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Rose Lalonde’s last childhood nanny had packed her bags and left the Lalonde’s lavish estate when Rose was barely eight years old, on the charges that the child in her tender care lacked all forms of empathy and was going to be sacrificing animals as an Emissary to the darkest gods before age ten. The Lady Lalonde, matriarch of the family, was not sorry to see her go, and indeed was only upset that such a person was hired to look after their precious youngest scion. Such ignorance indeed, saying these things. The Furthest Gods looked down upon such deathly blood rituals, for one. As to the other, well. Only girls were carefully handplucked for Their direct service.
The dining hall of Court on this lazy summer afternoon saw its inhabitants milling about the intimate round tables. Looking down on it from above, imagined Rose, would have shown a swirl of color and movement, stars in the sky waltzing about fixed points and empty space. Did stars chatter and gossip as much as teenagers did? It would be a shame if they didn’t, she mused, not for the first time. If stars had their equal, surely the minds and energies at this madcap Peixes retreat would be as close as any, and burn those who came too close just as fiercely.
As composed as a tuned bowstring, and just as poised, just as carefully taut for her audience, she laid out the deck of shuffled cards in a pattern on the table where she held her own small court. Card readings remained popular, and was often encouraged by her giving lip service to the fact that perspective could be dangerous as ignorance, so tread lightly when asking the Arcana. Those who felt she was being utterly sincere scowled at her, taking her all too seriously and would remind her of her sworn duties as the Emissary assigned to their haven. Perspective was what she had to offer, and through her services she could provide light. Those who were devout in their needs knew to whisper at the correct times, tug on a sleeve for a private ear and advice for their souls or even mundane solutions, how to combat stress, affairs of the heart. In private she knew to be all cloaked Emissary, one whose duty called for those keen senses prolonged training granted.
Public also called for cloaking and a keen eye, but after all appearances had to be kept up, and let it not be said that a Lalonde could not put on a good show.
“Well? I wanna know what my fate is!” whined the troll sitting across from her on his own pillow poof. Rose herself sat ladylike, sidesaddle with her bare feet showing off her delicately tarnished silver anklets. Her robes ended just above the ankles in this position, pooling about like so much dense gray smoke, shifting as she readjusted to better peer over the three unrevealed cards. Her audience, consisting of a gaggle of garish trolls and a human or two, were eyeing events with speculation.
“Correction, you want to know how best to approach your mother about breaking off an arranged moirallegiance,” demurred Rose. “There’s a time to be specific and a time to trail off and leave more to the imagination. Keep your question in mind, just as when you shuffled for me.” She left off at that and flipped over the first card. So far, so good, it seemed.
“The two of swords, a good start,” Rose said. “The cards have heard your question, and are giving you a choice. Shall we see what your paths are?”
“I wouldn’t have come to you if I hadn’t wanted to, now would I?” groused the troll. One of the onlookers – his pale love, Rose assumed – lightly swatted his leg and motioned contritely for Rose to continue. She arched an elegant brow at that but kept onward.
The next two cards were quickly flipped, one after the other as the need to do so struck her, without pausing to dissect what they might mean. The small crowd froze in horror at the sight of last card flipped, the gray robes of the stylized figure a match for the Emissary before them.
Death. An old friend, a role model, a better sight than she had dared hope to see. She allowed a smile to curl on her tinted lips, pleased to be able to give constructive advice at last. Should this one prove able to act on it, at any rate.
The young blonde scion looked carefully at the cards laid out on her mother’s dressing table. It was only a quick reading, general well being, but she saw the cards and could see their twists and turns, a stray shaft of sunlight illuminating fate itself. Her mother came back from the fine standing jewelry chest in the corner, smiling as she put on the pair of earrings Rose coveted most: dangly flashes of ruby red to Lalonde purple to vivid forest green.
One of the many things she longed for but was unable to express an interest in, and in her view, there was no point in speaking of it until she was in a place to do shit properly concerning the matter.
