LOTS – CARA/DAHLIA

Terms of Service

liz_Estrada

Title: Terms of Service

Author: liz_estrada

Fandom & Pairing: Legend of the Seeker (post S2); Cara/Dahlia, Richard/Kahlan

Rating: R

Summary: Super–sized continuance of Camelot is a Silly Place and Roundelay, where AU Dahlia and post–series Cara have connected in Richard & Kahlan’s reforming D’Hara.

Here, Dahlia’s past comes calling and Cara smacks some people (with cause), getting in Dutch with the law and prompting pre–trial intervention involving torture and a naked geezer (not Zedd).

Author’s Note: Wading into deeper waters, with more plot and less secks. I don’t know how this fic series will turn out, end up, etc. but I’m having fun writing, so what the hell. I’m adapting my dad’s flawed method of motorcycle riding instruction: “Just get out there and ride hard ’til the engine starts sputtering, then turn it around and pin the throttle.” If I don’t crash, I may need help pushing the bike home.

Terms of Service

liz_Estrada

They became lovers a fortnight ago, and discovered soon after that their union had somehow affected the very nature of time. When they part, the sun loiters in the sky for three–quarters of the day, and drowsy sands clog the hourglass. When they come together, candles burn faster, and the moon dashes away like it owes Cara money.

They vanish sometimes on slow rides to nowhere, trying to stretch the hours spent together after duty or before appointments, to escape a palace and city filled with nattering people obsessed by trivia. It’s a gentle fugue, and simply executed: Cara saddles a horse, Dahlia climbs on behind, and they wander away.

Sometimes they talk about Cara’s travels with the Seeker, Mother Confessor, and the wizard, which leads into present politics and all the tedious daily challenges Richard and Kahlan must now conquer to maintain forward progress in D’Hara and the Midlands. They discuss music, or magic, or effective methods of dispatch for various wicked creatures. Sometimes they don’t speak at all.

These are Cara’s favorite rides, these silent rambles across hill and dell with Dahlia fixed to her back and breathing into her hair. After a lifetime spent craving conflict and power, Cara has begun to understand the commoner’s attraction to simplicity. Peace is not as wretched as she had feared.

One early morning, while riding along a shaded forest trail a few miles outside of Eringaard, Cara reaches up and tickles her horse along his mane. At first, Dahlia finds this an endearing gesture, the kind of affection Cara regularly shows for reliable animals. She moves one hand from Cara’s waist and grasps her belt buckle, hugging her closer.

Cara says nothing, barely reacts by settling back in the saddle. A few paces later, her stalwart chestnut stallion stops cold. She urges him forward with body and words, but he refuses to move.

“Stubborn old hayburner pulled this same stunt last week,” Cara says.

“I’ll bet he did,” Dahlia agrees, though she does not believe this for a second. Cara’s mounts would charge through fire and trample Banelings for her; they don’t strand her in the forest unless she tells them to do so – perhaps with a little tickle to the neck.

“Let him rest for a bit. He’ll get his mind right and take us home,” Cara says. She hops down lightly and pats the animal’s clean white blaze. “And if not, he’ll make a fine pot of glue.”

Dahlia takes an offered gloved hand and dismounts, and Cara wraps the reins around a sturdy branch. They amble off into the woods, down a tidy, fresh–looking path bordered with recently broken limbs and still–weeping cut vines. A cawing crow lands in a tree nearby and briefly breaks the silence. By this time, Dahlia is casting sketchy glances at Cara’s back.

“You seem to know where you’re going,” she says.

Cara shrugs and kicks a few stray twigs aside. “I think I hear water. I could use a drink.”

Casting her eyes toward the Creator, Dahlia can only surrender to her fate and hope for the best. They chop–step down a gentle hill into a natural sunken glade, where dragonflies and staghorn trees abound. The sky is largely green, a moist and leafy canopy, and Dahlia finally hears the burbling of a small stream. She pauses to marvel at her surroundings and loses sight of Cara, who has vanished around a dense copse of saplings.

She rounds that corner and strolls right into an ambush. In a small clearing by the water is a large red blanket, bordered by trimmed ferns, centered by a covered woven basket and two cups. Cara throws a stone into the brook and turns around wearing a tiny, expectant smile.

Dahlia cannot hide her elation. She does not feign coolness and would not hazard such behavior with Cara, whose delicate sweetness can melt away faster than spring snow. Gestures like this are gambles even for seasoned romantics; for Cara, who essentially remains a raw nerve bound in scar tissue and leather, the risk of rejection or derision requires bravery Dahlia can barely comprehend.

She touches her flushed cheeks and laughs to keep the tears back. “This is going to wreck me later,” Dahlia warns. “I’ll think about this while trying to work and lose the entire afternoon remembering.”

Cara senses this is not a bad thing, this notion of creating experiences worth reliving. The smile on Dahlia’s face redeems the long hours spent finding and preparing this place. She grabs a length of twine tied to a branch and raises a submerged flagon from the cool stream. “Cups?” she says, canting her head at the blanket.

Dahlia fetches the two cups and Cara fills them with dark red liquid, which turns out to be neither wine nor bitters, but something altogether unexpected – a delightfully cold, sweet and sour fruity concoction.

“Berries from the staghorn trees,” Cara explains, pointing at the laden branches overhead. “Mash and steep in water, strain and serve cold.”

