The Sorcerers

[Seydon of Arda]

Outside was fresh air, and a relenting quiet. There were not so many bodies in the wide avenues between the immense storage sheds and they individually cleansed themselves of the smell of fear-stained sweat and narcotic fumes. Seydon checked his chrono-piece; an hour past local midnight, cool sixteen degrees centigrade, forecast for rain before dawn. He’d already smelled it against the cigara odour, stepping under the wharf floodlamps and black-as-jet night sky. Neither of them made comment on the dead Sullustan, or the strange, inexplicably sudden tree that’d grown out of the ferrocrete.

He wished she hadn’t done that. Glad that she did. Seydon lead out through the wharf, onto the long streets beyond the security fences. Khedal’s terracotta roofed city ramped up into the soggy headlands that grew sparser and sparser of habitation. As they walked, turning down an avenue east, purposefully becoming lost in the sleeping boroughs, they held a silent conversation. Were they followed? No, he didn’t think so. Could they return to the safe house? It was still dark, and the night was one of their few shields. They had work to do yet. Sleep would be theirs in a little while, he promised. They paused under a fitfully glowing street lamp. Besides scant midnight traffic, they were all but alone. Hover cars hummed distantly, a sound like honey bees.

Are we okay…? …No. They both knew the wharf scene was horrid. It was their duty to one day come back, burn it all, and somehow cripple the Pacanthan slave trade. Only a responsibility to their mission stayed them from enacting on an impromptu mission, then and there. That taste of breath-fouling drugs, the tinge of drink so thick it left the air humid, the sweat, the fear, the careless laughter. Seydon knew it’d taken Rosa considerable self-control and personal ability to keep from a breakdown.

His pride in her, and hopes, was relayed through a sudden kiss. The Dunaan slid his cloth mask off his nose, surprising her with an embrace around the small of her back. She tasted with an edge of… something. He couldn’t put a word to it. But it dissolved amidst sweetness, and he hugged her closer for it.

“I shouldn’t have made you go in there,” He murmured reproachfully.

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

She didn't have to kill him, and yet she had done. Each step that moved them away from the auction house, the red that had descended slowly eased away. Rosa balled her free hand to stop it from shaking, the other never letting go of Seydon's arm. The scene playing over and over in her head, the sullustan's fist cracking hard across the boys face, the boys limp form, the casual dismissal of the fact that he'd just killed a child. Anger pulsed off her in angry waves, gnawing away at her. And yet... Should she have killed him? She knew the right answer to that question was no, that it was wrong, that it was not what a Jedi should do. She'd killed a defenceless man. Who'd murdered a defenceless child.

Seydon's embrace caught her off guard, his tongue hot across hers but she welcomed it all the same, hands sliding up to loop round the back of his neck, desperate to draw him closer. He pulled back slightly, words hushed and she tensed slightly in his embrace, unable to find words to answer him. Rosa hadn't just killed the sullastan, but she done so in the most brutal fashion available to her. Not a Jedi.

"We had no choice." I had a choice. I had a choice to let him live or not. "Things are only going to get worse, the deeper we dig into this."

[member="Seydon Gunn"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

He watched guilt, repentance, contrition, and satisfaction warm and cool her eyes in time with her secret thoughts. Seydon felt more simply about it: the Sullustan was a slaver, devoid of conscience or empathic measure, and had slain a child on a whim. If he was due to die, Rosa had sped his time table along and taken the matter of justice into her own hands. Was it ‘Jedi’ proper? Maybe not. But he understood a ‘proper’ Knight or Master would seek action through conventional channels. He knew his own compass emphasized a kind of arrogance; never mind the law or due course, you’ve a sword in hand and know what’s right from wrong.

Do you, he always asked beforehand? Can you be an arbiter? How well do you know ‘good’? How entrenched are you in ‘evil’?

“One day,” Seydon said, trying to soothe her heartache. “That whole system will burn. We’ll be there for it, I promise. All the slaves will come up and spit in their oppressor’s faces. …For now, let’s find that orphanage before someone comes along to ask about that slaver.”

They tracked down a ‘black cab’: an unlicensed passenger ferrier. The speeder was an unmarked model branded under a generic ATC stamp, mostly clean, mostly well-maintained, the cabin densely packed with scanner counter-measures. It’s driver: a shaggy Epicanthix, lean-faced with a hint of nervous energy.

“Provisional orphanage,” Seydon ordered.

The speeder shuddered up from the cobblestone street, flying flow amid a dense route ferrying them through back passages, quiet alleys, and disused narrow streets belonging to Khedal’s elder years. They left the harbour quarter, and the night auction sheds behind them. Before them was a weathered basilica: moderate in stature, the architecture from the massed architrave flowering around the central iron doors and long pillar facades the object of both decoration and accumulated grime. The ‘Grey Abbey’. Walled off behind a long iron-bar enclosure, fenced around the lot perimeter. As their driver slowed and eased them close to the sidewalk, a burst of off-coloured sparks touched off from an iron finial. Strange corrosion showed on the flaking metal.

