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Cut Scene: White Chalk Markings

Several Days After The Ascension Of Kith-Rhiannon

And at first the light is white and terrible and all-engulfing, but then it begins to resolve itself into whirring, spinning patterns, faintly deeper patches against the brightness that begin to trickle together and then she is standing once again on splintered wood and the mechanisms of the mill are spinning, weaving, readying themselves for the final moment when the weapon will be unleashed.

The rooftop sways underfoot and now she knows what moment this is. Across the weirdly interlocking floorboards, the Blackside magician is panicking, again, and getting ready for a desperate lunge at the over-engineered lever that triggers his device. Copper is marked with black scorches where too much voltage has gone through the drop switch way too many times already, and none of the safety mechanisms are engaged.

She looks at him and is surprised by what she sees. He's not old at all, in fact he's kind of handsome, it's just the fear twisting up his muzzle and lowering the folds above his eyes that made him look older, more cruel. He readies himself for the grab.

Her left hand, swinging slightly behind her as the floor sways, brushes against the rim of the circular throwing blade with the unpronounceable name, and so she throws it at him.

It's not a very good throw, but she's notoriously ambidextrous and the release is good. She didn't really understand the explanation of how this could be some kind of souvenir, it's made of the best machined steel she's ever seen and you could shave fur with it, but the balance is good and she slices it, left to right across her line of aim, where it neatly clips the side of the sorcerors arm and draws a crisp spray of blood.

The magician staggers and she is on him, faster than a blink, and she knows she should be drawing a knife, levering it up and driving it into him again and again, but she finds herself desperately drawing a spare, black home-spun bandage from her leather weapons belt and wrapping it around his arm tightly in a manner totally disproportionate to the severity of the wound, which is barely bad at all, hardly more than a scratch. The magician seems confused too, first in shock over the sudden injury to his arm, then at the fact she isn't killing him. He keeps looking at the chakrim, yes that was its name, which has cut to half its own depth into some sort of heavy bank of machinery up against the outer wall and doesn't even show any signs of blood.

At first she thinks he's saying, "so quick," and she's suddenly conscious of the way she pins him down with her weight, the damned breast-horns either side of him and her nipples hard with combat surge running through her, but then she realizes what he's actually saying and it really isn't good at all. There's a slowly increasing whine coming from the machinery, and then a cracking sound as an electrical arc discharges between two of the spinning generators driven by the motion of the tower.

It appears that this time round, she has killed the machine herself. Which means it is most definitely, oh yes, time to leave.

She hauls the magician bodily to his feet, surprised at his slightness, his lack of weight. He must have been desperate. He must have been working himself to death, barely eating, driven by terror of her side, his side, everything that might have happened if he failed. And now he has. No wonder he fell so easily at such a slight cut to the arm. She manages to pull him up alongside her, so that she can keep pressure on the very poorly applied bandage, and starts dragging him toward the spiral stairs.

The eyrie is starting to tear itself apart. Spinning things splinter and snap and the shadows change where the light from outside is no longer disrupted by their motion. Sparks and electrical arcs discharge around them, between the machines and the pressurized pipes made of metal, avoiding the Lady dressed in little more than her leather weapons belt anymore and a wounded magician who is skinny and frail under thin dark robes.

She pulls him down the stairs. Her last sight of the top level of the wind tower is the chakrim earthing a huge discharge of pale plasma blue lightning, her final spare backup knife discarded thoughtlessly next to it in a corner.

~*~

And this, again, is how she comes to find herself sitting on an empty barrel, stained with soot and hoarse with smoke, hugging the magician she was sent to kill and watching the sole most dangerous weapon of her age destroy itself. Things get a little discontinuous in her memories after the moment everything seems to have happened in, all of an instant, and she wants to yelp in pain and howl for joy at the same time.

She just keeps watching the tower burn. The familiar faces of her squad interrupt occasionally but she feels she really can't give them her full attention. Not quite now.

"...what happened in there, you're wearing nothing but your belt, for Wolfmothers sake..."

"...your little Blackside friend says thank you for rescuing him, they were forcing him to build weapons for them and they were using his family as leverage, and his accent is bloody awful, by the way..."

"...the spinning bit near the top exploded, but it was white! Things are supposed to be flame colored when they explode, right? But it was white! And then the top caught fire properly and started to fall in! We thought you were done for..."

The final explosion occurs suddenly in mid-word as the powder barrels they fought so hard to place around the exterior base of the tower abruptly detonate without any apparent external intervention. The tower collapses neatly down into itself like a stack of tarok cards, and then goes one step further by falling downward into the very earth itself, as some unsuspected chasm opens beneath it.

"Fuck," says one of the squaddies concisely. "It's like it did garbage disposal on itself."

"You heard the boy," says her sub-commander proudly. "Our orders were complete deniability and no evidence. Difficult to see how she could top that."

"But what about the magician?" pleads the boy. "We're supposed to kill everyone. But he's just a civvie! They'll expend us too, and then him, if we bring him back!"

The Lady Hornbreast feels her eyes and her mind clear as she blinks away the final sudden collapse. She does her best to clear her throat.

"This never happened."

"What?"

"This never happened. We were not here. No-one was. This is just another heap of wartime wreckage that will be built over and probably have a visitors centre and commemorative placard put up next to it by the locals, Wolfmother help us all."

"But what about us?"

"We never came back. The Lady Hornbreast and her Flying Jackals Wing were dispatched on one last heroic secret mission the day after the war was over and never came back. They are presumed missing in action."

"How can we disappear? We don't exactly have a low profile, you know!"

"I know a place. Oh yes I do. And in case you've forgotten, this war is officially over. So fuck the orders, I quit. Weren't you the one who was saying that if we were still alive afterwards, we should retire somewhere, enjoy the spoils, and marry some buxom local sethuresses?"

"Yeah? So?"

"This part of the spoils is mine," says the Lady, hugging the magician fiercely and finding that she is suddenly very cheerful. "You all gotta go get your own bitches."

"You know he didn't understand a word of that, right?"

"I'm sure he'll figure it out shortly," she replies, and gives the poor skinny magician a quick kiss on the ear that makes him jump, and forces her to readjust the bandage.

~*~

After they redistribute the available armour and gear, there's enough to make up most of a set for her, but the special cuirass and breastplate that accommodates her 'additional tactical assets' dryly put, is not replaceable. She cuts holes in a suit of standard leather that no-one else wants because a swordspear has already prepared one of the holes for her, and it's good enough. She ties the weapons belt back around the outside of the armour to make it fit.

They have the best riding jackals in the world, hitched not far away, and their steel arbalests along with most of the arrows, retrieved to hide the evidence. By her estimate, it shouldn't take them very long at all to reach a certain remote valley near the sea, where in years to come evidence will be found of a magician, an alchemist, a sethura ahead of his time who designs machines and strange devices for the pure love of discovery. Nearby is the White Pyramid, monument, library, a thriving place that attracts visitors of all sorts. A safe place for such a one to live and love and discover things, and perhaps to have a child or two with his wife, who is the leader of a professional acting troupe who do a good impersonation of Lady Hornbreast and her famous Flying Jackals Wing (it's a bit risque but a hit with the tourists).

Total deniability.

And finally, freedom.

Ending For:

The Lady Hornbreast