Shadowdance 01 - A Dance of Cloaks

Thren, staring at her with his blue eyes. She could not decipher his look, his face remarkably controlled. And then he spoke the words that sealed his fate to her.
    “Yes, Father,” she heard the boy say.
    If Gileas didn’t take her life, Veliana swore revenge. Not on Thren, not directly. She’d only fail against someone so skilled. But the boy, the groomed heir, him she could kill. Him she could make suffer. Maybe, just maybe, Thren might feel as helpless then as she felt now.
    Aaron took one torch, Will the other. They walked away from the forest, toward the western gate. The torches faded away and then died. In the starlight, she watched them pass a hobbled form approaching the other way. Her way. She didn’t want to imagine what they might do to James. She was their only real hope for easy manipulation of the Ash Guild. What might they do now? Crush it completely, perhaps. Or perhaps nothing. The rest of the guilds were doing a fine job of rending the Ash Guild to pieces.
    Veliana struggled against her chains. Their original purpose had been for the execution of criminals outside the city, who were left for wolves and coyotes to come and eat. While the punishment was gruesome, the spectacle was rarely witnessed and too random in its length. Fifty years ago the Vaelor line had instead instituted beheadings held before the castle steps. Quicker, bloodier, and a much better spectacle. Given how old the chains were, Veliana pleaded for one of them to break.
    They didn’t. From the corner of her eye she could see the manacle on one of her wrists. Black steel, clean and polished. Thren had brought his own chains. Of course he had. He wouldn’t make such a stupid mistake as letting her escape because of some rusted manacles.
    Gileas was getting closer. He was a fat shadow sliding across the wall, worse than any monster in her childhood stories.
    “Please gods,” she whispered. “Any god. Get me out. I’ll do anything, but get me out of here.”
    She pulled so hard on her bindings that her wrists bled. Don’t cry, she told herself. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
    “Hello, girl,” Gileas breathed into her ear.
    Tears trickled down her cheeks.
    “Ooh, no, no, no,” he whispered. “Don’t cry.”
    “Fuck you,” she whispered back.
    He laughed, not at all bothered. She was shackled and helpless. He had all night.
    “Nothing personal,” Gileas said as he pressed the tip of his dagger against her right eyebrow. “I’ll milk Gerand and the crown for all the gold I can, then take just as much from Thren and his ilk. I’ll turn the rats on each other, and grow so very wealthy from it.”
    He pressed the dagger into her flesh. Blood trickled around her eye. She blinked against its sting.
    “All night,” he said as he slowly dragged the dagger downward. “I have all night.”
    He cut her eyebrow, her eyelid, and then her eye. She screamed.
    Gileas rammed his mouth over hers, drinking in her scream like it was a fine wine. His smell hit her, followed by his tongue. It was slimy, wet, warm. She vomited into his mouth. He drank that too.
    He pulled back, smiled at her, and then flew to the side from a brutal kick to the head. He rolled along the hard ground, stopping only when he struck the wall.
    A woman wrapped in black and purple stood before Veliana, a serrated dagger in hand. She put her free hand against the vicious wound on Veliana’s face, her fingers gently touching the flesh. Blood pooled across the cloth around her fingers, yet strangely was not absorbed into it. Veliana looked into the white cloth over her rescuer’s face, seeing only the faintest hint of green eyes.
    “You made an offer,” the woman said to her. “Will you honor it? Swear to Karak your life, and I will take his.”
    Veliana could barely see Gileas out of the corner of her good eye. He was retching on the ground, one arm leaning against the wall to prop himself up. Blood continued pouring down her face, her neck, and her slender body. The eye was useless, completely useless. What did it matter if she swore her life to a nonexistent god? She wanted vengeance. She wanted to live.
    “I swear it,” she said.
    “Good,” the faceless woman said. Her hands were a blur about Veliana’s body. One by one the locks clicked open. Veliana collapsed into the woman’s arms, unable to stand.
    “Your name?” she asked as she clutched the woman’s shoulders, one eye crying tears, the other blood.
    “Zusa,” she replied.
    Gently she put