“Electrified fencing,” Seydon muttered, stepping out and helping Rosa navigate from under the cabin roof. He palmed a pair of platinum chips to the driver, watched the midnight operator disappear back into Khedal’s long avenues. They both surveyed the grim enormity of the orphanage awaiting them.

“…Say we go in a back way?” He said. “I don’t see any guards on the grounds…”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa nodded in response, following him away from the front entrance, the lack of guards raising her suspicions that this may very well be a trap. Still, there could be some inside or it could quite simply be a case that those who ran this establishment ran such a tight ship and were arrogant enough to think the didn't need security guards. While the latter was possible, businessmen were not so foolish as to leave such precious wares unprotected. Suppressing a shudder, she cast a glance over their shoulder as the walked the perimeter fence to the rear of the Abbey. A large courtyard spanned the width of the building, encompassed by the quiet hum of electricity.

They passed their eyes over its colourless surface, highlighted by pools of yellow light gleaming from higher windows. Consciously, she adjusted the cowl, sinking her face into shadow and making sure it remained fixed in place as they moved along. In the bottom corner of the courtyard sat two small guardhouses, flanking wide double gates. Yellow light spilled from their small windows, figures silhouetted within, a low rumble of voices reached their ears.

"What was that about no guards on the ground?" she murmured.

She pursed her lips, glancing upwards, surveying the fences height. Eight foot at least, not terribly high, but high enough with a little help from the force she could clear it easily enough. "Can you jump that?" she asked, curiously.

[member="Seydon Gunn"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Seydon regarded the height, performing a rapid mental calculation. “…I could. But wait.”

He stooped and collected a jag of broken sidewalk ferrocrete, hefting it over the enclosure. The shard caught a brief lance of cooking electro-bolts as it passed the fence zenith too closely, but tumbled onto the courtyard grass. Seydon had sequestered himself and Rosa back into a deeper moat of midnight darkness, just watching the guardhouse. Bodies were stirring behind frosted windows, but were reeling drunk. There was a console feed glow, the smell of cheap wine, half-eaten treats, and sour cursing that Seydon detected. If there were sensor nets laced over the Abbey grounds, whoever was charged with overseeing the nights security didn’t give a damn. He took a binoc set, scouting that long, tall face of the rear central wing.

The heavy-set iron doors were bolted in place, besides a handful of open windows and peeks of strange colour showing through the interior shadows. Little in the way of recognizable security. Unless the Provisional Orphanage, the ‘Grey Abbey’, defended itself quite differently. It’s age and cruel pedigree were a taste in the cold air. Did it hide behind veils of alchemy? Or contract out to the secret killer guilds that had always been a Panathan staple? What countermeasures were in place to deflect poaching attempts? What’s the secret to opening you up, Seydon wondered? He put the binocs away, crept with Rosa up to the sidewalk, and together, they leaped.

Rosa with the Force, Seydon with his strength. He jumped and landed with more weight, less grace. His wife seemed to skate on a current, buoyed by gravity, and she stepped onto the crisp grass with an easy stride. They whisked to a row of squared sagebrush bushes and low trestles of dry cedar, hunched ow, Rosa following her husband through the dark. A moment of panic came when they nearly tripped over an unseen sprinkler, left broken and jutting up against the underbrush. Seydon chose a wide, latticed window three rooms away from the main door and its stone porch. There was little telling if alarms had been wired into the soft wood frame and for once, the Dunaan wished he had more advanced amenities. While Rosa gauged the lawns, the guardhouse, and kept an ear for that main door, he produced a slim handful of durasteel tools from a pack on his waist-belt. The window locks fought him; weathered, shut with rust. He replaced the genteel picks, selected a heavier killing knife, and quietly forced the stuck duranium.

“Shhh, now…” Seydon whispered. He helped pick Rosa up by her waist to the sill and climbed in after her, shutting the window in behind their scurrying entry. Their feet felt and scuffed against laminate tile. In silence, weapons half-drawn, breath squeezed tight behind their tongues, they crouched in the dark. The chamber was high ceilinged, the make and feel of courtly hospital aesthetics, dressed with anatomical reference charts, chemical tables, a low bank of diagnostic banks, an examination table, and an unused medical cot. Save for their near heartbeats, Seydon sensed nothing else waiting in the blue shadows. Sodium-yellow illumination glowed through the narrow, boxed window cut into the entry/exit door.

“…Ugh,” Seydon grunted. Smell of anti-septic and ammonia. There was trace bacta scent: pine and salt. He stood, exhaling, cat-eyes bright in the murk. “Rose, you feel anything…?”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa shuddered, extending her senses across the hospital as they remained crouched eyes slipping closed. A few bodies stirred in the east wing, force trembling around them with barely contained fear, the terror that came with unknown surroundings, among them a handful of minds she could not penetrate. Epicanthix matrons no doubt. There were more that moved through the halls, unyielding in her attempts to press against their minds. She gritted her teeth in frustration, flitting past the sleeping minds of sleeping children whose dreams were wrought with nightmares.