Dahlia savors another sip and grins in pleasant surprise. “The things you know…”

Cara snorts a breath into her cup. “Spend a year of your life trailing after a forest boy who won’t shut–up about the wonders of nature. You’ll learn a few things purely by accident.”

Dahlia tilts her head, charmed as always by the mild, respectful potshots Cara takes at the Lord Rahl. “I’ll take your word for it,” she says.

They sit on the blanket, which is softer than it appears, with cushioning fern fronds layered underneath. Every breath is clean and sharp, livened by peppery green, cooled by moving water. They are alone and happy in the middle of gorgeous nowhere, gingerly tending an unspoken love. By definition, this is already a good morning.

Cara opens the basket and details the contents, all quality breakfast fare prepared in the People’s Palace kitchen, made for cold service. She roots around in the basket and produces one hidden item: a small cluster of wildflowers, their stems swaddled in wet cloth. When Cara offers the bouquet and looks into Dahlia’s darkening eyes, she knows their meal will grow colder still.

“The food can wait,” Dahlia says, unfastening the waist ties on her skirt.

Cara rolls her eyes and eagerly removes her gloves to help. “You always say that.”

* * * * *

The morning spins into a knot of tickling ferns and tangy red kisses, fingers and thighs, cries and whispers, cold baths and perfect quiet… save the random cawing of a voyeuristic crow.

As they leave, a peeved Dahlia hurls a rock at the bird. Cara proudly announces that if she’d used a bola, that crow would be dead. She spends most of the ride back explaining what bolas are – various sets of round weights connected by a three–point cord – and how one properly thrown can bring down a charging horse or break a person’s neck from sixty paces.

During this graphic martial lecture, the singer makes occasional noises to indicate rapt attention. The subject matter does not trouble her, is irrelevant to her enjoyment. Words are notes, phrases become chords, concepts cascade like arpeggios; everything is music. She locks her palms over her lover’s midriff to know each breath, and nuzzles in below Cara’s ear to feel the vibration of her voice.

They return to the city mid–morning, to Dahlia’s sunny rooms on a busy street, and fall into bed. Naked and sated, they sleep entwined until almost noon. Well, Cara, who was up all night laying a tender trap in the woods, sleeps until noon. She wakes to find Dahlia fully dressed, sitting in a backward chair, watching her.

Cara rubs her nose and sits halfway up. The sheet slips to her waist. Golden sunlight touches bleary green eyes and ivory skin, filters through her tangled hair. Dahlia can only sigh and shake her head at such a wondrous mess.

“What?” Cara croaks.

“You make me wish I could paint,” Dahlia says. “There should be some lasting record of how beautiful you are.”

“Mmm.” Cara snags a hand in her hair and sneers. “That sounds like a waste of pigment.”

“I disagree. Physical graces inspire people, and inspiration is a rare and precious commodity,” Dahlia argues, beaming with conviction. “Your spirit, your face, your body… such beauty is proof of the Creator’s love.”

Cara blinks and looks away. Her skin could not be redder if she were in flames. She thinks that even if they remain lovers for a hundred years, she will never tire of the glee in Dahlia’s voice as she says these ridiculous things.

“I would lay odds that the Creator is completely indifferent to me,” she retorts.

“Fine,” Dahlia sniffs. “Your body is proof that the Creator loves me.”

Cara rolls over and grumbles something profane into a pillow. Dahlia slides her chair aside and prepares to depart. She has a lute lesson to teach in an hour, and her mended instrument is ready at a nearby repair shop.

She kneels on the bed, tickles the gifted bouquet of wildflowers down Cara’s spine and plants a kiss directly between her shoulder blades. Dahlia barely eludes a skilled pair of grasping hands aiming to slow her departure.

“One hour, Cara Mason,” she reminds, “and I’ll be back with an impressionable young student, a boy not ready to see a naked Mord’Sith.”

“Might do him some good,” Cara mutters. “Sheltered little whelps grow into sheep.”

“True, but I fear you may ruin him for other women – as you have me,” Dahlia says on the way out.

Cara gives up a sleepy chuckle. The door barely closes before she is dozing again.

* * * * *

She wakes some time later as a key unlocks the door. As it opens, she is on her feet, ready to duck away and apologize to Dahlia and her student. Only this is not what happens. Instead, a tall, rawboned youth boldly enters the rooms and looks around.

Her agiels rest atop her leathers on Dahlia’s dresser – within arm’s length, should she need them. Her body is ready, but first she must settle her mind. Facts must be shuffled into place.

“What’s your business here, boy?” Cara barks. “Why do you have a key to these rooms?”

The giant, gangly boy appears to be about seventeen years old. He wears fine, clean clothing: black trousers, white shirt, and black waistcoat. There is a notable puncture scar beneath his left eyebrow; his lids tremble violently as he looks Cara over once, then again for good measure. She is naked, after all.

“You’re not Dahlia,” he observes, and laughs quickly and loudly.

Cara’s hackles rise higher at mention of her name. “Answer me quickly.”

“I’m here for Dahlia,” he says, in a voice as deep and dull as oxen lowing. “It’s been a month and she didn’t come this morning. She comes every month, but not today, so he’s getting mean again. She has to come now.”

“He is getting mean,” Cara repeats. It’s been a month… she last saw ‘him’ before they met… an angry, entitled fellow with thug servants and a door key… Her instincts chime like temple bells, and she knows that ‘He’ is the rich man who gives scars as receipts. “Tell me his name.”

