fanfic: A Fish Out of Water

[bellaknoti]

An AU to Wings of the Storm Crow

Title: Bones, Stones, Echoes, and Lies (Chapter Thirteen)
Rating: AO
Pairing: Zev/Lily
Summary: Okay, time for a field trip. The note we got through Enzo agreed to our setting of some dockside whorehouse around midnight. But before that, there's just one thing Zev wants to do, and he won't tell me what it is. Infuriating man.

My betas are uncommonly patient women.
scarylady is very awesome, and fixes all the injustices and horrible liberties I take with the language without even meaning to.

1smut_princess keeps me sane and pokes holes in my plot for me.




“What about the dresses you’ve been working on?” I ask querulously as Leliana turns me around again, taking my measurements with lengths of string. She clucks her tongue and shakes her head.

“You could wear them, yes, but they are not meant for blending in, as they are mostly of Ferelden design, though I did borrow some of your sketches for the embroidery. For this endeavour, you will need much simpler fare. I intend to visit to the market later, so I will purchase everything then.”

I blink, surprised. “My sketches?”

She glances up at me from her position on the floor, where she’s been measuring the length of my leg, her brow furrowing. “Yes... Do you not remember? In Orzammar, you grew tired of the blocky designs of the dwarven kingdom, and lamented the lack of curves. Hmmm... how did you put it?” she muses, putting a finger to her lips as the string dangles from her fingers, pinched to mark her place. “I believe you said, ‘The only curves in Orzammar are on the women’!” She laughs, rising, and I laugh with her. This is news to me, but it sounds like something I’d say. “It was a long night, waiting for news from the Shaperate, so we passed the time in Tapster’s drawing dress designs in your book.”

I shake my head, bemused. “I wish I did. I haven’t... opened it... in a long time.”

Leliana gives me a level look, measuring the string between her fingers. “There are a great many things you do not remember.”

I turn red, embarrassed, caught. “Uh... yeah.”

“Things you ought to remember,” she adds, stretching my arm out to the side so that she can measure from shoulder to wrist, and I bite my lip. Pinching off the string at my wrist and running it through her fingers, she looks back up at me, and the sweetness and innocence that is her usual mask has been replaced by the shrewd and insightful woman she really is. “You’ve actually never opened that book at all,” she says, matter-of-fact.

I feel my mouth drop open a bit in surprise, and she purses her lips, eyeing me critically. “Who are you, really?” she asks, and the bottom drops out of my stomach.

“I’m Lily,” I say, helplessly, though I know that’s not the entire truth, and she does, too. Sighing, I rub at my forehead.

“Yes, I know that - anyone who knows you can see this is true - but you are also not Lily at all,” she points out reasonably, as she circles around behind me to measure the width of my shoulders.

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. This woman is supposed to be... no, is my best friend. It would be exceedingly stupid not to confide in her. “You’re right,” I concede. “I’m not Lily Mahariel anymore. She’s dead. I’m Lily Maxwell... and... I’m... I’m a carpenter, by trade.” There is silence as I feel her hands stretching the string between the base of my neck and my waist. I shift uncomfortably, and since she’s being quiet, I just keep babbling. “I lived in a house by the sea, with a man who-- who-- couldn’t keep his hands to himself when he was angry. And... it was really easy to make him angry. He almost killed me when he found out about Zev. After I died here, I... ran from him, despairing and hollowed by the loss of all that I held, but there was a storm, and then the ocean swallowed me up before I knew I’d gone too close. The next thing I knew, Zev was fishing me out again and... well, you know the rest.”

“How can it be that you were two places at once? And why did you never tell us?” she finally asks, and I sigh.

“Zev asked me the same thing, and... Wait, actually, you know what? There’s this poem I learned when I was a kid, and it’s by one of my favourite poets; it describes my situation here perfectly.” I screw up my face, trying to remember what I’d memorized as a teenager. I couldn’t tell The Raven anymore, nor Annabelle Lee, but I always liked this one best. “It’s called A Dream Within a Dream, by a poet named Poe. Let’s see... how did it start...”