The west wing was wrought with darkness, pain sickness and gut wrenching fear, she glimpsed dark walls through children's eyes, heavy iron shackles, bruised limbs and a noble epicanthix bearing the Zambrano crest that moved between them, surveying his handy work. A hand reached for Seydon, steadying herself and she exhaled slowly, careful not to make their fears her own, anger burning hot in her chest. Another four epicanthix padded here, dealing pain and delivering fear. Rosa recoiled, her mind tracing back through the corridors searching for something else, anything else to drive that image from her mind.

She opened her eyes. "There's five in the west wing, five in the east wing and four patrolling in between. One is stationary on the second floor. They're all epicanthix, I can't get in at all to give us cover."

[member="Seydon Gunn"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Seydon held back his whispers, instead considering their course. The boy was now a permanent fixation over the lens of his mind’s eye: the small face with baby chub, a tuft of unkempt gold hair and blue eyes that stared out with unfiltered severity. Their child of destiny, his gut told. You’ve come for him, so find him, he told himself. He finally nodded to Rosa and together, they defeated the next lock sealing the examination room, slipping out into the hallway.

The corridor had breadth, with smooth colonnades banded in iron and zinc. A vast, torn carpet was installed over the floor, stained hideously, the must stench so thick they spat out tongue film, gagging in the rancid air. Seydon passed a spare scarf to Rosa, looking up and down the corridor for his bearings. He sought out a brass plaque in the trembling electro-chemical sconce light. It showed only the ground floor layout for the main buildings, pointing out entries to the neighbor wings, staircases to the second story. The Dunaan blinked, memorizing, listening against the heavy quiet. Danger was on them: sick cold sweeping up through their bowels, breathing deeper now, fighting against flinching at every too loud sound.

He tapped the cloth and hemp-roped bundle still weighing off his waist. Thought better of it, passing Rosa a look, drawing a long, oiled knife from its scabbard behind his hip. Again, doubts crept in. They eased along the passage, tacking right and staying to as much shadow as they could manage. There were disused closed-circuit cameras hanging from mounting brackets, every dozen metres. Broken or just camouflage? How did the Grey Abbey account for its own security? Sheer terror? Seydon thought only the Dunaan were so antiquated. They followed the edge of a mounted column, through a wide intersection that was a partial drawing room, keeping right still. Misshaped toys and thrown away shackles occasionally clattered underfoot.

“Shht!”

“I’m trying!”

Down the hall, a hatch swept open. An Epicanthix in burnished plate and masked behind a sonic-visor stepped under the light. He turned, in time to see Seydon dashing noiselessly forward. They fought in a brief, cruel scuffle: the Dunaan reversed his knife-grip and speared the pommel into his throat, collapsing the trachea, pitching the guard forward until his neck and skull were locked in Seydon’s elbow crook. He wrenched curtly, snapping vertebrae, severing the spinal column. The guard was posed in a corner of his break room and left for someone to find.

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa’s face was pale and glistening in the low light, she flinched at the snap that echoed in the room and the soft sigh in the force as the guard died. Once upon a time she might have admonished Seydon for such an action, but with her own actions at the docks and the effort of maintaining some sort of mental equilibrium while her senses were assaulted with pain and fear the Abbey poured out, she was neither justified nor capable.

Trembling hand found his, squeezing tight seeking reassurance, something to remind her who she was, lest she drown. Even if she’d wanted to, she could not shut it all out now she could track their movements, give them prior warning to what lay ahead even if she couldn’t read them. They slipped through the same hatch the guard had come through and found themselves at the foot of a twisting staircase whose stone steps were worn smooth by the hundreds of feet that had passed over them.

Rosa’s fingers brushed the wall as she took the lead, and instantly regretted it. A thousand images flashed through her mind’s eye, psychometry feeding her memories wrought with pain, she was like an exposed nerve. A soft cry passed her lips and she clapped her hand over her mouth, breathing hard listening intently for any reaction. A beat passed, then another. Nothing. She exhaled and glanced back at Seydon, his amber eyes wrought with worry for his wife’s wellbeing. She didn’t pause to give him reassurance, because it would have been a lie, instead Rosa did the only thing she could and pressed on, her footfalls silent on the steps. The sooner they were out of here, the sooner she could breathe again.

Footsteps belonging to neither of them echoed down the narrow staircase and for the briefest of moments, Rosa froze. Back was not an option, through whoever it was was the only way. She bounded the steps two at a time to greet the guard as he came into view, shadow becoming solid in her right hand as a long black spear took form, driving upwards through the soft underside of his jaw and embedding deep into his skull. The spear of midnight black trembled and vanished, her slender finger catching the front of the guards clothing to stop him pitching backwards and making a racket on the stairs.

She paused again, listening before gently laying him down and leaning on the wall. “Go.” she whispered to Seydon to take the lead.


[member="Seydon Gunn"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Seydon nodded, drawing Razorlight, stepping up through the turn of worn smoothstone steps onto the second story landing. A locked auto-door yielded to the Dunaan, after it’s keypad wiring was savaged then subjected to a crude feedback short and he bent the door’s galvanized steel panel back into the frame recess. Blade held in a half-swording guard, he cautioned Rosa down into a partial crouch, leading in to a grey, shadowed pall.

