(no subject)
Dearest Alanna,
On All Hallow I will be attempting some experiments -- all very arcane and esoteric, with no meaning for anyone but a Master, I promise you. The work is quite delicate and requires plenty of power. To get it, I'll be tapping you, since you never use more than a small part of your Gift. I know you won't mind. If I've caused you any inconvenience or worry, please forgive me.
Your loving brother,
Thom.
(The Woman Who Rides Like a Man, by Tamora Pierce)
The scroll slipped from Alanna's fingers to the stained wood of the table, rolling in upon itself once more and coming to rest beside a scale. Curious, she touched the herb being weighed and rubbed it between her fingertips until it released its secret fragrance. Vervain.
Naturally.
Other dishes and bottles held dried leaves, twigs and crushed blossoms: white oak (independence), cress (stability and power), thyme (courage) and prickly pine needles (magical energy), nestled among the herbs more commonly used for healing and sorcery. The power to heal, the power to harm: as ever, they go hand in hand.
She'd seen this all before, though the memories, like two pieces destined for different parts of a puzzle, refused to fit together. Frowning, Alanna walked along the worktable and examined a collection of seeing crystals. A piece of smoky quartz caught her attention, but it was the tiger's eye she removed and held safe in her palm when she chose to acknowledge the man she'd known was there all along. Watching her.
"You're here," she said.
Festive sounds rose from the garden below, laughter and music and the occasional squeal of delight as the court did what it does best: put on fancy clothes, fancy masks and fancy airs, then attempted to one up each other in the most elaborate game Alanna had ever been forced to play. Maybe it was just the day making her cynical. Typically she spent All Hallow's far from the city, but for whatever reason she clearly hadn't escaped this year.
The man inclined his head enough to bring his handsome face out of the shadows and arched an eyebrow. Obvious comments rarely required an answer, and the Duke of Conte had never shied away from letting a well-aimed look speak for him.
He was younger than when she'd last seen him, and undeniably more sane. His eyes pierced her as they always had, as if he was trying to see into her innermost soul or, failing that, to uncover her greatest weakness and use it to pick her apart. She stood straight and proud under his scrutiny. Even so, Alanna felt odd; something was missing from what had become a familiar confrontation: danger, importance and the inevitable brush of destiny. It felt like they were simply two people who hadn't wished to attend a masked ball. Except they weren't, and it would always be more than that.
"Is this our epilogue?" she asked Roger, moving to stand before him, just out of reach. Alanna had always been reckless, but repeated encounters with Roger had taught her at least some measure of caution.
"Nothing so neat as that," he replied, his generous mouth twisting up in a wry smile.
"Why are you here?"
"It would be crass," he said, his smooth, vaguely amused expression reminding her of Lucifer, "to point out it was you who found me."
Alanna bristled. "Your afterlife must be terribly boring. Up to your old tricks?"
Laughing, Roger rolled to his feet with the grace of a panther and started forward, only to stop and regard her in mild and apparently genuine fascination. "That's so reassuringly you, Alan, Alanna, Lioness. Unbending in your expectations, unyielding in your principles." He paused, considering. " Except once. My, my. How surprising. Perhaps I should have courted you more, pressed you harder. Made sure it was you who opened my grave."
A lick of heady satisfaction curled through Alanna's stomach, chased by shame. "He's out of your grasp now, Roger." I've won.
"There will always be another to take my place. What is a hero -- pardon, heroine -- without a great enemy? You needed me," he told her, closer now.
"It won't work." Again, she was reminded of Lucifer. She should feel stalked, she thought next, but she didn't; and she didn't resist when he took her hand, pulled her into a swirl of light and sensation. "I won't," she gasped, "let you turn me upside down."
"You needed me," he continued, "far more than I needed you, or Thom. Jonathan needed me." When she tensed, he ran a soothing thumb back and forth at her waist. "He did. Without me, he never would have ruled so successfully or so well."
They were dancing to the music drifting through the open windows. The air was cool but not cold, thick with the scent of candle wax and falling leaves. She'd dreamed something like this, long ago. They'd danced in the Chamber of the Ordeal, Roger's face alight with love, hate and insanity, forcing her to move with him, calling her 'pet' and 'my darling.' It was the strangest dream she'd ever had in a lifetime of peculiar visions, and Alanna found herself pleased that this dance was nothing like that.
It was... pleasant.
For the first time, she saw a true glimmer of what had so attracted Thom and Delia. Of what had first held Jonathan's loyalties, above and beyond the magic. And she had no choice but to admit that on some level, she'd always known. There was something about Roger that drew her in, made her unwilling to let go of the past.
Maybe she had needed him. Not in the way her brother had, nothing at all like that, but if she made a map of her life and considered every step she'd ever taken, her experiences with Roger were an integral part of who and what she'd become.
Arms sure and strong, he guided them around the corner of his worktable and looked down at her; she felt the brush of his black hair against her fingers. Alanna stubbornly refused to look up and instead stared at the blue silk of his tunic, remembering. There was something unbearably intimate about the fact that she'd twice killed this man. She knew how it felt to drive her sword into that sinew and muscle, and watch his crimson blood well and start to drip into a puddle at her feet. She knew the sounds he made, the look of disbelief that usurped the mad triumph and self-assurance in his eyes. It made her shiver.
When Alanna glanced up through her eyelashes and furrowed her brow in consternation, his gaze was there, waiting. "Part of me wanted to know how you did it just as badly as Thom," she breathed, shocked at her own candor. "I still want to know."
He smiled again, sharp and bright, but this time it came with a glint of purpose. "Yes." Another twirl and he offered in return, "Part of Thom wanted to hate me as easily as you did, for your sake."
Alanna swallowed hard, fought not to stumble. "What is this, Roger? You aren't using illusions. I'd know." The room they danced in continued to be alarmingly real and normal.
"I no longer require them. That part of our dance, my dear knight, is done."
As the music swelled into its final note, he pulled her in until their noses were all but touching and went still. She imagined he could feel her every breath, then realized she felt none of his.
"I no longer need the illusions," he whispered, "and now I've shattered some of yours." He released her and casually returned to his chair, lounging as if nothing had happened and neither of them knew what it felt like for him to die.
Bizarrely, Alanna felt like laughing.
"I hear wisdom comes to all of us with old age," she snorts, the dig deliberate.
"I wouldn't know. I was deprived of mine," he shot back, eyes dancing. His tone was frosty because that's what she expected of him. "Go away, Alan, Alanna, Lioness. I've work to do."
His words should have sent a chill down her spine.
They didn't.
"Just remember what they say, Roger." Alanna felt herself start to smile. "The third time is always the charm."
His laughter echoed in her ears once more, but this time it was rich and interesting, and Alanna didn't mind nearly as much as she had all the times he'd laughed at her before.