This boy is clearly ill–equipped for conversation. As he struggles to cogitate, Cara fancies that she can smell burning sawdust. “I’m here for Dahlia,” he says, and fires off another strange giggle. “She has to come now so he won’t be mean.”

“So you won’t tell me his name, this man who so urgently requires a singing lesson.”

The boy shakes his head and casts a nervous glance through the half–opened front door.

“He’s out there waiting, isn’t he?” Cara hisses. She moves toward the exit and the boy puffs up large, blocking the way and protecting his employer.

By this point, Cara has lost all interest in diplomacy. “Son, have you ever been grabbed by the hair, dragged into the street, and thrashed by a naked woman?”

His throat bobs with a hard, dry swallow. He shakes his head and smiles dumbly.

“Prepare yourself,” says Cara, just before she jumps onto the bed, elevates, and drives a knee into the boy’s chest.

He crashes back against the wall and slides down to sit on the floor. He wheezes and looks up at Cara with confusion and fear in his eyes; it gives her pause, and she pulls her next blow – an elbow to the temple which strikes him dizzy instead of unconscious.

She kicks the front door open wide. The boy is very heavy, so dragging him into the street by his wiry brown mop requires more effort than Cara anticipated. Fortunately, he doesn’t seem to relish the idea of losing clumps of hair, so he limps along as best he can, laughing like they’re playing a rough kid’s game.

Pedestrians witnessing this scene are understandably confused and concerned, but no one speaks out or asks what is going on. Though things are changing in D’Hara, many who lived through Darken Rahl’s rule try to keep their heads down when fighting starts. Depending on their temperament, they either stand around and watch or duck away to avoid involvement.

A black one–horse coach is parked in the street out front. The initials “B.A.D.” grace the door in gold paint.

“We’ll see about that,” Cara says, and charges forward, ramming the stumbling youth’s head against the door directly beneath those gold letters. He collapses, dazed further but still wide–eyed and smiling.

Bony fingers suddenly clamp onto Cara’s shoulder from behind. Her elbow fires back purely on instinct, colliding with someone’s nose. She spins around, ready to render further injury, but the bony–fingered man is already staggering backward, slamming against the coach. He pinches his bloody nose shut, and begins to shout.

“Evil cunt! How dare you?? Who in Keeper’s blazes do you think you are??”

This is the man, and he looks nothing like she imagined. She thought Dahlia’s “wicked benefactor,” who bought her school debts and took his interest payments in skin and blood, would be corpulent and spoiled, with a nasty pelt of body hair and a nose red from drink. This man resembles some lanky bird, beaky and gray – a heron, perhaps.

Cara has so many questions – Why did you hurt her that way? How are you nourished by tormenting someone so beautiful? What business do you have with her now? – but she can’t bring herself to interrogate him. She just wants to hurt him, to beat him docile, make him quake with fear, take a sharp knife and cut pieces of him away, just as he did to –

“Where is Dahlia?” the man bellows. “Bring her to me now!”

“You will not see her this month, or any other,” Cara says. Her hands flex open and shut, palms aching to strike this man a thousand times. “Go now. Your luck and my patience are running low.”

He stands up fully and straightens his fine dark topcoat. He is tall, like the boy, but looks refined as wedding lace. He takes two steps toward Cara and raises his hand to slap her. She catches his fingers and yanks his wrist over her forearm – causing hyperextension but not fracture – and backhands him across the mouth as she lets go. Shocked, he totters backward and crouches beside his fallen young servant.

“Beastly little bitch,” he growls. While licking blood from his lip, he stares at Cara with a strange glitter in his dark eyes. “You have made a grievous error – a series of them, in fact. When we meet again, I will take my due.”

“Call anytime at the People’s Palace. Ask for Cara – the Mord’Sith in residence,” she flatly suggests. “Come here again, and I will take my due.”

The bird–man is quiet now, and so white he appears bloodless. Sweat breaks out on his forehead, and his eyes shine with excitement. He coughs up a wet laugh and grins.

“Well, one of us is right,” he says. “Who will it be, I wonder?”

He hauls his servant up, pushes him into the coach and climbs into the driver’s seat. He smiles at Cara while cracking the horsewhip, and points as if she’s being marked for the next lash.

As the stung horse rushes this villain away, Cara stands naked in the middle of the road and stares until the coach disappears around a corner. She hears Dahlia calling her name, hears footsteps rushing toward her, and turns.

Dahlia approaches with a lute slung across her back and a red–haired boy of ten tucked under her arm. She has one hand clamped over his eyes, but the boy can plainly see through her fingers. He squirms a little and waves to Cara, who scowls at him.

Dread clouds Dahlia’s face, indicating that she saw the departing coach. “I sent him a letter. I told him I couldn’t help him anymore,” she absently mutters.

Cara nods, as if that oddly phrased comment will suffice for now. “He is not a good listener.”

Dahlia shakes herself back to the moment and realizes there are dozens of onlookers – many of them her neighbors or friends – waiting to see what happens next. She lays a guiding hand on Cara’s back, ushering her shameless lover and one ecstatic little lute student inside her scandalized home.

“Wild thing,” she says, closing the door as Cara brushes past. “This is why people have robes.”

* * * * *

Cara dresses, gathers her things and leaves almost immediately. Neither ready nor willing to discuss what happened on the street, she refuses Dahlia’s entreaties to stay and talk.