The second floor was arranged around classrooms and smaller gymnasiums. They spied through musty and grime-fogged leaded glass at rowed desks, topped with datapads detailing the habit and custom of Panatha’s gentry servant class. Most of the seats were padded with iron plating and wired into power lines sheathed under the floor boarding. They guessed that anything incorrect, an answer, a word, attitude, or even lousy posture garnered a painful electric shock through the children’s bottoms. Seydon turned Rosa away when he heard her voice choke, incapable of looking into the wet, violet fury in her eyes. How can they??

They killed another three guards on a patrol circuit. The first and second Seydon put his blade through, skewering them through the meat of nape, or jousting Razorlight in a curl through the heart, cutting the edge out through the backbone and spinal column, collapsing the body into jumbles. The third was Rosa’s prey, and her dark artifice crushed them. The corpses were stored inside dusty closet spaces, the blood left to pool on the carpets. Ornamentation was more verbose here, decorative touches preserved from whatever century had built the ‘abbey’. They couldn’t help noting a constant, sticky-sweet pine odour. Power was dimmed save for a few running lights mounted dimly against the baseboards. Rosa found another fire-evacuation plaque; ahead straight through two junctions and then right at the third.

Hardlight portraits of esteemed Panathan patrons lined the walls like a gallery. Some were holo-sculpts of Khedal’s rough, sea-carved beauty. Most flickered; the off-blue glow lit them like ghosts travailing a passage of the underworld. Seydon felt for Rosa’s hand. Held tight, fingers knotted together. He should have come alone, he thought. Spast, you would have followed anyway and such hell would have come in your wake. It’s better this way. Just us. It’s better when it’s you and I. There’s nothing else I might trust. Rosa, forgive me, when we find the boy, we’ll take him away. We’ll show him Spira and I will detox all of this darkness from your spirit.

They walked in the deeper pools of shadow and took the last right junction turn. The Principal’s offices were behind the third heavy door jamb on the left. It was a conventional single-slab panel that looked newly installed, the frame still naked against the elder wood and ratty plaster. Taking off a glove, he felt heat and sound through the metal. There was a body on the other side, in the interior office, he was sure. Faint perfume, tea fragrance, a liquorice-sweet element just behind the sugary cha, foot steps in heeled shoes across a thick carpet, a slow heartbeat that was laboured with disease. Seydon eased Razorlight’s tip into the frame. Eased it out of its moorings, hating the crick of metal on metal. When there was space enough for a body to wedge through, he tugged the door in another inch and motioned Rosa inside. He joined in the next moment, clawing the door back into the jamb.

A woman’s soprano tone spoke further in. Light showed from static lampshades, a smell of lho smoke and herbal drinks thicker now, sharper down their throats. They listened to a one-sided conversation going back-and-forth over a comm piece. Seydon crept forward into a narrow reception chamber bereft of furniture. Here, the trappings of Khedal’s sea-faring culture were most prominently displayed, from the massive under-hook of a broken anchor to brass fixtures, specimens of sand dollars, dried out crustacean husks, and the skeletons of mean-mouthed deep anglers. The crest of the God-King was displayed on a platinum rack above the portal into a drawing room, stylized with emerald tridents flecked with blood cut from raw rubies.

“ - - until the second quarter. Not a day prior. …If you’re willing to put up with sub-bar performance, then yes. I can deliver them. …I will not. …Because the Grey Abbey has its ways and they are sacrosanct. Beyond reproach. We’ve not failed the nobility in six thousand years. …You are hardly exceptional at anything, dear~ …That is the final word on it. If you were going to be in such binds, perhaps you should have saw to your scheduling before this allowance of ambition clouded better judgement. Our discussion is concluded. You’ll have your little ones by second quarter. Good day.”

The comm piece silenced, the woman hummed a note of triumph of the rim of a crystal glass. All Seydon and Rosa could see was a shadow with a high collar and a stalk like neck pacing the drawing parlour beyond. The figure paused.

“…Is someone there?”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

The pain and fear that pulsed form the young inhabitants of the Abbey, stirred a third and far more dangerous emotion Rosa. Hot fury, drove a desire to burn the whole establishment to the ground, to tear all of them apart for their crimes and to sweep the children away from here, to show them all the joys of the world. Oh, how she hated them. Her jaw tightened as they listened to the one-sided conversation, to think a person could take such pride in a business as foul as this made Rosa feel sick.

She cast a sideways glance at her husband, the anger rolling off her in a wave that seemed to suck the light out of the room. Rosa moved with a predatory grace as she stepped deeper into the room, revealing herself to the woman, eyes shrouded in the shadow cast by her cowl, lower half of her face concealed by the scarf Seydon had given her upon entry. The Epicanthix blinked, frowning.

