In which Giliana finds herself in the company of an unlikely travelling partner.
***
There were once settlements along this side of Mt Shyleaf. They used to answer to Spire, the biggest Ironborn town in the Deep Wilds. These deepwood Ironborn clans were united under a single banner, pooling their resources into Spire: a proper bastion like that of the Old Country, with stonework and buildings that sought to be more than rickety watchtowers and forts masquerading as functional communities.
The One-Blood Concord threw all that into the dust. A big fish swallowing a smaller fish, smashing like a hammer into Spire and leaving it in ruins. The old communities dispersed, some fleeing the Concord and others melting into the forest to join the new surge of raiders choosing lawlessness over nationhood. For those who remained, mostly scattering across other enduring settlements or pooling into Spire itself as it rebuilt, shared loyalty became shared resentment under a new master.
Gil knows she’s feeding her own anger as she passes the husks of these bygone settlements. Mistress Irsia would tell her it’s empty anger, but it keeps her sharp as she walks, feeling dead on her feet. The sun’s up now, and she can’t recall how long it’s been daytime. She should rest, but she doesn’t know what pursues her. Esra is bringing his own dominion to bear, right under the Concord’s nose, and even in a small locale like Watersong the degree of his control is terrifying.
She should be far enough away to feel safe. But something still feels wrong. She’s walking and barely noting the passage of the environment, or even her own footfalls. She’s used to keeping on her feet with willpower alone when exhausted, but this is different. She’s completely severed from herself. In fact, as she again notes the ruined settlement she’s just passed, she hadn’t even meant to head down this road. She’s circling Mr Shyleaf, heading towards Spire, rather than home to Grimwood.
She tries to shake her head, get some clarity back, but something pushes against her. She stops, and feels the fatigue rush upward from her feet. Then, it’s certain: the motions of her body aren’t her own. Or at least, there’s something affecting her sense of control over her actions. A foreign presence. She can pick it out now. A little maggot of a thing, writhing in the shadows of her consciousness.
Gil didn’t escape Esra after all.
The moment of clarity jars her, and she’s moving forward again. Locked in her own head, feeling her legs move but not being in command of them – she needs time to process it, understand what is happening and how Esra can do this.
She is – they are? – on the edge of a grove on the north side of Mt Shyleaf. The clang of iron echoes from further along the path. She knows of this place: Fort Greencrest, the largest concentration of One-Blood officers and soldiers in the Deep Wilds. She wants to turn away. Esra, with his hand on the puppet strings, doesn’t care and Gil marches forward, a blank shell moving with two minds in tow.
The fort squats across the rough road, a partition of the sprawling encampment acting as a checkpoint for travellers –traders moving between Grimwood and Spire have to come through here. Gil panics, but she still walks.
Two guards watch her approach. The outer gate opens and she saunters through. Gil can feel the guards watching her: a battered and bruised woman, without supplies or goods. She can’t even be sure if she looks relaxed, or nervous, or wearing some smug grin of superiority from Esra’s influence.
Gil’s directed to a station by the road, empty until a captain approaches, gazes at her briefly with an unimpressed huff, and sits under the station tent. ‘Name and residence?’ he says, clearly bored.
‘Gilanph … Gwinmwa …’
Now she has the captain’s attention. He waits, already impatient.
Gil waits, thinking Esra will try to speak again, but he doesn’t, so she can. ‘Giliana Shale.’
The captain cocks one eyebrow and records the name, and ‘Whisper, Grimwood’ in a flourish as she elaborates. The words come out of Gil rough and milky, and she has to concentrate to form the syllables coherently, but it’s at least one small mercy that she has a voice, even in this potential nightmare.
But the more she’s questioned, the worse it gets. Her words are slow, pausing, and the captain is irritable to begin with, and infuriated with each hesitant answer. Why is she travelling alone? Is she heading to Spire or further on to other locales? What is her business west of here? She halts whenever she tries to mention Esra or Watersong. Every word must sound like an awkward lie.
‘Take her inside,’ barks the captain.
***
Gil has never been one to bemoan bad luck as the reason for her misfortunes, but there’s little else to turn to. Bad luck just covers it all.
Captain Talan, as he formally introduced himself with a sharp tone and bad breath, has barraged her with questions for the past two hours. Even without the invasive presence in her skull, she’d have a problem focusing on his interrogation; too much panic for too little rest in the past day. They think she’s a practitioner of forbidden arts. They think she started the growing fire spewing smoke into the air to the south-east. They think all these dangerous, insurgent things about her, and all Gil thinks is that she’d just like to sleep and drown out all these self-indulgent bastards.
‘Our agent has already confirmed you have the stink of the unseen arts about you, to a near-unprecedented degree,’ says Captain Talan. He sits hunched at the long table, a man who fancies himself as physically carrying the weight of his position. ‘That’s punishable by our most severe terms. But clemency can be offered in return for information on those who would see harm done to the Concord.’