“Later,” she says, “when my head is clear.”

She rides away from town and tries to dull her mind, to pick away some of the bright emotions sprouting in every patch of thought. Some are good and some are bad and others are indistinguishable – it’s easier telling weeds from wildflowers in a darkened wood.

Possessiveness and jealousy are colored very much like protectiveness and affection. Insecurity flourishes in the shade, just beside healthy suspicion. The fine differences are tougher to discern under a red sun of hateful rage.

If her Lord didn’t expect and require more civilized behavior from Cara, she would have broken two necks on the street today. She has no regrets about helping Richard and Kahlan, knows life is better now for most everyone, but settling conflicts was much easier before they all became so damned responsible.

It takes hours before she sorts things out, and before the last of her anger bleeds off. Still, she arrives at the palace well before she is due back. She intends to soothe herself further by preparing the shooting range at dusk and conducting full moonlight drills with the elite D’Haran army archery corps.

Richard has other ideas; he sends a man to intercept Cara and guide her to an unfamiliar room in the palace annex. As soon as she enters this room, lit by a dozen lanterns and a chandelier, Cara feels a sense of impending disaster.

The walls are festooned with macabre woodcuts of executioners at work. Some of these panels have been sanded flat, and patches of sawdust dot the floor. It is an ongoing process, healing the wounds of Panis Rahl’s long tyranny.

Benches are fixed to the floor in long rows, facing two tables set opposite each other. This is a courtroom. She instinctively despises courtrooms. Nothing good ever happens in a courtroom.

At one table, an elegantly dressed elderly man leafs through a small stack of papers. Beside him is the now exceedingly smug “B.A.D.” bird–man. His swollen nose is bandaged and his strained wrist dangles pitifully from a lovely green brocade sling.

At the opposing table, Kahlan Amnell waits placid and silent, wearing her traditional Confessor’s white dress. She sees Cara and motions her over. Cara sits and Kahlan says hotly in her ear: “Let me speak to this. And no matter what happens, don’t try to hit him again.”

Above this scene, Lord Richard Rahl sits at a high podium looking down on everyone. He appears very upset, with his mouth twisted into a grimace and his forehead wrinkled in thought. He will not meet Cara’s eyes.

“Everyone is present,” Richard intones. “We will begin. Baron Danton, you will stand with your counsel. Cara – stand with your advisor.”

Cara only clenches her teeth and folds her arms. Kahlan rises and touches her shoulder, asking with her eyes for patience and cooperation. Cara blows out a fitful breath and complies.

“Baron Alphonse Danton has filed charges of assault and attempted murder against Cara, late of the Mord’Sith, now in service to the crown,” Richard continues. He pauses and noisily clears his throat, as if choking back bile.

“As the Baron provides great service to our lands, employing thousands of workers for countless building and construction projects – including the new Kybar River Dam, which will revitalize farming in the drought–stricken central Midlands – his complaints merit expedient attention.”

“Shit,” Cara whispers, understanding that Richard’s speech is no mere hagiography, but an explanation of why this hearing is happening.

The “particularly powerful” part of Dahlia’s description now makes much more sense. Cara wishes that she had been taken up the singer’s offer to discuss this terrible man and their mysterious arrangement. She thought there would be more time before the issue resurfaced, but that was a mistake; the rich often find swifter justice than the rest of mankind.

Baron Danton’s counselor reads prepared remarks grossly overstating the damage Cara inflicted, and offers a score of signed statements from eyewitnesses, each supporting the Baron’s version of events. Danton smirks at her all the while, eyes still glittering like cursed diamonds.

Once the old man sits down, Kahlan begins to speak on her friend’s behalf, but Cara catches her arm and tells her not to bother.

“I did the thing, Confessor. I’ll face it,” she says softly to Kahlan. Cara figures that if the opposition can exaggerate and interpret events to their advantage, then so should she. She speaks loudly, directly to Richard.

“Yes, I beat him and his manservant – with cause. Danton laid hands on me first. His servant entered a woman’s private home, stated that he was there to abduct her, and then attempted to hold me against my will.”

“If I may, Baron Danton owns that rooming house, so of course he has landlord’s rights,” the old counselor rebuts. “As for this foolish accusation of abduction, Miss Currier and the Baron have a longstanding professional relationship and a valid services contract.”

“Dahlia canceled that contract,” Cara hazards, recalling mention of a letter, “in writing.”

The counselor nods and smiles indulgently. “It is true that Miss Currier gave notice, but only two weeks ago. The contract requires ninety days notice for valid termination. The Baron requires completion of the agreed terms or penalties will be enforced, beginning with immediate eviction and public censure.”

“Vindictive worm,” Cara mutters, clenching her fists. Beside her, Kahlan prepares to move.

“As the Baron is widely respected, these penalties would certainly have a deleterious effect on Miss Currier’s reputation and career,” he continues, speaking directly to Cara as if delivering an ultimatum. “It would be regrettable, should she come to harm over this incident.”

“Rotten, twisted, loathsome…” Cara growls, and starts around the table.

Kahlan grabs her belt and holds tight, eventually tugging Cara back into place. Richard raps a fist on the podium and pulls a face at the irate Mord’Sith, entreating for order.

Danton looks delighted, as if he is getting everything he wanted and more. He wipes perspiration from his upper lip, and raises his uninjured hand for permission to speak. Richard gives him a curt nod.