“Anything you like, my son?” teased her mother as she drew back the chair gracefully (always gracefully, always swaying like a willow, was the lesson drilled into Rose’s head. She may not have gotten the intensive movement and grace lessons her debutante cousins had to go through, but she practiced them in secret, as finely controlled as any dancer or swordsmaster).
“The sun,” she noted. “But why is it not against the moon? Why would they work together like this?”
Her mother stopped reading the Arcana in front of her after that, and that particular deck stayed at the bottom of the jewelry chest for a long time, which she judged by gathered dust on the carved box and her half-formed plans and wishes.
“Relax, calm!” Rose called out, making her husky voice spread around the table and settle down like a cat before arching up again at the murmurs whirling round. “I know most of you here get readings from me as often as I permit it. Your sense of drama is unfounded, is it not?” She tsk’d at the lot of them, clucking in concern, a veritable mother hen with her brood. “I would have thought some of you more adventurous ones would be able to nigh read the Arcana as well as I can at this point.”
More muttering, more flat stares and exasperation. She had thought with as many tutors and professors the younglings here had studied with that they would be beyond such petty superstition, as used to it as she was from every person in every walk of life, yet it persisted. What a pity, yet it made things considerably easier when she wanted to shock and awe and blaspheme, as Dirk had once put it.
She couldn’t precisely argue there so settled for smiling mysteriously before going in for some admittedly delightful early summer cherries. None could spout hearsay quite so much like the de facto lifeblood of a group. They were simply the best there were at it.
The cards were scrutinized, as Rose squinted slightly (not enough to risk causing early wrinkles, but squinting nonetheless. One could never be too careful about such things, even with Emissaries aging, as Jade put it, like a fine wine, whether it be sweet or dry). One unfamiliar with her, or her group in general as it were, might have thought that she was scrutinizing the cards to lay answers at her feet, to give up information from the swirls of paint that marked the silver-gilt borders of tableaus and people long unknown.
Rose had known these cards long and well, long before she was chosen to be an Emissary, and had known their readings like the back of her hand from the moment she greeted them as an old friend.
“Dirk, I know I’m a girl, but what’s the point in doing anything about it when everyone insists I’m a boy?”
Her older cousin, though only by three years, had been cleaning chainmail after a hot practice with the swordsmaster of the estate. Their family was only formally two titles, both jointly sharing land and were known for the abilities of their members. In practice the Heads of House were one Lady Lalonde and Sir Strider, both exemplifying the traits of house and home for their charges. Striders were brave, strong, daring with blade and arm. Lalondes held the arts of speech and wit, and were long sought after to foster young charges in the nobility in the hopes that those who stayed might gain a silver tongue or two.
Dirk paused in his oiling links to look at his cousin before sighing.
“Talking could get you a long way. They call you a boy because you’ve not said otherwise. How can they know to call you a girl if you just don’t tell them?” As he spoke he carefully worked a spot of rust out of the maille, so that the darker logo worked in would be visible. The symbol of the Furthest Gods, whose training Dirk would be leaving for soon enough. He had already started the bare bones of it on top of the education he’d been receiving, which rankled Rose to no end.
“Yeah and maybe if a fish tells everyone it’s a bird everyone will believe it,” muttered Rose. Dirk reached out with an oily hand to ruffle Rose’s perfectly arranged bob as she quietly squealed in outrage, leaping off the bale of straw they were sitting on in the mews together.
“I’m not saying it’s easy, just that it’s simple. And you’re the fish that knows it’s a bird, so why not fly?” he asked, gesturing towards sleepy merlins and hawks. One peeked an eye at him, as though asking him why he had dared to interrupt their sleep with bringing a small female cousin to a place where quiet was a necessity.
“Because I’ve got to be able to show everyone that they’re wrong! I know my case, I know my stance, I just need to know how to go about this!”
Dirk snorted at that. “You’re too Lalonde to play Strider. At least you know that well enough, and so does everyone else. Then again your whole issue is that you won’t act on this, so I guess Lalonde strikes again, huh?”
Death stared at the group from under her veil, a soft smile not quite mocking those assembled. Rose let her own lush lips do it in full as she drew her audience to her like she would gather her robes before setting off for a walk.