"How did-" Rosa's hand moved, three small spears shimmered into the air between them and alarm crossed the woman's face as she turned to dive for the desk, probably to punch some distress button or retrieve a weapon, the first spear slid across her path, slamming into the wood with an thud that brought the headmistress up short. The second clipped her shoulder spinning her back to face Rosa and the third hit her with enough force to knock her back against the wall beside the desk. She threw a fourth for good measure pinning the woman to the wall by her own flesh, Rosa's anger so palpable that the spears did not diminish.

"We've some questions for you."

[member="Seydon Gunn"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

The lance pinned the ‘Abbess’ to a teak lathed column, blood running fitfully through the plunging tear in her emerald petticoat. She was another Epicanthix specimen, resplendent in autumnal colours set against rich turn-of-the-century ornamentation that dominated the ‘office’ space. Seydon glanced at the neat, studied desk with built in console interfaces, at dark wood bookshelves rowed with paper and flimsiplast. He smelled traces of sugars, soya, milk, vegetables and meats. The ‘Abbess’ took her meals here, and washed her courses down with selections from a caged, oxidized copper liquor cabinet. With Rosa neutralizing the woman, Seydon secured the doors. One lock was engaged, then slagged, the Dunaan pelting the metal casing with a brief pyrokinetic flare. The other he left unmolested, planning for their exit from the parlour.

He addressed the enigma of the Abbess. Tall, grey with pain in a sharp-boned face, lips bloodless except for a rosy application, and adorned in gold jewelry. The sense of price extended to her dress, a fine example in neo-Selonian fashion with its mixture of conservative fabric cuts that were subtly betrayed by crimson layers just beneath the green and smoked orange fabric. She was battling to hold her composure. Seydon thought her eyes were almost colourless. Not limpid but like ice, infinite in their cruelty.

“Cut my throat. Be done with it. I won’t beg,” The Abbess groaned.

“This boy,” Seydon stood close, holding the pict up. The child with elvish ears and piercing blue-over-blue eyes. “Has he come through your orphanage?”

The Abbess pooled a well of spittle and blood and hocked it at Seydon’s face. He paused, wiping with his sleeve, facing down her cold, tempestuous contempt. “If he didn’t, you’d have heard. So, if not here, then where else might they process babes for slave work?”

“You… You waste my time… Like this?”

“…You will know shame before the end,” He whispered. The parlour swam in frightening silence. His cats-eyes burned with unholy promises. “Nothing can save you from me. Or from her,” Seydon gestured to Rosa. “Not your breeding. Not your stock. Tell us what we need and you’ll go away without having to answer for everything you’ve done. Refuse, and you will. The docks said any child with certain pedigree, certain looks, they get snatched up for the Grey Abbey.”

He thrust the pict back into her face. “Which leaves you next in sequence. Where’s the boy?”

“Collection agents are so tedious…” The Abbess grunted, still impaled to the column. “Are you so inept you need to… To use barbarian… tactics?”

Seydon nodded over his shoulder. The Spear of Midnight Black twisted in. For a satisfying moment, the Abbess lost her venom and scrabbled at the walls. Pain made her soil herself. He kept the pict levelled with her eyes. “Again. Have you seen this child? Where is he?”

“I-I don’t…!” She barely kept a shriek at bay. To scream, she knew, would spell the end. Pride for the integrity of the Grey Abbey dissolved against their unrelenting expressions. The man, with his damnable eyes and corpse-like pallor. The woman, stormy with the passions of a typhoon. Seydon knew she was already begging forgiveness from whatever black gods her family subscribed to.

“Yes!” The Abbess finally bit out. “Yes… A boy like that was brought here. He… He underwent initial… examinations.”

“Explain that.”

“To check his health! Against… Against foreign poxes and diseases. He… He was supremely healthy. Rebellious little punt…” She closed her eyes. Sickness swept over her skin. “Maybe our best take in decades. However…” The woman allowed herself some smugness to return. “He was taken…~”

“By?”

“Shouldn’t you know? Others like you~ However, they had their authority in hand… and there was little in the way a modest principal could do to stop them,” Said the Abbess. “Seems word spread from that… whore-poxed harbour… About your golden-haired child. I think he’s bound for one of the great houses now…~”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

"Which house?" Rosa's voice was eerily calm, lavender eyes blazing from beneath her cowl, fingers curled about the lance that held her fast, itching to wipe the smugness off her face. The Abbess slid her gaze from Seydon, lips curling into a sneer. Rosa's grip tightened and twisted and the sneer vanished in a spasm of agony. "Which house?" She repeated, drawing closer, fingers sliding up the lance as she did. Defiance blazed in the Abess's eyes, and Rosa moved so they were mere millimetres between them.

'You will tell me." She twisted the lance again, hand clapping over the woman's mouth to stifle the scream that followed. "You will tell me, or I will show you a world of pain you never thought imaginable. But not before you've suffered the ones you have imagined, the ones you force upon children. I've seen inside the west wing, I've seen your correctional facility down the hall. I will make that seem like the child's play you make it out to be." Another spear formed, point down, and slammed into her foot, guided by Rosa's will, her hand still clamped to stop the screams. "and just to make it last the little bit longer, I'll take the time to heal you, just to do it all over again. Which. House."