“We appreciate the Lord Rahl’s willingness to levy justice, even among his boon companions,” he begins, oily and ingenuous. “We relish our close relationship with the crown, and are willing to forgive all criminal acts by this woman… if she consents to fulfill the terms of Miss Currier’s contract herself.”

Cara snorts in disbelief, and the courtroom goes quiet for several moments.

The Baron smiles horribly; despite his fine clothing, silvered hair and aging face, he calls to mind a mean child tearing the wings from a butterfly. “Further, we will forego the three month notice requirement and require but one single visit – tonight,” he says.

Kahlan watches Danton closely, Cara’s reaction even more so, and her face tenses with apprehension. Richard seems particularly baffled by this whole turn of events.

“It’s a generous offer, Baron, but Cara doesn’t sing,” he says. “At least, I don’t think so. Do you sing?”

“Only under duress, my Lord,” Cara answers, stone–eyed and remote as she mulls the proposition.

Richard looks concerned as he scans down the contract and reads a portion aloud. “What does ‘provide miscellaneous entertainments at the Baron’s discretion’ mean, exactly?”

“Well, the Baron has eclectic tastes, exotic hobbies,” explains the counselor. “Under his tutelage and instruction, Miss Currier has evolved into a more sensitive artist, and a more… flexible woman.”

“Damn you, stop talking,” Cara grits out, with her eyes squeezed shut against black interpretations, against imaginings of Dahlia bent over and bleeding as the Baron takes his pleasure. She rolls her neck, squares her shoulders, and glares at Danton. “I accept.”

Richard exhales loudly and calls the proceedings to a close. He is clearly relieved that he needn’t jail Cara (or pretend to) for publicly thumping a titled citizen. By now, Kahlan has grasped the subtext and senses that her friend courts hidden peril.

“Cara, don’t,” she says. “Richard’s hands are tied, but maybe I can find some way around this.”

“This is the way around,” Cara insists. She is unsurprised by Kahlan’s intuition of danger, and answers her concerns with candor. “This man is not Darken Rahl. I have seen his handiwork and can easily bear it – especially if it means he’ll never touch Dahlia again.”

“But you… you barely know this woman,” Kahlan says, and touches her shoulder. “It’s only been two weeks, right?”

From across the room, Danton’s counselor beckons them over to sign and witness the amended services contract. Cara purses her lips and shrugs out from under the Confessor’s hand.

“Two very good weeks,” she says, walking backward. “I’ve paid more for less.”

The counselor offers his inked quill, and Cara signs her full name atop Dahlia’s looping, canceled signature. It takes a moment to turn out the foreign letters, but they are plain enough for legal purposes.

“Mason! Ha!” the Baron crows. He grins and blots his damp face with a handkerchief. “Is your father a bricklayer? Perhaps he works for me.”

Cara looks down and says nothing. Kahlan moves to her side, sweeps her fingers down Cara’s arm, and signs her name and title as witness. Danton’s counselor leaves with the contract, and the Baron informs Cara that his coach waits in the courtyard. He expects her there immediately.

As Richard descends from the podium, Cara asks Kahlan to shroud her concerns, lest Richard figure things out, forget his larger responsibilities to his people, and cleave the Baron in two.

Kahlan nods, and speaks very softly. “Control this, for my sake if not your own. If you suffer genuine harm, I’ll likely gut the swine myself.”

Cara musters a flat smile. “I expect no less from a friend.”

* * * * *

The black coach speeds away from Eringaard and into the hills. Oddly, Danton doesn’t gloat or goad Cara during the trip, just stares needfully at the rising moon with sweat beading his face. He peels the damp bandage from his nose and removes the sling from his wrist; his injuries were minor to begin with, and now appear almost imaginary.

“Attempted murder? Really?” Cara says, and shakes her head. He does not respond.

They travel deep into the forest, up a winding road toward the Baron’s keep – a seemingly solid cube of cold, ancient granite tucked amid ragged pines like an unkempt tombstone. There is magic here, powerful and old, soaked into the very rock of the place. The air crackles as they approach the keep, making the hair rise on Cara’s nape.

When the horse stops inside the gates, Alphonse Danton breaks from the coach at a hobbling run. Two doormen open the iron–clad front entrance and he vanishes into the foyer.

“Hurry!” he shouts back to Cara. “We don’t have much time!”

She mounts the front steps and eyes the doormen, who may as well be gargoyles for all their deaf and blind silence. Fear and money buy such discretion. Cara touches the agiels holstered at her side, taking comfort that Danton’s worst cannot match their blazing misery.

A meek houseboy, smooth and overfed, points her toward the main hallway, a cavernous tunnel lined with flickering lamps and outsized portraits of hideous Danton men, dating back ten generations. Each man shares three characteristics: spiky nose, ghostly pallor, and glittering black eyes.

Distracted by the horrible paintings of dead Peter and dead Gaumont and dead Frederick, Cara stumbles on something, then recognizes the dark mass tangled on her boot as Alphonse Danton’s discarded robe.

She weaves through the keep passageways, dodging pieces of abandoned clothing. She remains well behind him, following the sounds of footfalls and squeaking hinges down a spiral stone staircase and westward through several heavy black doors.

“I told you to hurry!” a panicked Danton shouts from somewhere below.