“Death is choice, my dear ones,” she called softly. “Death brings us to crossroads time and time again, letting us have our choice, for while life is hesitant, it is Death who compels us to set our choices in stone.”
The one who asked for the reading looked almost hesitant now, nervous, as their moirail rubbed their knee soothingly. One of those couples who needed a lot of physical contact, which was probably why they had opted that keeping a relationship private was simply no longer an option whenever the young lordling was called back to The Court. Too many would be aware of the pair and how they felt, with intents and love and compassion written in touch and gesture and sidelong glance.
“Death calls for your choice and while the path is hard, as so many are, you must be resolute. No shrinking violets, yes?” said Rose, with tilted head and a tilted hand gesture to a table almost nearby, where a finned troll with an exquisitely purple cape lounged near their beloved princess, though at another table than her. It was obvious to all, including Feferi, that he would rather sit at the table with her but for reasons unknown was scowling into a cup of apricot juice morosely. She was rewarded with giggles that heightened the tension instead of relieving it, the group eager to hear the outcome as they surreptitiously gathered in closer.
“Two of swords promotes positivity, a change, decision making. It works with Death in this instance, with the two saying your crossroads has arrived and decisions made have a goodly chance of being in your favor, the outcome you desire.”
The troll looked startled at that, looking at his moirail in confusion, in near hope. Clearly he had come into this reading expecting much the same as Rose herself had when the matter had first been broached over a late afternoon snack of freshly baked bread topped with steaming fish and a delightful hollandaise.
Rose secreted the deck of the arcana away from her mother’s jewelry box on the waxing moon, two nights before it was full, and gathered her other supplies carefully: fat white tapers plucked from the family chapel, honeycakes stolen from the kitchen, straight sharp pins stashed in the hem of her tunic after distracting the maids in the laundry. She made her preparations in the afternoon in a visiting room that had not seen use in years, using the dust itself to lay out the circles needed for what she had planned but not sealing them just yet. As the air turned golden and shimmered motes in the air and the corners of eyes, she thought long and hard about what she intended to do.
At last the gold dispersed, leaving behind the odd thick gray coolness that only a proper summer twilight can cast. At its first sleek nudge into the room, filling everything at once with a flatness of shape and breadth, Rose acted. She set out the honeycakes, thoughtfully laid on her favorite plate, with a vivid purple pattern of cats bordering the rim. The plate went at the head of the not yet sealed circle, which was large enough to expand several feet around her. She laid out her supplies: box of cards, pins (so much easier to conceal than an arthame, though she hoped the gods would understand just how much most adults despised handing out knives for the hell of it to children), and tapers. The tapers she set up as she had seen their Emissary do in the chapel, where those gathered would watch from above on upper levels and look below to see the doings of their furthest gods.
She sealed the circle with one final swipe in the thick layer of dust and lit the tapers, at first lighting one with a smoldering coal in a tin cup, then using the lit wick to set the others ablaze. Rose worked faster, pulling the deck out from its box and shuffling quickly, marveling at the rightness of it in her hands. Twilight would only last so long so she didn’t dare linger, setting out a formation for the asking of advice, a simple four clover spread with the cards circling each other, echoing the circle that surrounded her. Then, with a quick breath and the blood pounding in her ears, she lifted a pin and jabbed it squarely in the palm of her left hand, so that the same blood drowning out all other noises in a growing chorus might drip on the honeycakes and give power to the offering.
She tried to speak once, failed, cleared her suddenly thick throat again and gasped out the words she had been practicing in the golden hour.
“O those of the Furthest Ring, Gods that I serve and my family has served, please, give me some answers. I’m a girl, I know it, but how do I convince those around me of this? How might I set to please you, to do my best, to bring honor to the calling?”
Towards the end the words had simply not wanted to come out but Rose refused to let herself think too heavily upon it. She was simply off her game today, today of all days, with the air still and gray and a fat lovely moon on the horizon. She coughed again, thinking the tapers should have had their wicks trimmed for the wisps of smoke they were giving off, almost as intense as the incense she wished to have thought to bring, but too late for maybes or should have beens now. She flipped the cards, wishing to see her choices.