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

It is quiet for a while, so, to break the silence, I say, “To the people of my land, Thedas is just a myth, a dream, and all my life here was only so much mist and memory, not worthy of the misery it caused me when it suddenly ended, leaving me alone on the wrong side of an uncrossable divide. What would be the point in mourning the loss of a dream? I’d’ve been locked away as a lunatic if I’d talked about it. Yet what else could I do? What I feel is real, what I did here was real... it’s just a life I lived through another pair of hands, another pair of eyes. I couldn’t be here myself, so I came the only way I could. And when my life ended... I nearly died in truth.” I swallow hard. “Time moves differently here than it does there... Three days passed for me, after that, while a year slipped away here.”

“Hmmm...” she murmurs, her voice in my ear as her arms come about my waist. “If that is true, then you only knew us for... what, two weeks?”

I bite my lip, glad she is behind me. That’s... far too close to true. “I was here. Lily Mahariel was half of my soul, my other self. In every way of being - who I am, what I think, how I feel, the things I say and do - she’s me, and I’m her. But... because of the way that time moves, and because my soul was split, I wasn’t always fully conscious of what was happening here. There’s so much I know, but there’s also a lot I don’t. Take the night in question, at Tapster’s - the designs are entirely mine, the words I spoke, definitely something I thought, and something I would say, but the memory associated with it died with the half of my soul that was burned away by the archdemon.” Sighing, I turn and pull on the tunic that’s been draped over the back of a chair, waiting for me, as Leliana leans over the desk to make a few notes on a piece of parchment.

“There are a great many mysteries in the world that I’ll never understand. How I managed to live two lives at once is one of them, as no-one should be able to do that. Yet, here I am. And that - my being here - is another question with no certain answer.”

“People don’t travel between here and there,” she ventures, and I nod.

“Never. Well, actually, now that I think of it, I don’t know, but not that I’ve ever heard of. Lots of people mysteriously go missing, y’know, and I’m sure that happens here, too. Who knows what happens to them? We always assume some misadventure, or they just ran from their lives, but what if they travelled to another place, a place that can only be randomly reached by the whim of the gods or an accident of fate?” I shake my head, grimacing. “If it weren’t for my connection to Zev, I’d be dead entirely. He saved my life. Again.”

“Hmm... And you, his,” she murmurs. I suspect that this is meant to be reassuring, but it really, really scares me. I try very hard not to think about the fact that I’m the weaker partner here, by far. Of the two of us, I’m the one most likely to get us killed.

Lels doesn’t ask me any more questions, but I can see she is troubled as she leaves for the market later that afternoon, Anders in tow. The way those two go about together, I wonder if maybe there’s more to them than it would appear, but who knows.

She returns several hours later, chirpy and giggling, with an armload of packages. Closeted alone with her, she makes me try on four different outfits, paints my face twice before she’s satisfied with it, and then does up my hair. When she stands me in front of the mirror, I barely recognize myself. The way she’s got me dressed, is something I never would have chosen for myself. She’s got me in several layers of gauzy sage greens, draped like a Roman goddess, my hair piled up on my head and enamelled gold jewellery at my neck and wrists. She pauses, an earring in her hand, as she brushes my hair away from my ear, and I feel a wry smile curve my lips as her eyes widen in surprise.

“Yeaaah... I don’t have my ears pierced,” I say, ruefully. I always wanted to, but... well, that was an ill-fated adventure, and I just never quite got around to doing it again properly.

She leans back, her eyes going a little calculating with wary confusion, before being instantly smoothed over with her usual mask of innocence. Something’s not right here, and as she shows me several pairs of sandals, it occurs to me: the Earring. I can feel myself going pale, but Lels affects not to notice, handing over the pair that seems like it will best fit.

Do I dare ask after it?

Actually... No.

Gods, I’m a coward.