Cara descends one last dry rock staircase and instantly the walls appear closer, the path ahead narrowing like a funnel. Beyond the landing, the ceiling slopes low and the hall squeezes tight, causing her to duck sideways toward one final room. Halfway ajar is a three–quarter scale red door with six locking bolts around the edges. Torchlight flickers inside that room, and heavy chains rattle.

She closes her eyes and does not think of a cell packed with crying little girls, of cringing alone against the back wall and praying for some hero to storm the gates and take her home. Dahlia has stood here dozens of times, she realizes, perhaps pausing on this very spot, mastering her fear, casting her thoughts beyond these hours of perdition and into a lake of free days. What finally pushes Cara through the door is her conviction that Dahlia must never come here again.

She creeps inside and shuts the red door behind her. At the far end of this long and barren dungeon, Alphonse Danton is not waiting with a knife in his hand. He is locking cuffs to his own wrists. The cuffs lead to chains anchored in the ceiling; similar restraints bind his ankles to the floor.

He is naked, white as a fish belly, withered and pitiful. His eyes shine with a pale, eerie light. Every inch of skin is bathed in sweat, and scars lay atop scars lay atop scars – some patches of flesh are thick and rough as tree bark.

“It’s happening,” he says, as his eyes roll back and turn moon–white.

He gasps for breath and every ropy muscle seizes in knots. His shouts carom off the stone walls.

“It’s happening! Hurry! Hurry, please HURRY! Do it! YOU MUST DO IT NOW!”

Danton’s glowing gaze is fixed on Cara’s agiels, and he is begging. She is behind the curve, closing fast on understanding. All she knows for certain is that she signed a contract and will honor it without argument… and with pleasure.

She draws her weapons and stalks toward the twisting old man, slamming the agiels against his sides like a pincer, grinding in hot cinders of death. He howls and thrashes and howls until tears of relief stream down his face.

* * * * *

It goes on for hours, the torturer and the tortured expertly dancing their steps, littering the floor with blood and sweat and waste. After a time, when Danton’s eyes dull to black and he calms enough to speak, he tells Cara of a family curse.

Greedy and base, the first Dantons bartered with a witch for abiding wealth and comfort. They partly jilted the sorceress, who crushed their happiness with binding old world magic. From that generation on, buried within the Danton marrow was a maddening hunger for pain which peaks at the full moon and demands murder.

“As a child, I witnessed barbarism that only fanged and clawed animals should know. I lied and claimed it as my own, but secretly it revolted me,” Danton admits. “My father thought me weak because I hurt myself rather than kill or rape, as was his preference. When at last he died, I buried him face down under the hog pen, trapped forever between shit and the Keeper.”

Cara smiles darkly, as if tardy defiance is better than none. She ladles water from a clay pot and splashes it across Danton’s red–crusted face and chest. He nearly weeps for the kindness, as she knew he would.

“Pain has two paths in man. We can spray it around like acid, or swallow it until we rot and burst. I have chosen the latter,” he continues. “The gift cannot heal me, and there is no release but death. Each month, someone must leech this pain out of me with blades and fire and hammers, or I will go wholly and irretrievably mad.”

Cara sits on the floor and leans against the red door. She is tired enough to humor him, as she drinks her fill of clean water and does not think of hidden glades and cold brooks. “Why not just kill yourself?” she asks, as she can no longer imagine being enslaved to capricious violence.

“I have a son. You met him,” the Baron says, nodding as Cara conveys her understanding that the scarred, slow giant is also a Danton. “A bastard baby, spirited away by his fearful mother, whom he murdered just before his thirteenth birthday. Her family had some primitive medicine man neuter him, then cut past his eye and sweep an awl through the ‘infected meat’ inside his skull. He was bleeding and mute when they dumped him at my gates.”

“Did the cutting work?” Cara wonders. She’s never heard of such things. “He seemed docile enough.”

“I cannot speak for the future; to date, he shows few symptoms. At first, he needed care which no regular sanitarium could give. I have endured life past my own willingness, for him, and to atone for my family’s secret crimes against the people.”

“By building bridges and roads and dams,” Cara indifferently adds, while wiping a speck of crud from her boot.

“I know it will never be enough,” Danton admits. “We lone renegades cannot hope to erase an entire bloody legacy, can we?”

The Mord’Sith looks up suddenly, chapped by such presumption. “Don’t pull me into your family crypt, old man. You and I are differently made.”

“Our paths varied, yet here we are, met and crossed like stars!” he says with sudden energy. “Tell me, can you truly feel anything for Dahlia? Anything of weight or substance?”

Cara grits her teeth and points one agiel at his face. “Go lightly,” she warns, “or I will burn her name from your mouth.”

The Baron’s hard little eyes pick her apart, drawing private conclusions from her response. His head dips low, perhaps the first sign of humility Cara has seen him exhibit. “I ask because I wish to know your intentions,” he says. “These years of her helping me have been the best of my life. She makes me feel… almost human.”

Cara snorts and rolls her eyes. “So you carved circles and lines into her back as a gesture of gratitude and respect?”

“Yes!” Danton yelps, and his eyes grow a few lumens brighter. “I paid handsomely for the knife – a relic of underworld bone, necessarily destroyed in the ritual. My sorceress claims those deep scars ward Dahlia’s body against my curse.”

“Why would she need to be warded… ” Cara intuits the reason and trails off, sickened. “You wanted Dahlia to bear you a sane child, to remain tied to you.”