Two of wands, six of swords, the Moon, and Death, Death who was everything she wanted to be, greeting her like an old friend.
She looked over the cards carefully, not realizing the honeyed cakes were burning with the acid of her blood, turned black and shriveling the pastry it touched. The smoke from the fine wax tapers grew as she looked it over, and late, too late, she realized the blood screaming in her ears was not blood, her throat was thick not with confusion or apprehension but a sludge, as she coughed again, turning her head to the side to avoid hitting the cards with drops of spittle that were black as pitch and just as thick. The roar in her ears grew to be deafening, and became a chorus of screaming voices, vying for attention as they stretched and bounded like spooked colts in the confines of their new vessel’s head.
WE’VE BEEN WAITING YOUNG ONE PRECIOUS ONE DARLING ONE LALONDE CHILD EMISSARY OURS CHILD YOUNG EMISSARY BLOOD OFFERING A GIFT FOR A GIFT CLEVER CHILD
Her screams fought with the charcoal-dust-ashes-bitter sludge now pouring out of her mouth, desperate coughs and shrieks that hung in the gray twilight, the tapers knocked over by the thick secretion as she retched and gagged, still coping with the horrifying screams in her head, until they found voice deep in her throat and in her soul.
The cards’ silver gilt caught what little gray light broke through the miasma and glittered like a secret.
“Death brings to a head the choice offered by the two of swords,” Rose continued to the softly breathing crowd. The subject of the reading had shifted his stance, going from sprawling to perfect posture, or as perfect as could be allowed by the floofy pillow seating preferred in the informal dining hall. His moirail had seen fit to let him sit on his own, and calmly sat next to him, calm save for burning eyes and a certain tense tilt of the shoulders. “But that’s not the only card I flipped over, now is it?”
She gestured to the last card, the two of cups.
“Ideal lovers, partners, but this is an ideal, and not the reality,” she noted. “Ideals take work to get to reality, so work has to go into it, both ways. The potential for this to work is there. Your choices are there. If you work at this, the path is open for you two.”
Claps rang out from around the table at the happy couple, as they hugged each other in delight at being told the news and almost fell over in their glee.
Rose didn’t want to wake up at first, and truth be told she didn’t want to after having pursued the idea more in depth. But the hands shaking her awake were most insistent about the matter, and at last she acquiesced to opening her eyes blearily. She was in her own room, in her own bed, with her mother, the imperious Lady Lalonde, the family Emissary (a distant cousin, of course) and Dirk all settled in various places throughout the space. It was the Emissary who had been gently shaking her awake, and she smiled at seeing Rose finally glaring at her, albeit from under heavy lids.
“Don’t speak just yet,” she warned Rose as she stood to walk to a tray helpfully set aside. Rose’s mother stood next to it and looked even grimmer than the gray-robed Emissary as she silently lifted a cup of steaming tea. The Emissary took it with a nod of thanks and handed it to Rose to drink as Lady Lalonde helped her sit up on the mass of pillows. She clutched the mug in hands that were doing their damned best not to tremble but shivers wracked her frame anyway. The heat helped, so she clutched harder.
“I know I said not to speak, so you can just nod or shake,” began the Emissary. “You attempted to summon the presence of the Furthest Gods?”
A nod, then a sip. It was good tea, the morning blend with sunny orange peel and rosehips, and at a good temperature for drinking more than teensy little slurps. Only a dab of honey for sweetener, just the way she preferred it. More honey might have been better for her raw throat but she assumed getting it down quickly was more important right this second, so she took another sip.
The Emissary’s mouth quirked. “Silly question, considering the state you left the room in, but it had to be asked anyway.” The humor vanished and in the clear eyes grew a veil, a cloud. “I don’t supposed you expected to be quite this successful then?”
It wasn’t a yes or no sort of question so Rose let the question hang in the air for a moment to coalesce before giving a sideways shrug and indulging in more tea. The Lady let out a snort at that.
“Your child already has the mannerisms down, dear,” she said to Rose’s mother. “The training can’t begin soon enough. I will not have portals opened at breakfast, not again!”