There were tears in the Abess's eyes now, defiance gone in the face of the amethyst eyed fury before her, because Rosa meant every word, and the queen knew it. Rosa lifted her hand as the muscles beneath her fingers fought to speak. "...They'll kill me..." Rosa seized the lance that punched through the woman's foot, drawing a sharp gasp of anticipation. "Theonlyhousethtmatters." The words tumbled rapidly from her mouth. "The house of the God-King." Rosa seemed to contemplate her words for a moment, before drawing back and contemplating the woman.

Whatever passed across her face seemed to rise panic in the Abbess. "No! Wait! Ple-"

The was a solid thunk as a short spear slammed into her throat, the last of her please dying in a gurgle of red.

[member="Seydon Gunn"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Both were wearied for the conversation. They allowed the Abbess to topple forward onto her slack face and crunch into the hard rug, pooling a thick carmine congeal into the wiry textile threads. Seydon picked his way over her splayed boots, striding to her console desk. The interface was powered down, access appearing as a set of biometric authentication and a vocal password. He knelt, prying at the in-built drawers, and rifled through handfuls of flimsiplast printouts. Revenue statements, purchase and sale documentation, employee records, inventories, enrollment curriculums. There was little concrete about the children currently indentured to the ‘Grey Abbey’. He looked at the darkened console banks, wondering about secrets, if the truth of the Abbess’ work was worth understanding. The slave trade was simple industry. The economy of flesh provided her with the means to enjoy the life she desired. Emotional and physical expenses incurred against the unfortunate didn’t factor into consideration.

Seydon wondered why, if she was everything they loathed, that he felt a twinge of pity. He crossed to her body rapidly cooling across the floor. Rosa was toeing her skull, watching for life, ready to snuff out the slightest twitch that showed. Was it wrath in sympathy for the children? Fear for the lost boy they were expected to find? The Dunaan thought Boolon, her charity work by extension, had been her way of exercising maternal instincts. Of his many shames, that he couldn’t give her the family she wanted and deserved haunted him privately. The Abbess was her antithesis; her killing a rejection of the clinical, calculated prosperity that came at the cost of destroyed childhoods and savaged innocence. Seydon dimmed the office lights and gestured Rosa back from the corpse.

“So,” He said, reaching and massaging at the skin just behind her ears. “Small juncture: stay in Khedal, look for anything further, or take the lady’s word, see what’s waiting in the capital. …Say we hightail it to the safehouse first. Get some rest. …You’re not doing too good, Rose.”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa watched the red stain spread across the luxurious carpet beneath there feet, hands opening and closing at her sides, battling with the want, the need to do more. The children suffering pressed against her, triggering vivid memories of Layil, all that was missing was the pleasure in the deed. She fought against the sudden wave of nausea, eyes closed and she swayed for a moment on the spot.

Seydon's soft voice and touch made her open them again, lifting only to meet his gaze when he'd spoken her name, tears welling in her eyes. No she wasn't doing good, in fact if they stayed much longer and the adrenaline wore off she doubted her ability to move. Her gaze slid away from him and back to the still spreading stain. If the woman's word was to be believed, then the Zambrano's had their boy...but why? What use could they possibly have for such a child? The potency of the Zambrano blood line was hardly questionable, they were new members of the family popping up almost every week.

She recalled the picts that had accompanied the hologram, the laboratory...his slightly sickly pallor...

...Rose?

Her eyes snapped up again.

"Get me out of here." she croaked.

[member="Seydon Gunn"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

He did just that.

When Rosa’s eyes reclaimed some of their lustre, she was quite suddenly stepping under their safe house porch. Behind them were curtains of hard sea rain, flushing the neighborhood of colour, painting the world in greyed out tones to the sound of belching gutters and running streams gently gouging ever widening rivulets through the cobble-brick mortar. The water washed and carried the stench of fish salt. Pillars of broken lightning flashed and struck a finial off a distant fisherman’s cathedral, smoting the brass, highlighting Seydon’s face in stark white and shadow. His cats-eyes were bloodshot, glowing felly; one of his bandolier vials jangled empty in its strap.

He pulled her in past the entry frame, jamming the door into place, cycling the half-dozen anti-intrusion bolts on. Glowlamps powered up at their heat signature. Their dishevelled lodgings were as they left them, kitchen disorganized but functional, musty furniture surrounding a high caff-table mounted with a refurbished holo-projector unit. Seydon checked through the blinds at the rain-logged streets outside. The evening downpour was drumming down the aluminium roofing and cottage siding. Eventually satisfied, he rolled the storm shutters down as a precaution, then disappeared into the bathroom.

“Sit down,” Seydon said when he saw Rosa numbly walking into the kitchen. A towel was bunched in his hand.