“Of course I did. What other woman would inherit my fortune and actually continue my work, rather than squander endless gold on parties and young men?” the Baron wonders aloud. “I even proposed chaste marriage, and she refused me for the most foolhardy reason I’d ever heard: the silly girl believes in true love.”

Cara waits for him to mock, to laugh, to taunt. If a joke comes, she knows that she will be the punchline. She sees the whitening of his eyes begin in earnest; hours of searing pain tamed his sickness for only a few minutes. She admits to herself that the curse and the man are surprisingly resilient.

“She wrote me a letter of resignation two weeks ago, saying she had met someone who mattered.” Danton pauses and shakes his head. “I chose to disregard it, thinking she would change her mind, as she has several times before. I learned by your words that this new lover was the Lord Rahl’s own right fist – the free Mord’Sith – and knew this was fated. I felt such joy… ”

“You wanted your demon to taste the agiels, I understand,” Cara dully presumes. “After all these years, it must be bored of regular pain.”

The glow now suffuses Danton’s eyes. “My forebears learned to love this demon, this curse, and wanted no cure, but I have never stopped seeking release. To no avail, I even begged Panis Rahl for death by the agiel, offering to lift protective wards from some of my lands and give up half my fortune, all for one little breath from his lowest Mord’Sith warrior…”

“You sneaky bastard,” Cara spits, as if everything finally makes perfect sense. Attentive and curious now, she rises to her feet. “You think dying and being revived by the Breath of Life would trick the curse.”

“Perhaps… it will,” he gasps, “or I may simply die… and remain dead.”

Cara draws both agiels and grips them tightly. “I thought you weren’t ready to meet the Keeper just yet.”

“My son is a man now, and my estate… is in order,” Danton reasons, beginning to shake and twitch. “And, actually, I would rather meet the Creator! Wouldn’t you?”

“That’s a longshot,” says Cara, cocking a brow and smiling, “for both of us.”

“I’m feeling… very lucky… this has been a most unusual day!” he cries, laughing as the spasms overtake him.

Cara nods in silent agreement. She looks into his moonlight eyes, focuses on the misbegotten rebel trapped inside, and presses her agiels to his heart. The Baron screams his last breath away, and hangs smiling and dead in his own chains.

She inhales, and the dank dungeon air transforms inside her body, becomes magic and faith and hatred, cold moving water and peppery green. The breath is a river rushing through her spirit, gathering fragments of everything Cara is and was and will be. She pushes this silvery wisp into the mouth of a man she despised only a few short hours ago, and wills him to live.

“A most unusual day,” Cara repeats, and waits alone in the quiet keep.

* * * * *

Her head buzzing with fatigue, Cara knocks at Dahlia’s door just after sunrise. Dark circles ring her eyes, and her spine curves like a wind–bent tree, but she is mercifully clean head to foot, thanks to the Baron’s houseboy and a bar of amber soap.

Dahlia opens the door, tying closed an indigo silk robe. Worriedly, she touches the shadows on her lover’s face and emits a disapproving hum. She lays a palm against one sunken cheek, and Cara leans into her touch.

“I hoped you would come back,” Dahlia says. “Have you slept at all?”

“No. My head is full of bees. But I had to see you,” she says, in a voice low and weary. “Your contract with the Baron is canceled. You don’t have to go back there ever again.”

“Canceled?” Dahlia starts. She jumps past how Cara even learned of her contract and reaches for the root of her fears. “Oh, Cara, please tell me you didn’t kill him.”

The Mord’Sith smirks. “Only for a little while.” She steps fully into the room, closes and locks the door. “He threatened to have me jailed for whipping him and his servant… his son… so we struck a deal: my freedom and yours in exchange for his mortal release.”

“You gave him the Breath of Life.” Dahlia steps close, with mild awe in her eyes. “Did it work?”

“It seemed to. I suppose we’ll know for certain in a month,” Cara says. She furrows her brow and shakes her head. “Why didn’t you ask me to intervene? Today – yesterday – could have been avoided entirely.”

“Yesterday wasn’t all bad,” Dahlia says. She lays her forearms on Cara’s shoulders and unconsciously grooms her damp, amber–scented hair into some semblance of order. “Honestly, I never considered asking. I will not use you like a lever to pry away my burdens. It’s beneath you.”

Cara’s face convulses with confusion, disbelief. “You forget – I have been someone’s tool nearly all my life. My hands have rushed hundreds to their graves and more toward torment.” Her gloved fingers land on Dahlia’s hips and contract, clutching fistfuls of silk robe. Looking up into steady blue eyes beaming regard, Cara feels her heart swell, feels strong enough to murder a mountain.

“Dealing with this was nothing,” she says, “and I can do anything for you. I will do anything…”

Dahlia silences her with a kiss, and another, then speaks low in her ear.

“I tortured a cursed old man for years. I let him mark me, let his needs control and shape my life. I did this knowingly, for money and comfort,” she says. “Your acts, your abilities, stem from devotion and strength. If anything, my weakness and corruption makes me unworthy of you.”

Exhausted as she is, Cara doesn’t process those words directly. She thinks first of her sisters, all those who endured as she did, who withstood the crucible and became Mord’Sith; they formed a gang of raptors, sharp and deadly together, rarely flying solo. From childhood on, Dahlia was largely alone, and often anxious about her future.