“Thank you,” I murmur, heartfelt, and she nods. I put on a pair of strappy flats and Leliana opens the door for me with a smile that seems a little false around the edges, but I think maybe she’s just worried and stressed over it, same as me. I don’t think she has decided to mistrust or dislike me. I hope. I can’t worry about that now. Just another thing to stuff in the box labelled: Stuff to Worry About Later (If Ever).

“Ah, cara, there you are,” Zev says, rising from the bench in our room as he looks me up and down, and I blush. “You look fine; you are lovely - a vision,” he says, when I look at him askance. “You are so beautiful, poets will be struck speechless, painters shall weep, and sculptors give up in despair of ever capturing your perfection,” he adds, when I fidget self-consciously, and I laugh. The genuine smile that spreads across his face distracts me, and I dimly register Leliana moving toward the door and leaving the room a moment before Zev closes the distance between us. As ever, everything I worry over is swept clean out of my head by the heat of his hands at my waist and the press of his lips against mine, and for an all-too-brief eternity, I am lost. He draws back, and I have to let him, regretfully, not quite able to repress the tiny little whimper of frustrated desire that escapes me, bringing a knowing smirk to his face.

I am nervous leaving the Warden compound. I’m inclined to feel safe, just from Zev’s presence at my side, but I know the comfort is false, and I have to stop and take a deep breath before we step out the doors. It’s not like I haven’t been outside before, but I had Alistair, Lels, and Anders behind me at that point, and that was before the... the Night I Do Not Think About. I shake my hands at my sides, like shedding water from them, and close my eyes, relaxing my shoulders by a conscious force of will. This is just like the moment before I’d walk on stage: settle, breathe, relax, and don your persona. Settle, breathe, relax-- “Let’s go,” I murmur as I feel Zev come up beside me, and he opens the door, his hand at the small of my back.

The streets of Antiva are paved randomly with many different materials. Some are cobbled, some are paved with flagstones, others with bricks. The Strada Rosa is apparently so named because it is paved with some kind of pinkish sandstone-like material with a high mica content. Little shops and cafes line the street in both directions, and hanging gardens from the balconies above provide a decent amount of shade.

Oh, sunblock. Another thing to add to the list of things I miss. I hate the sun.

The scents of coffee and baked goods penetrate my senses, and my mouth waters. “Oooh, coffee,” I murmur, breathing deep. Zev tucks my hand into the crook of his elbow, his stride a picture of ease, as he leads me toward one of these little cafes.

“We will stop for a little something,” he says conversationally, approaching the entrance. The building is two stories, white stucco on top and mural-painted below. The windows are just wide open rectangles, the size of a typical shop window, with shutters and awnings set up on wooden legs that can apparently be folded down to close the place up for the night. The doorway, too, is open, though rather than simple openings, this has an intricately carved frame around it. I study the vines and flowers as we pass through it, looking at the tool marks that were made as the artisan carved into the darkened wood. Little square tables with benches to either side sit outside under the awnings, and a bench runs around the inside walls, more of those little tables and benches scattered around the room haphazardly.

I take care to only glance around once, because I don’t want to call attention to the fact that I’m an outsider, here. The place is busy, but not overly crowded; a pair of older ladies with scarves over their hair play some kind of game involving cards, dice, and copper pieces; a young mother feeds a baby a piece of pastry; two old gentleman friends talk companionably over coffee; a courting couple with only one slice of cake between them glance at each other with heat in every visibly smouldering breath.

At the counter, Zev orders coffee and pastry for both of us, and I’m pleasantly surprised to find orange biscotti being pressed into my hand, along with a cup of incredibly mellow, faintly sweet and slightly tart coffee. It’s not sweetened, no, but more like a jasmine tea is sweet - naturally. I hum with pleasure as Zev steers us to a window seat, and we sit, half-turned toward the street. He is looking at me, but I can tell that his attention is actually focused on something across the way.