His expression suffered no defiance, which is exactly what he noted her glare back. The night had been too long, cooped up with foul company, just barely restraining her rage at the enemy. All her adult life, she had fought against this machine. It was here. The enemy was tangible. Give her a day and night, she would make Panatha weep and watch grimly as slaves in their millions rose up and strangled their owners with their own shackles. She wanted caff, gods-damn him, and she would get it.

Not yet, he stared back. Firstly, she was going to sit and let him dry her off. Seydon wouldn’t mention the half-hour spent securing their exfiltration, killing a half-dozen other floor guards and disposing them in available custodial closets. Neither the long hour traversing Khedal’s back alleyways, out of sight of Panathan and FO street authorities on night patrol. Cursing the sudden turn in the weather as the stars were blacked out and he tried keeping Rosa shielded from the heavy downpour.

Don’t act like you always know what’s best.

I never do. Come here.

Feth you, my ears are still ringing. Screams even you can’t hear! I’m tired, wet, cold, and thirsty.

Love, come here.

Her silence refused him. He watched her hands deftly operate the caff machine. Seydon sighed through his nose and began unbuckling his harnesses. The brew percolating, his wife lost in thought over victims she couldn’t save (not yet), the Dunaan was hardly noticed by the moment he carefully tugged her shoulder. Seydon was undressed and damply naked. Clothing was strung on a makeshift line running through the living room. When Rosa’s blood could remember to blush, he was roughly scruffing the towel through her hair and rubbing briskly down her throat.

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Breath caught in her throat as he turned her, tensing ready to push him away to prevent him from stopping her. She needed to make her hands busy, needed to do something to stop the tremble in her fingertips and damn it, she made better caff than he. But Seydon's nakedness and silent touch took the wind out of her sails. Rosa's ameythst gaze slid up to meet amber, burning with worry for her anger at what they'd seen. She relented with a soft sigh, head tipping forward onto his chest her anguish rolling over her, their pain still echoing in her ears.

"I'm sorry." she whispered, she ran kisses along his collar bone as his hands worked to undress her, goosebumps rising along her skin. Her arms looped about his waist and she buried her face into his neck, letting his warmth wash over her as the tears she'd been fighting against from the moment they'd set foot in that damned Abbey spilled over, drawing a harsh sob from her throat. All those children...couldn't they have done more? They needed to do something. For all they'd killed would be replaced by tomorrow and their torment would continue.

"Damn them all." she choked lifting her head, eyes burning with fury. "They were so scared, Seydon...and in so much pain..." she closed her eyes, images flashing behind her eyes. "Nightmares riddled with agony. Children shouldn't dream like that, shouldn't feel like that. I'll come back and raze the damn thing to the ground, see all of them safe and make the epicant schuttas suffer for what they've done. Damn. Them."

[member="Seydon Gunn"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]“One day,” Seydon began, undoing her thin collar. “Panatha will come out from beneath Kaine’s shadow. They’ll burn their god-kings. And slaves and the children of slaves will go free…”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]That it would require Panatha to bleed until spent to release every indentured caste, that the Epicanth would become universally reviled as xenophobic pariahs, that Kaine would marshal all the legions of hell before ever relinquishing his taken birthright, that his talk of freedom was so cheap compared to the immense price that would have to be bought before the ziggurats were smote and the cathedral spires knocked out of the sky, the image of the God-King scoured and his line burned and salted, Seydon didn’t say. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]He helped with guiding Rosa to a place of careful vulnerability. Clothing was unbuckled, the buttons gently plucked, sloughing off her belts and harnesses until the soaked fabric was piled away beside a dusty cupboard. His steel touch scruffed and probed into her damp skin, unlocking the elixir beneath the tissue. While she excised herself of anger, the caff and her husband’s hands worked to revive the warmth in her belly. The Dunaan kissed, brushing her belly with whisker scruff, humming into her navel. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]With a caff refill, he took them to retire in the living room. Thunder broke out; the bare rafters quivered in their brackets. Seydon let her sit atop his lap. He worked his thumbs down the bone and skin of her nape, travelling down the landscape of her back. You are woman and strong, one day, you’ll come to their rescue, he thought. Don’t ask me when, or if it’s in this lifetime. But I don’t think Rosa Mazhar will ever rest until she feels justice has been brought to those in need. I love you, he thought and bit softly into her throat. “You’re okay, Rose…”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt][member="Rosa Gunn"][/SIZE]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Am I?

She blinked slowly, her tears quiet but burning her cheeks all the same. Staring unseeing at the blank wall in front of her, a flash of lightening casting flickering light through the shutter gaps as thunder growled above them. How far was she willing to go to save this child? How much of herself, of her grasp on the light would she loose? Did it matter? She'd killed a woman in cold blood, murdered men in a rage where death wasn't necessary and yet...it didn't feel wrong. There was the terrifying part, that she had committed something so heinous and felt no remorse.

Then there were the children, their lifeless stares that she could see in her minds eye, the fear that had eaten away at their souls and made them nothing. Dreams that should have been full of laughter and delight at the simplest of things were riddled with cold rooms, sharp fists and agonising recollections of beautiful yet deadly teachers...She memorised their faces, every detail of their leer, every fleck of colour in their irises as their dreams depicted them and made a silent vow there and then to make them pay. She drew in a shuddering breath a shiver running down her spine. Whatever happened here on Panatha, child or no, she would not leave as the same person she arrived as. So better that they find the boy, sooner rather than later, so that none of this was in vain.