Her choices, like Cara’s, were pragmatic, based on survival instinct and pursuit of security. Their spirits were evidently so well–fitted that they had been lovers elsewhere, in a world that Zedd necromanced away. She wonders about that life, where they entered training and grew up together.

Cara imagines fighting with Dahlia at her side, buckled and laced neck to foot in leather. She thinks of bathing together in Jandrolin and bedding down in the cold tower, bare and trusting. She decides that their Mord’Sith union would have been quite good, had it not led to the end of the world.

“If neither of us deserves the other, then surely you are for me,” Cara says, closing their embrace tight as a chain link, “and I am for you.”

She opens her mouth against Dahlia’s throat and greedily tastes her skin, breathes her smell into the very bottom of each lung, making it part of her gift.

Dahlia holds herself very still, lingering on the complex meaning of those simple, welcome words. “You sound certain.”

Cara pulls back and nods, with a faint smile on her wet lips. “Then you heard me correctly. Take this off.” She ineffectually tugs at the water knot belting Dahlia’s robe closed, and the singer begins to laugh.

“You can do it,” she says, holding her arms out to the sides. “I believe in you.”

Annoyed, Cara snatches off her gloves and works the belt with cramped and shaking fingers; it won’t give way. Unhurried, she walks Dahlia backward into the bedroom and pushes her down on the mattress.

“I’m unfamiliar with this,” Cara reasons. “As you’re always pointing out, I don’t have a robe.”

Dahlia nods in agreement and glides back against the pillows. “Yes, that, and your head is full of bees. How long since you slept?”

Cara does not tell her it’s been three days. She needs sex, sleep, and food – in that order – and the truth will ruin her plan. “I want you,” she says, crawling atop Dahlia and attacking the water knot again. “Then I will rest.”

“You can have me later,” Dahlia protests. “Cara, you can’t even untie – ”

“A–ha!” Cara cries, as the belt unravels in her hands. She whips the robe open and races her hands along warm, silken skin. “Bear witness. I am unstoppable.”

Even as she laughs, even as those shaking fingers crawl down her shoulders and caress her breasts, Dahlia remains cautious. “You are a braggart – and you’re barely even upright! After everything you’ve been through – ”

“Woman, stop talking!” Cara barks. She takes hold of Dahlia’s hands and squeezes, tightly as she can. “I know I’m a mess. From one sun to the next, I may do terrible things, and good things, and foolish things no one will ever know, but right now… right now, all I’m trying to do is love you. Please, just… let me?”

Dahlia’s smile is slow, tremulous. Her eyes close, and she nods. Tears slide into her hair as Cara kisses her, loves her, as if this can heal them both. Maybe she’s right.

Epilogue

Many miles away, a crow flies through the night, over a dark forest toward a burned stone ruin. A war–wounded overlook rises up near the treetops, and the bird wends through limbs and leaves, into a glowing viewport near the tower crown.

The crow lights on a perch and sits obediently, more like a pet than a wild creature.

From the shadows, Darken Rahl approaches, flanked by two Mord’Sith guards. Their agiels are drawn and ready.

Rahl deliberately reaches out and strokes the bird’s sleek black head, runs his nails down its breast, and touches an engraved silver band around its leg. He backs away.

The bird opens its wings and flutters to the floor, writhes and expands and becomes a woman, nude and pale, with long blond hair knotted in a tight braid. Nicci looks up to Darken Rahl and kneels before him.

“Tell me,” he says. “What new damage has my loving brother done?”

“A new dam will end the Midlands food shortages before next season. Public faith in him rises by the day,” Nicci begins. “The disgustingly beloved Mother Confessor has reopened numerous closed schools and temples. The army grows loyal – they train as if full–scale war is imminent.”

“Prompted, no doubt, by a certain paranoid apostate,” Rahl sighs. “Why can’t Cara just lie back, relax, and dream of my punishments?”

Nicci smirks at her preening master; the Sovereign Cuff on her ankle governs her Han, but not her mouth. “Actually, your lost acolyte spends little time thinking of you. She’s too busy staging picnics in the forest and vigorously pleasuring a new lover,” she says, twitching her arm like a grazed wing, “a dissolute, scarred woman who cares little for crows.”

Rahl’s lips curl slightly – a subtle indication of annoyance. “How prosaic,” he sneers. “No doubt she’s been infected by Richard’s banality.”

The sorceress says nothing more. She keeps some information for herself, giving Rahl just enough to keep his anxiety high and his guard low. When the time comes…

A sudden noise wakes her from dreams of murder. Rahl has peevishly upset a table, and frail, ancient books tumble to the floor.

This is how he spends his hours – poring over spells and incantations, legends and myths, searching as always for a shortcut to power. He is losing patience, and Nicci knows he will soon grow desperate enough to try anything, even turn to her for advice.

When he does, Darken Rahl will fall to ruin, the Mother Confessor will burn, and Richard will belong to her forever.

Nicci believes this will happen, just as she believes there are three fundamental truths in life:

One – Power does not care who wields it, as long as the hand remains strong.

Two – The enemy of an enemy is still not a friend.

Three – Love makes people weak and predictable.

“Nicci,” Rahl calls out from the gloom. “Time for bed.”

The sorceress rises and walks slowly toward her duties, while thinking of fern glades and brooks, and a warded woman who broke the hardest Mord’Sith with a kiss.

END