“I imagine the sludge does make a poor substitute for jam on the morning toast, yes,” agreed the Emissary mildly. “I’ll write to the Prefect at once. I’ve not seen a candidate this outstanding in quite some time. I hadn’t realized there was such a likely lady in the ranks of our family.”
At that Rose grew still and her eyes darted wide open to look at the Emissary, not too hopeful not too excited not too showing how much this mattered to her –
The Emissary noticed, and gave a sad sort of smile. “Darling, next time you need to say something important like this, please try and talk to us about it? You’ve a talent, yes, but had we known how you felt we would have tested you like we do the other ladies of our family. The Gods got so excited at your reaching out we almost lost you. Dirk knew just enough from starting his studies to know how to take care of you. You got damn lucky, kid.”
Rose’s mother walked over then to place a gentle kiss on her forehead. Rose put up with the display of affection bravely, only wrinkling her nose a little bit as she handed over the now-empty mug. She tried to find her voice and was able to locate it after only minimal scratching.
“Can I get my ears pierced?”
“Slick reading, Lalonde. Especially the part where they didn’t even notice you not answering their question.”
Rose glanced over at Dirk and gave a winsome smile as she carefully placed the lid back on her arcana box. The audience had dispersed at last to watch their princess and Jade blowing bubbles shaped like small animals. Often they glowed in amusing colors as well, looking like an illustration from a fairy’s tale in the golden hour of the dining hall.
“There’s a chance it’ll work out. It’s up to the listener to find their own path, it always is,” she argued.
“And the Gods like to inhabit brains that look like mazes, I’m sure they feel right at fucking home there with all the shadows ‘round the corners,” he groused back. He was standing at the ready, on alert for external dangers as much as for the Gods inhabiting Rose’s aforementioned brain. More than once he had had to be quick in order to catch her after she was struck by especially stubborn throes. Thank… well, maybe not the Gods, but thank someone that none of the incidents rivaled her initial headlong plunge into the world of being an Emissary, nearly ten years ago.
Some had come close, to be sure, but by now she knew what to expect.
“You only say that because you’ve met them. Wise boy.”
“And if I ever do again it’s too soon. I’ll leave that horse shit to you.” He held out an arm for her to clasp as she carefully held her treasured box of cards and they began to pick their way out of the golden light, illuminating their similar features, jawlines and dark skin and fair hair. With her free hand she pushed a lock of hair in her face behind her ear, where she knew it would contrast nicely with the amethyst chips she had chosen to wear that morning.
“So you’ll simply throw me to their tender graces if that’s what is so desired of me?”
“Too right. I’ll go to hell and back for you but I might pause at the Furthest Ring. Mortals not being supposed to mess with the affairs of the righteous and all that. As righteous as any God has a sense of being, maybe.”
They walked to the doors and paused to look back. Jade was now jumping from table to table and showing off, blowing green and fuchsia bubbles connected in the form of a sinuous dragon that followed her about as playfully as a puppy and needing twice as much attention, to the cheers of the crowd below. The golden light filtered onward, a finite resource that one could almost see fading but not quite, the calm gray almost ready to pounce should it let down its guard. Dirk spoke again.
“The path is possible, but is it likely? Will your advice actually help them? It’s not an easy path you’ve given, what with the chance of being disowned and all. You knew what would happen when you gave them that counsel.”
“It’s not easy but it’s the simple choice,” she mused. “I think… I think they’ll be happier for this, once the events come to pass. And that’s what matters. They have hope, now. They can fight, and if they clearly believe what they’re saying it makes the listener pause to take in words.”
Dirk sighed and rubbed his temples at that. “An Emissary talking about hope. No wonder you got assigned way out here when your training was barely done. They want to keep you out of the main concourse, I fucking knew it!”
Rose slapped his arm and did a quick twirling two-step, moving away from him lightly before he could try to get even with her. It was a move he’d taught her when she was seven and he was excited to start learning the sword, and wanted her to get a head start for when she would eventually train as well.
Gold passed to gray as Rose exited the hall, while those still inside kept shadows at bay with bubbles.