A cool breeze blows in the window, lifting the curtain. All the windows along the street are hung with brightly coloured fabrics that, at a guess, are batik dyed. The women in the streets carry these large, oval-shaped floppy baskets that can be folded in half and carried via their leather, braided handles, but the frame also seems to be strong enough that cargo of lighter weights can be carried on them flat. It’s fairly easy to see a separation in the social strata by dress. The poor tend toward simple linen, belted tunics and loose dojo-style pants or tiered skirts. Most of these are made of plain fabrics that are either dyed or decorated with fanciful embroidery at hemlines. The women wear their hair up under loosely-knotted, fringed scarves or just pulled back and tied with a thong, and the men seem to favour clean-shaven cheeks over beards. In this climate, I’m not surprised. They all tend to go about in simple canvas slippers or leather sandals for those who had by some manner gained enough coin to afford them.

Those of some modest means - what I guess would be the ‘middle class’ - are dressed such as we are, in slightly higher quality fabrics, sometimes with checkers, stripes, and mad paisley patterns woven in, and far more colour. The women wear gauzy Roman drapes and Grecian hair, like some kind of pre-Raphaelite wet dream, and a lot of the same kind of enamelled jewellery I’ve got on, painted sort of like cloisonné. Most of the women wear some kind of heeled sandal, and the men tend toward closed-toe gladiators. It’s the rich one that I spot who’s the easiest to pick out. Some banty lordling struts along, clearly slumming it, a couple of his friends trailing along behind, and they go into a little shop across the way. They were the most obviously dressed, in dark, vibrant colours and well-tailored clothes, high-quality leather half boots on their feet and swords at their sides. Very few of the people here actually carry weaponry openly; in fact, now that I think of it, aside from the occasional utility-knife, the only people who do are either people wearing livery or those who look to be some kind of nobility.

Hmm... no wonder we attracted so much attention when we went into the lamp shop. Damn.

“There is something I have been meaning to speak with you about,” Zev begins, and I realize he’s been turning his cup in his hands. It’s the fact he’s nervous that actually gets my attention. “Ah... Do you recall anything of what I said about how I grew up?”

I nod. “Yes. I remember the important stuff, just not all the little moments in between.” I wait a moment, but he remains silent, so I reach out and lay my fingers across his, halting another revolution of the cup and making him look up at me. “What is it?”

“The fortune teller,” he says, and I watch his eyes swirling with turmoil and pain. “She had a daughter, and since she was born in the whorehouse, they intended for her to die there, as well. Before she died, that woman asked me to save her daughter, any way I could. So... I bought her.”

I blink. He doesn’t own a slave - wouldn’t - so where is she? Ah... The skin painter on pink street. The one he was so protective of. Suddenly it all makes sense. I sit back and take another sip of my coffee. “Mmh. Okay. So when are we going in?”

It’s his turn to look surprised. “I did not think you would be so sanguine with the idea of me owning a slave,” he says warily, and I smirk.

“You don’t. You bought the debts of a woman who deserved to be free, and now she is.” I shrug. “That actually seems very like you.”

He is only half relieved. “Ah, but that is not all.” I arch an eyebrow, and he sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. “There are certain things expected of someone who has a slave...” He grimaces, looking out the window again, and I begin to have a feeling I know where this is going. “My... family were watching me very closely, you see, and so I could do nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that seemed to show special attachment. I thought to protect her, it was needful that I be cruel in some manner.”

Now that is not quite what I had expected, actually. “You hurt her?”

He winces, sitting back. “You must understand I was a much younger man at the time. I lacked subtlety.”

I swallow. His idea of cruelty could be hard as stone and sharp as shattered glass. “What did you do?” He hesitates, and I say, “If we’re to go in there, I want to know what I’m walking into, that’s all. Whatever happened, my opinion of you’s already been formed, based on who you’ve been since I met you. I won’t get angry at ghosts and echoes of a life you left behind. You’re not that person anymore.”

The look he gives me tells me he is weighing me carefully, and I wonder how much he doesn’t say, either. We’ve both got closets full of bones, but his closet is... much bigger than mine. I don’t think I want to be Bluebeard’s wife. “Ah, but it is not a ghost, nor an echo, that is the problem,” he says, looking down into his coffee as though that shallow darkness will hold some answers for him. Does she harbour some grudge against him? If she’s technically a slave, is it possible for her to purchase a contract? Brooding, Zev looks up and out into the street again, then suddenly says, “There, just now, do you see him?”