She exhaled in a sigh, letting her emotions go, pushing away the doubt and accepting what may yet come to pass. Seydon's touch and murmured words seemed to slowly break through her rapture. Whiskers, words and soft bite at her neck sending shivers of pleasure down her spine, awakening a fire in her belly. She shifted in his lap to face him fully, his hands at he waist each touch sparking pleasure through her as she looked down at his face, retracing every detail of it, each scar, each line that had come with age. Drinking the amber liquid that surrounded cat like pupils. He was her everything, her anchor, her rock, her twin. Without him she would be broken. Hands cupped his face thumbs running over his cheeks before marital lust flashed across her eyes.

She kissed him full, with need, hot and hungry, hands trailing down his neck. She drew back enough for them to breath, forehead leaning against his. She was okay, because she had Seydon. "I love you." she breathed.

[member="Seydon Gunn"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]In truth, Seydon always struggled with her anguish. He couldn’t fathom proper answers; the questions that haunted her sleep, begged her for irrational anger and coaxed out the rage that carried her through the evening were the same that’d harried him since Coruscant decades prior. He was a poor Jedi. An awful husband, he felt. If he could eat up her pain an swallow it away, let the burden pass to his shoulders so she could just know peace… Scarred hands crept up her shoulders.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Began to paw, clawing into the skin, feeling the muscle tighten in reply while shivers responded down the bone of her spine. He stopped Rosa from putting up her hair; just let it fall and cage us, he said. But, she argued. No. And then his body did a little shift and all argument left Rosa’s voice. She cursed and blessed him in the same voice, berating his rapacious appetite and blessing him for his body, the gifts in flesh that made her eyes water and throat clench. That made her everything, her sinew and blood and soul, quicken as she plied back ferociously.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Oh hurry, please, don’t you dare make me wait. Zest translated to force. The Trial of the Waters had made him strong, so very strong. Seydon battled to take care but Rosa was doing everything in her power to make it difficult. If he lost self-control, she could die in his arms. What do you want, his eyes worded? Stop sparing me, she seemed to say, because I won’t see you spare yourself. Seydon swallowed thickly, found purchase on her body, and let a measure of his strength show. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]Her screams carried them into frenzy. Hands and feet tore through the cushioning. Rosa was trapped between her husband and the couch plush. Watching his physicality bunch and coil with the effort, oiled by sweat, scarred, muscular, at once masculine and vulnerable and oh gods, so very strong, so very, very, spast, too much! He helped her to try finding a place of self-forgiveness. Here, with him, she was woman; fiercely intelligent, creative, with all the flaws that brought. Seydon shimmered with dark heat, the Force suddenly welling. He poured in the hurricane of chaos and surrender that was his state of being, taking her into the strange eddy of calm in the centre. There, contradiction and paradox somehow found answers. They were formless, more feeling than anything lucid, but it was the best he could show. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“I love you too~” He said, feeling her burn again and again until she broke apart. They shuddered… Whimpered… And at last passed out. How they got into bed neither of them could recall.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt][member="Rosa Gunn"][/SIZE]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

The storm had rumbled through the night, competing with the noise they had made till they had nothing left to compete with. The rain however had not ceased. She could hear it pattering politely on the window panes, trickling though the gutters just beyond. Rosa did not want to open her eyes, limb entangled with her husbands, head on his chest feeling the rise and fall as he dozed, his heartbeat strong and steady. If she stayed here, she could pretend they were somewhere else, on the Golden Rosa with Spira's beach just beyond the port hole, in the Silent Temple, the breeze carrying in scents from the jungle beyond their balcony. A smile tugged at her lips brief but real.

The boys face cut through her waking thoughts, bright sapphires staring up at her with accusation. Rosa heaved a sigh and opened her eyes, turning her head slightly to kiss Seydon's chest. "Wake up, love." she said softly before sliding away from him. She scooped up his shirt from the floor, sliding it over herself before she padded to the kitchen hiding a yawn behind her hand. She flicked the holoprojector on the table to life, the boy materialised in the table's centre. They'd found a trail, not a good one, and certainly not an easy one either, but it was a trail all the same. She moved to the kitchen, bringing the caff machine to life. Eyes glazing over as it worked, her thoughts drifting to the Abess's words.

The only house that matters. The house of the God-King.

The Zambrano name had grown in strength and power over the last decade, Kaine at is head even more so. She recalled the conversation with Thurion about how twisted he was by the darkside and whether he had ever known love... It didn't matter, whatever Kaine's past, whatever his family were, didn't matter. Finding the boy was all that mattered now. Rosa's hands worked automatically, pouring the caff and steaming the milk just right, setting the cups on the table before brushing her tousled hair behind her ears and picking up the first datapad. Where would they begin?

[member="Seydon Gunn"]