. And I've been so, so patient for you, my love. Too patient. I grow... restless below. How much longer until we-"

"Don't you dare finish that sentence, love!" I interrupt, pinching his lips shut in flustered embarrassment. "Not in public! Keep such talk behind closed doors. For my sake!"

"Mmyes, mwuv." he mumbles between my fingers. "But-"

"You have been patient, love. I will admit as much... Our wedding is in a few days, so no one would be the wiser." I concede, letting go of his lips. "So... perhaps tonight? But only if you're good."

Johan perks up with a newfound energy, hugging me close and peppering my cheek with kisses. He leans into me, I feel his inhale in my hair, and I can tell he is barely able to keep his excitement down. I silently swallow guilt.

"Shall we retire early, my dove?" Johan asks, springing up and offering me his hand. "On a matter of practicality, of course. We'll be leaving for House Mephei early in the morning, and we'll need the rest."

I smile and let him lift me to my feet, leaning into him as his arm wraps around my waist. He leads me out of the dwindling gardens and into the quiet stone hallways of the Thurnald estate. We pass through the archways of my childhood home, under leering portraits of my family that seem to know and judge my inner thoughts. I begin to tremble slightly. I can hear his heartbeat. I did not think it would affect me like this...

My private chambers are a sanctum of silk and down that one would expect from a merchant's daughter, but a careful eye might notice a certain sparsity: the imprint of a study desk that's no longer there, the space a mirror used to hang in on a wall, a bed that has had its canopy deconstructed. I am being changed from a protegee to an asset, and assets do not need lodging. Johan knows this, of course, no matter how sweetly he courts me otherwise.

"Turn around, my sweet. No peeking." I urge, separating from his side to sit primly on my bed. "You promised you'd be good."

A paper knife sits on my nightstand. It's inconspicuous, a maiden's tool to kick her feet with as she blushes and giggles at a suitor's mail in bed. It rests there, pristine, but I know its edge has seen more than letters. I pick the weapon up discreetly, bringing it to rest against the faintly raised scar tissue of my left palm. The cold metal makes me wince. I am not a brave woman. I detest pain. But I close my eyes, I grit my teeth, and I begin to drag.

For this to be more than mere mutilation, I have to wound with purpose. I have to be an offering, to pray to Her. The 'dead god Haema' isn't real. I'm sure of that. But something about the invocation enables the thaumaturgical properties of the act. The words themselves don't matter, only the focus and inflection of them.

"Haema is an ugly whore." I whisper in the intone of prayer. "Give me strength that I don't become one as well..."

"Hmm?" Johan asks, turning as he hears me mumbling. "Did you say something, Arancia? Are you naked y-"

But it's too late. My left palm is open and gushing, the bloodied paper knife discarded. The sixth sense that I've spent so many secret nights practicing surges into me, that perfect spatial awareness and muscle control. In space without time, I can see a billion afterimages between me and Johan, and among all the klutzes and brutes, I can see the singular me that bears perfect execution. I am no longer shaking.

I rise to my feet with a poise that belies a spectre, so smoothly, with such little motion wasted, that it appears almost jerky in its uncanniness. Johan is still wearing his 'listening' face as I drop into a low crouch. My right hand reaches under my bed, finger closing around the hilt of a rapier I'd stashed there. The tip strikes blurred fire in the candlelight as I draw. I lunge. The blade catches the soft under-hollow beneath his jaw, and a rising thrust puts the full strength of my body behind it. Shlik! In one clean motion the sword punctures into his mouth, pierces his palate, skewers his brain, and emerges a red spike out the back of his head. Johan barely has time to die. The light is already leaving his eyes by the time he's coughing blood. His body slumps.

"I'm sorry, Johan. I tried to make it painless." I mutter, dropping to a kneel beside him as I guide the corpse to rest. "You were a lecher, but you would have tried to give me a good life. It was never the life I wanted. You deserved a fairer fate than this."

My own bleeding left palm comes to rest on Johan's face, and I hold him still there while I waggle my blade free from the wound. Gore spurts from the emptied hole, sprinkling my face and chest with little glinting droplets. It leaks from his punctured skull and empties in slow, heavy sloshes onto my floor and rug. Eugh. What a mess. I grab fistfuls of my white travelling cloak, using it to dab at the worst of my face. A hot bath would be lovely right now, but I hardly have time for that. I'll have to make do with the fantasy alone.