A young man, I’d say early twenties, carries a heavy, canvas-wrapped burden on his back. He’s tall, maybe about six inches taller than me, though he is stooped under the weight of his load. He has long legs, strong shoulders, and long, white-blond hair; he ducks into the tattoo parlour across the street, the beaded curtain swinging back together behind him. “Oh.” That’s about as coherent as I can be. So it was about a baby. “I expected that, actually,” I say, taking another bite of my biscotti.

His gaze swings back to mine, and his lip curls in almost a snarl, though he keeps his voice down. “You expected me to abandon my own child?” he asks.

I blink, taken aback. “Uh... Wow, no, calm down. If I truly thought you were that sort of man, I’d’ve had Anders fix it so I’d never have to worry about it. Which I didn’t,” I amend quickly, as his face darkens with wariness, “Actually, quite the opposite, but that’s not the point here. What I expected was that circumstances with your family would have forced you to do it, and that was the only thing I could think of that would have you so twisted up in knots about going in there to see her.”

He rubs at his forehead with one hand, and I reach out to him again, but before I can speak, he says, “She is the one who did my tattoos.”

“What, all of them?” I ask, and he nods.

“Most, yes. A few I did myself, but I learned the art from her.” He finishes off his coffee and sighs. “I do not wish to go in there, cara,” he murmurs, and I chuckle softly, scooting closer to him.

“Ah, my man, laughs in the face of danger, yet quails at the thought of a tongue-lashing from a tattoo artist.” I wrap my arm around his waist and tuck my head into his shoulder, sipping at my coffee again as the tension in his shoulders eases a bit, and he laughs with me.

“Hmm, just so. You may have noticed I am ill-suited to dealing with matters of the heart.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that... you do just fine with mine... But I understand what you mean. Look, we’ll go in, see what happens, and if it’s bad, we’ll just leave.” I look up, see the crease of worry between his eyebrows, and run my finger from his hairline down to the tip of his nose. “Shh... Whatever happens, we’re in it together, right?” He catches my wrist and presses a kiss to my palm, his eyes tightly closed for a moment, but the look he gives me after is fierce.

“Sì, amora mia. There is nothing I cannot face, with you at my side,” he says, cupping my cheek in his hand. Ah, crap, ‘cause that’s not intimidating. Gods, let me live up to that. I give him a brave smile, anyway, because at least in this, I’m not expecting there to be anything particularly scary. Not for me, anyway. I hope.

Zev rises, holding his hand out to me, and I stand with him, dusting the crumbs off my skirt and trying not to tug too much at my clothing. We link arms as we are leaving the little cafe, and slowly make our way through the crush of bodies to the other side of the street. The blond man leaves the shop, just as we close in, and doesn’t give us a second glance. We’re just people in the street, to him. That, too, tells me something. Zev holds the curtain aside for me with his arm, and I enter the dimly-lit shop.

The place is hung with fabrics and scattered with pillows, looking like the inside of a harem tent. Little low tables sit around the edges of the room, holding candles and an assortment of oils, incenses, and other, less identifiable things. A beautiful black-haired woman comes out from behind a curtain in the back of the shop and stops dead, staring at us. Her hazel eyes flash with fierceness and pride. “So. You have returned,” she says in Antivan, her voice smoky and low. I don’t move, not wanting to call attention to myself, watching the exchange between them.

“No.”

She blinks, apparently stunned. “No,” she echoes, and the look on her face makes me think maybe I shouldn’t be here for this, except that Zev brought me here on purpose. “Then who is this I see before me?”

“I am no one. A ghost.”

“A ghost.” Just how long has it been since they’ve seen each other? Can it be that he hasn’t been back at all? She swallows, then blinks, shaking her head, coming back to herself. “Why haunt me now?”

“I have come about the ink.” The way her eyes widen when he says that tells me that maybe it’s “Ink” with a capital “I”.