Gil leans forward. ‘Even ifyyoh … I don’t truun …’ She sits back with a sigh and feels her foot twitch, another unbidden movement. She’s ready to throw this obscenely oversized table through the wall.
Talan doesn’t relent, Gil’s barbs sliding off him like trickles of water. Finally he dismisses her, and a guard seizes her by the arm to drag her to a holding cell. She can barely keep her footsteps in sequence. As they’re taken along the ramparts of Fort Greencrest, Gil notes the amount of soldiers mobilised in the yards. There are a lot of them for what’s supposed to be peacetime, more than would be gathered to keep order in the occupied woodlands.
The burrowed tick in her mind stirs, and her body keeps turning towards the sight of the rank and file of soldiers, even as she tries to keep pace with the guard escorting her. Gil feels a headache coming on.
She’s taken to her cell, in a small building separate from the rest of the fort. No other inmates, but the smell of blood. The cell is tiny. Very tiny. The guard throws her in, secures the door with a teeth-grinding squeal from the lock, and stomps off without another word.
Gil needs to escape. Their agent – some mystic on Concord coin? – has sensed something unseen out of her. Possibly Esra’s presence, if that’s truly what it is. Most Concord softboots would rather kill her than take the risk of spending too long near an unpredictable forest witch.
But first things first.
You’re in there, aren’t you? She forms the thought, not sure how to direct it as ‘speech’ towards the invasive presence, but hoping the message is received from her disgust and anger alone.
Yes, is the response. An echo of a voice, carrying all of Esra’s arrogance and self-assuredness.
She’s been delaying the confirmation for hours. There it is: Esra got into her head. Maybe he even allowed her to get away from Watersong. The whole scene – Esra resplendent in his blue mask, the throng of Ironborn and firstborn, the command to kill her, even the circumstances of her escape – was it fabricated? On the other side of the long night, full of visions and illusions and mad dashes through forbidding woodlands, Gil’s not sure anymore what was real.
This can’t be happening, rages Gil. You can’t be capable of this!
Gains require sacrifice, replies Esra. I have broadened myself at great cost. And I am not limitless.
Even without a voice you talk like a damned fool. So how about you sacrifice some control over me? I can’t even walk straight when you’re jockeying for a spot in my head.
Esra doesn’t deign to respond, but he’s still there. Gil paces, awkwardly, and appraises the cell. The lock’s old; she could probably find a way to pry it open with the right tool. If her hands would stop twitching. Why do you need me? she asks.
Silence.
You wanted to see Greencrest. You knew there was an army mobilising here, didn’t you? What else?
I have business in Spire you can conduct for me, Esra replies.
Hard for me to do that if I’m dead for being a witch. Them thinking that is your fault, by the way.
But you are capable of the unseen arts without my—
And me stumbling everywhere, not talking right? That’s your fault as well. You want me out of here, you need to let me do it without your meddling.
Silence, at first. I concede that. Even without a tone of voice, Gil can almost taste his discomfort.
For good measure, Gil waits a moment, even after she feels the headache subside. She wants to be sure that the first step she takes is her own. And when she puts her foot forward, it’s a clean, unimpeded movement. Esra is learning restraint. Next, the sky will be green.
She moves fast, now that her movements belong solely to her again. Sweeping her hands underneath the cot and near the bars, she finds an old nail. It takes time, but it’s enough to manipulate the decrepit lock into opening, although it makes enough noise for her to be wary of guards storming in to investigate the noise. The door opens, and only one guard saunters in, not expecting an escaped witch to be standing right there in front of him.
Gil sweeps past the guard and closes the heavy door – no point attracting extra attention – before she’s grabbed and slammed against the doorframe. Gil stomps down on the guard’s ankle, following up with an elbow to the chin to silence the incoming groan of pain. A few more blows to the head and the guard slumps, not quite unconscious but incapacitated for long enough. Gil limps off, feeling the ache across her body from the struggle.
The escape is quick after that. There are frequent stairways and ladders to reach the walls and ramparts from the inside, so Gil chooses her moment, slips up a ladder, and waits for the patrols to pass by before sneaking over and rolling over the edge. She scrapes against the wall on the way down to control her fall and it doesn’t work well, but the landing doesn’t hurt as much as she feared. She can still hobble away, keeping to the shadows of the few remaining trees around the fort well enough to avoid initial detection.
Then, the sluggishness and weighted limbs returns as soon as she’s out of sight of the fort. Esra clearly isn’t going to pull himself away forever. Not quite elegant, but effective. Well done.
‘So what now?’ Gil says aloud. She’s just thankful her voice isn’t slurred this time.
To Spire. The city holds much for both of us.
Submitted October 17, 2019 at 02:58PM by HotsuSama https://ift.tt/2MJUdwY
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