I begin dressing - not new clothes mind - for travel. Merely a few pieces of light armor I've pre-prepared to fit over my current finery: A gorget slips over my head first, and a considerable amount of care is devoted to unwresting any trapped strands of my hair. Pauldrons are affixed with straps, then gauntlets attached to those slip on. I don't like gauntlets. My fingers feel pudgy in them. But they will hide the wound on my left palm, and for that they are needed. I finish by attaching a waistguard, lightweight enough to keep myself nimble.

I still buzz with unnatural fleetness as I exit my chambers and into the manor halls. The servants are missing from their posts, absent to give Johan and me due privacy for our presumed 'activities'. But now poor Johan is dead. I need an audience to my crimes. I head for the foyer.

House Thurnald is not as busy in the black hours as it once was; much of the night staff has been 'redistributed' in a pathetic attempt to shore up creeping financial ruin. When I appear at the top of the stairs, there are only half-a-dozen attendants in the main hall. I have to step heavy on my heels to ensure that my presence is duly announced. Still, I can see on their shocked and worried faces that my red-flecked visage has the intended effect. I wonder if any of them yet realize the blood is not mine. They will.

"Heed me. I am leaving by night." I announce. "Prepare a caravan and plan to be on the road by moon-high. I take my leave of this place. My kin, entrenched and sycophantic as they are, have made me unwelcome here. If ever I proved myself more capable than them, I bid you follow me now. Wake whomever you feel is loyal. Your presence is not required, but it would be welcome and appreciated. Mules, guards, servants, slaves - come and I shall not demean you as lesser any longer. But I ask that no one goes upstairs. Your Lady forbids it."

I strut down the steps almost casually, throwing up the front doors and walking out into the night without fanfare. I will leave alone if I have to, a caravan of one. But behind my infinite composure, I hope for even the smallest showing of allyship - a smattering of companions. It is dangerous to go alone, and I must admit that for all my excellence, I haven't the faintest idea how to correctly hitch a wagon or handle horses...

There is something decidedly unsavory about this room, this place which on its face is little more than another well-adorned meeting hall but that carries in its bowels the palpable impressions of nefarious scheming and sinister intent. It is no one mere thing. The walls, perhaps, are a bit thicker than normal, the rug intentionally chosen with a thickness such that a speaking voice might carry only to the end of the table and otherwise be absorbed. There are no windows, and only a single door serving as entry and exit alike. The sole source of light is a lone chandelier casting silver light futility into the encroaching darkness, its flickering flames striking cruel lashes against the walls, which themselves seem to crawl and dance with long and writhing shadows in pain or protest.

You've been summon here, to the heart of House Olapierri, on a direct request. You haven't been told what you are so wanted for yet, but the nature of a request from House Olapierri is not the kind of thing you are allowed to turn down. It's been fifteen minutes now, maybe twenty, and nothing has happened. This is intentional. They are letting you stew in the silence.

Finally the door opens, and Qosera Olapierri, the matriarch herself, enters the room. Although not a particularly tall women, Qosera's stature is imposing by her rearing alone; her posture is perfect, her heels high, her long blonde hair done up primly above her. She looks down at you with an upturned nose, and, there in the light, the suggestions of faint creases about her eyes can been seen. Though she is still spry and far from her twilight years, her figure bears a matronly shape that places her in her forties or fifties.

"Welcome, welcome. Thank you for waiting. It's a pleasure." she greets. "Yours."

The chair across from you remains unattended as Qosera doesn't move to sit down. Uncomfortably, she chooses to walk behind you, her hand on your shoulder seeming to bid you not to turn around. Her fingers knead softly against your collar, the tender yet condescending gesture of a woman who considers you at best a cherished pet.

"You have heard of what's happening in the south east, yes? Johan Mephei's death? The Thurnald lands?" she prompts, pausing but a moment before continuing. "It's just awful. I married a Thurnald, you know. My husband Laughlin saw the writing on the wall. But now... this. House Thurnald is being plucked apart. The other merchant houses are vultures. All of them. And I of course desire to protect what's rightfully mine."

Her voice remains perfect in inflection and placid in tone, but her thumb digging into your throat conveys the worst of her anxieties. Only at the end of her address does she realize that she's near-attempting to strangle you and finally slacken her grip. She apologetically pats your head.

"I have lost sleep over this." she announces, a tragic inflection in her voice. "But the cruel world cares not. It demands from me - demands from us - a suitable plan. You will listen now, but you will not repeat. These are matters of the House, and they are not to be spoken of again outside this room. Is this understood?"

.