Just then I feel her pin me, looking at me carefully, but I’ve been glancing around the room, checking the place out, and am currently looking at a painting to her left, which is a remarkably Parrish-style sunset with a Botticelli nude reclining on a river bank. I hope I get a chance to get closer to it. I glance at her casually without flinching, hard as that is to accomplish, but I just take a breath, and say in Common, “That’s a beautiful painting; who’s the artist?”

She blinks, then gives me what I suspect is her professional smile. “Ah, dear lady, that is one of my own,” she says, and I know she can see the unfeigned respect in me.

“You’re amazing,” I tell her, sincerely. “I love it.”

“Thank you,” she says, nodding at my praise. “She is from the land of dogs,” the woman says in Italian, and Zev shrugs. “And she knows nothing. You bring her here, and she knows nothing.” The woman snorts, settling into a chair, and Zev looks almost grim. I busy myself looking at the patterns on the cushions. Some of them are woven, but most are dyed. Interesting... Better supply to demand that way. Artisans get to be as creative as they wish, and the weavers can just concentrate on turning out the fabric. The woven tapestry stuff must be specialty.

“But I know,” Zev says, “And you owe me a life.”

A life? I crouch down, fingering the fringe on the edge of the rug. It looks silky, but is actually quite coarse, like it’s made from wool. “I owe you nothing. You abandoned me when I was pregnant and never returned for more than twenty years, and now you come in here with some dog-worshipper, hoping that I will give you more Ink? You are out of your mind.”

Zev snorts. “Hmm, yes... Such a thoroughly natural occurrence, for a barren woman and a man taking powders,” he says mildly, but it carries the sting of a whip lash, and she colours tellingly, struck momentarily silent.

“Fine,” she hisses, but Zev shakes his head.

“Tch, no. You can do better than that,” he says in that same mild tone, as I examine the pattern of knots on the fringe. Each bunch was divided four times, then three, then two for six rows, before being tied off into individual tassels. This must’ve taken hours upon hours of work. “You sought the protection of the Crows by the most permanent means, which is fine; that is your right. However, that protection comes at a price, a price which was mine to exact, but that I have ignored for quite some time, as I did not intend to collect. What a small thing it is that I ask, in the face of such a debt, hmm?”

The woman growls, but it is a capitulation. “Yes, yes. It is simple enough.” She sighs and opens a small box that has been sitting innocently upon the table at her elbow. “Come here, darling,” she says to me, “Your friend wishes me to read your fortune.” This is decidedly not what they’ve been discussing, but I go along with it. Sitting upon an ottoman opposite her, I lay my hands on a tray she’s got across her knees, as she directs. She surrounds them with stones and inscribed bones, in a very specific manner, and I recognize some of the stones and their uses from my own hedge-witchery.

Amethyst for the astral connection and maybe for the cleansing; blue topaz (or maybe that’s tourmaline... hard to tell) for communication and insight, either way; quartz for balance and cleansing, and maybe for the amplification. This is a veritable powerhouse of stones here, and as my fingers begin to tingle, I feel the pentacle at my neck growing hot, and snatch my hands back at the same moment that she gasps and looks up at me sharply. “You have an amulet?” she asks, her professional smile firmly in place. “You must remove it before we can do this.”

I look to Zev, but he seems unconcerned, so I reach up and unclasp it, then hand it over to him. She watches with a hawk’s eye, and as I pass it over, I see her eyes widen. “What?”

The look she gives me is more than a little speculative. “Where do your amulets come from?”

I arch an eyebrow. “They all come from my homeland.” Let her make of that what she will. If she wants to assume that’s Ferelden, that’s okay with me.

“May I examine them? Sometimes the amulets and spells people wear will change the outcome of any fortunes I may foresee.”

I shrug. “Sure.” Zev lays the necklace in her hand, and she peers closely at my little talismans, though I notice that she doesn’t actually touch them. Aside from the simple silver pentacle that I’ve been wearing since I was sixteen, I’ve got a spiral that was made from pre-historic mammoth tusk by some Aleuts (both of them about the size of a quarter), and an amethyst that I wrapped in silver, both for its properties and because it’s my birth stone. They’re all strung on a thin rope chain that I ordered online from some silver merchant in Italy. Honestly, I forget I’m wearing them, even though I have a tendency to worry at the spiral when I’m nervous.

“I do not recognize the stone, here,” she says, pointing to the spiral, and I shake my head.

“Not a stone. It’s fossilized bone.”

“Fossilized?” she asks, the word clearly unfamiliar in her mouth, and I nod.

“Yeah, uh... bone buried in the ground so long that it’s turned to stone. From the ancient animals that lived millions upon millions of years ago, before there were people.” They’re both staring at me like I’ve just grown a second head, and I shift uncomfortably. “The scholars of my land have discovered many things.”

After a moment, she says, “This magic is very, very old, and protects you strongly. I’ve never seen its like.”

I blink. My little spiral? Auntie Leah sent it to me for Yule one year. It probably only cost her something like twenty bucks. How... weird. “Uh... Oh. I didn’t know it was magic,” I say, lamely, and she stares at me a moment longer, before she goes speculative on me again, but she hands the necklace back to Zev.

“All of your amulets are magic,” she says, watching my reaction, and this is somewhat of a surprise. Then again, they were supposedly magical at home, too, but that was more an article of faith than a hard fact, like it is here. I smile.

“Oh. Well, that’s good to know... I’ve been wearing them so long, I forget they’re there, sometimes.” Maybe that’s what protected me enough to let me reach here. I place my hands back on the board, and she takes a deep breath, refocusing. My hands start to tingle again as hers hover over mine, and the shivering continues up my arms, making my hair stand on end as it prickles across my scalp. I close my eyes and breathe carefully, but something is burning my third eye, so I centre and focus, like I do for meditation, and I hear her breath hitch. When I have imagined my mental and emotional defences, I have seen them as a brick wall, impregnable, and I surround myself with it, whenever I am doing a meditation for strength. This time, I imagine a door in the wall, and I open it, with the express intention of allowing her access.

The tingling ignites into a roaring flame, yet it does not burn me, and I hear her gasp in surprise at the same moment Zev does. I can’t open my eyes yet, though, because I’m still struggling to hang on to my defences and only leave that tiny portal open for the woman across from me. It does not take long for the pressure to become unbearable, and I quickly slam the door, imagining the bricks closing over it again, whole and unmarked from the intrusion. The pressure is gone, and the burning subsides to tingle again, and then is gone. I let out a shaking breath and open my eyes.

Both of them are staring at me.

I look from one to the other, and then, “What?” Neither of them want to answer me at first, which doesn’t bode well.

“Ah... You were glowing,” Zev says, after a moment, and I can feel the blood drain out of my face. I do not want to be a mage. I’m not a mage. I’m just a misplaced kitchen-witch. I don’t have real magic, I just know my way around herbs and stones. And cards. Shit!

I laugh, weakly. “Haha, weird.” I swallow, then look at the woman. “Uh, so did you see anything?”

She shakes her head, but it’s not a negation, and I feel my heart clench. “There is much darkness ahead. I see death, despair, heartbreak and sorrow. But I also saw a tiny little fluttering of light, elusive. You must tread carefully, lest that light be snuffed out by one wrong step.”

Zev and the woman look at each other, and I can see them having a silent conversation. At last, she says, “Yes, I see, and I will mark her.”

Zev turns to me, knowing I’ve heard and understood everything, and says, “I’ve asked her to give you a tattoo, cara; Ferrilinn can enchant inks.” He flashes me a grin, and I realize that his own personal luck might be tied into the ink she laid into his skin. No wonder he brought me here.

I take a deep breath and nod. “Okay. Just... vallaslin’din.”

Zev shakes his head as the woman’s brow furrows. “No, I swear to you,” he assures me. Not the face. I take another deep breath, and he nods to the woman, who has been sweeping her stones and bones back into the box; she sets aside the board and disappears into the back of the shop.

Zev crouches down next to me, taking my hand. “This is a day for secrets revealed, cara, for I have something else to tell you, as well.” I feel a small cloth pouch pressed into my hand as his withdraws, and I look down. Opening it, I find a single earring inside, hung with a red jewel, and my heart suddenly hammers in my chest. My eyes snap back up to Zev, who looks nervous, and I know the shock is written all over my face. “Will you still consent to wear it?”

I stare at him, momentarily tongue-tied. Whaaat? “I’ve been despairing its loss all this time,” I whisper, my voice deserting me, and the shadow of a smile plays about his lips. “Please,” I beg, “When can you put it back?”

“I thought that now would be a very good time, while Ferrilinn lays the ink into you that will keep you safer by my side.”

“Good,” I say, simply, as the woman in question returns with a tray full of ink pots and a simple tap-comb tattoo stick. “What pattern will I have?”

She looks between the two of us, and sudden understanding lights her eyes. “You have seen his, yes? Yours will be laid to suit your soul, the same as his.” She sets the tray aside and busily arranges a bunch of cushions on the floor, then motions toward them. “Please, remove your dress and lie down,” she instructs as she moves across the room. Pulling aside the beaded curtain, she closes the door and bolts it. I loose the ties at the waist and shoulders that keep my dress in place as Zev tugs away the belts, and the pile of cloth puddles around my feet, leaving me standing there suddenly in my panties and bra without warning. Zev laughs at my surprise and I stick my tongue out at him as I unclasp my bra. With only a moment’s hesitation, I take off my panties as well, and stretch out on the floor.

I try to take deep breaths and relax as I feel them settling on either side of me. I feel Zev’s hands in my hair, pulling it up and off of my neck, twisting it up and piling it out of the way. “Do you wish some poppy smoke, before I begin?” Ferrilinn asks, as I hear the clink of bottles, and I shake my head.

“No, no please, I’m deathly allergic to it.” There’s a pause, and I wonder if people have allergies here. “Uh, but I like cannabis...” I venture, as the sounds resume.

“I do not recognize this name,” she murmurs, and I shift, holding up a hand.

“The leaves splay, like this, and it has dense green buds...”

“Ahhh, ganja,” she says, and I nod.

“I wasn’t sure what it was called here,” I admit, and she hums.

Within moments, the sweet smoke invades my senses, and I breathe deep, as the familiar relaxed state of well-being comes over me. With my senses gently muddled, I barely flinch when the needles touch my skin, and then the tapping begins. I focus on my breathing and the sensation of the cushions beneath me, the feel of Zev’s hands in my hair and the scent of the smoke as Ferrilinn lays burning trails across my skin, snaking from just shy of the side of my breast, across my back, and curling over one hip. It does not escape my notice that one of the lines traces right over where the curve used to be in my spine. Tattooed to the shape of my soul, she said. Somewhere in the middle of all this, Zev pierced my ear, but I never felt it.

There is a hazy period where I drift in and out of consciousness, until finally I am roused by Ferrilinn’s voice. “It is finished,” she says, her voice tired.

“Thank you,” Zev says, and I hear her snort.

“I did not do it for you, but for her sake. I do not know what you have done, and I do not wish to know, but her end is so securely tied to yours, she needed the protection.” I stop myself just shy of responding to that with a question. Zev hasn’t told her I speak Antivan, so I’m not going to tip our hand. “Rest for a while, ragazza, while I heal the lines,” she says, and I nod. I feel the heat from her hands passing over my skin, above the lines she has laid, and slowly, the burning from them fades away. It is nothing like the power I feel from Anders; his flows like water, or warms like the sun. This is... a quiet thing, a small thing, a little like smoothing aloe over a burn.

I hear her moving out of the room again, and Zev leans down to whisper in my ear. “Sei tutto per me, moglie mia,” he says, stopping my heart. You are everything to me, my wife.

Wife?

Wife.

The earring. The earring. Oh gods.

That... explains a lot...



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