1 Vhalar 722
Daylight
Continued from here.
Maxine's hands and clothes were clean but she could feel the blood warm and fresh still on her hands. A joint of Ambrosia hung on her lips, smoking and putrid like her wild, bloodshot eyes. The hooded Rusalka moved with purpose through the streets like a lithe predator. Citizens who found themselves in her path were quick to step out of her way, some craning their necks to watch her go after she passed like a storm on the wind. Their stares were fleeting. Eyes adverted when they felt the hairs raise on the backs of their necks.
The woman had never been to this part of Westguard before but she quick-walked like she knew exactly where she was going. Her hands were balled into tight fists at her sides inside her cloak. Smoke billowed from her nostrils like a dragon, the ashes from the end of her joint spilling with negligence. She was a woman possessed and all her focus and energy was on something so very singular. Her world revolved around this one thing.
Alice.
At some point the guilt and the internal damning broke as she held the woman as she died. In the stillness Maxine had started to turn. Chrien's influence had allowed her to detect something at that gory scene beyond the blood, the sorrow, and the injustice of it all. Spite lingered densely over the murder done there. It filled her, coaxing her, lighting the way toward the vindication she instantly wanted with such fervor. Leaving the soulless body of the servant girl she was supposed to save was not easy. Following the teasing beacon of Spite to the source of her demise, toward revenge, was effortless.
A blood hound was less on point than the Rusalka was to this trail. She nearly forgot to toss the joint when it had been long burned out. It didn't take her long to find the new safehouse. At least that's what she assumed it was when she tracked the source straight to the door. The Rusalka pulled a handkerchief up over her face. She rounded to the back and admired the clear glass window, and then shattered it with a chair perched outside against the siding. Someone inside screamed. Max vaulted through the hole she made and stood tall in the living space. Two girls, holding one another in frozen fright, squealed and raced upstairs.
A Guardian rose from his seat in the kitchen with wide eyes. He opened his mouth to alert another in the cellar retrieving a jar of provisions, but found his throat filled with a thrown dagger instead. He clutched at the handle and in a foolish panic tugged it out. Blood filled the front of him, swallowed into his lungs, and fountained lowly when his body hit the floor.
"Gem?" a voice called out from the cellar. "Gem, you a'right?" Feet stomped up the weak, wooden stairs. When the guard reached the threshold, having emerged from the dark with a jar of pickles in his hand, Maxine's sword plunged into his stomach. Her boot drove him off the length of her gladius and his body thudded its way back down the stairs. She slammed the door shut and placed a chair up under the door handle. Rounding back toward the stairs, she saw the same pair of girls had re-emerged like they thought they might make their way to the door. The moment they saw the masked killer they thought the better of it.
"Help!" they cried in near unison before they stumbled over one another, clambering on hands and feet back upstairs. Max followed them silently. Closer toward the source. The girls cried out with fists pounding on a door, "Let us in! Let us in!" The door swung open and the two girls slipped inside. Maxine's boot was in the frame when they attempted to slam it closed. Whoever was on the other side panted and smashed their body against it, but the sole of Max's shoe weathered the pressure. Then, in a break in their effort, she threw her shoulder into the barrier and it swung open.
"Blast!" a woman with blonde hair howled, scrambling backward on the floor away from the stranger's entrance. There were five total girls inside this room. They all recoiled from Maxine arrival, eyes wide and bodies tense. One held a dagger out before her. The hands shook.
"What do you want?!" the girl with the dagger demanded, though there was no power in her voice. "Take it and be gone! What do you want?!" Another girl cowered behind this rare hero. The Rusalka paused to regard the speaker with the blade. She eyed the weapon carefully, murky eyes tightening on the edge.
"I want nothing from you," Max admitted honestly to the girl. She sheathed her gladius. "The watchers downstairs are dead. There is no one keeping you here, especially not me. You're free to go." The dagger continued to tremble and the Rusalka was keen to it. "Leave, and I'll not follow or harm you." She nodded her head. "Unless you try it with that dagger..."
Three girls now cowered behind the girl with the dagger. They clung to her back as their hero eased closer to the Rusalka, dagger held defensively until they safely reached the door. The blonde servant on the floor made it to her feet and started to rush at their heels.
"No," Maxine growled. "Not you." The blonde woman froze in place, reeling back at the sinister snarl in the voice. The girls in the hall seemed to notice the change and turned around, shouting for the last of them. Maxine's rear kick sent the door shut in their faces, and the lock turned as hands reached down to wrench it back open. The blonde woman shivered in the center of that room. Alone.
"Hi, Regina..." Max watched as the blonde's face sapped of color. "What's that look for? Are you afraid?" The Rusalka took one step forward. Regina took two steps back. That made the vindictive woman smile. "So you are? Good."
"Who are you?" Regina's voice was barely above a whisper.
"Doesn't matter."
"What do you want from me?"
"Why'd you do it?"
"D-do what?"
"Don't try to get cute with it." Maxine's eyes glowered. "I can still smell it on you..."
"Lacy!" Regina called, voice shaking. "Gwen! Harriet! Wendy!"
"Regina!" the girls on the other side of the banging door replied in cries. "Regina! Regina!"
"Just like her," Maxine snarled, approaching Regina now. "No one is going to save you. Not even the help waiting on the other side of that fucking door."
"P-please!" Regina stumbled over a rug, dropping onto her butt before hustling back to her feet again. "It wasn't my fault! I had no choice!"
"Oh, come on! I've used those lines so many times I don't even believe them anymore! You'll have to do far better than that!"
Light danced through the curtains, shielding the events within this second story room from the ground and illuminating it all the same. Outside the world continued with its mundane routines. People went to the market. Children played. It was all and all a beautiful trial. The beyond was full of life and light. The safehouse grew darker in its isolation.
"You were all so very close to getting your lives back,” The Rusalka pointed out. "All you had to do was listen. She was telling the truth. She had your escape. Back to your homes and your families. She stayed for all of you when I offered her a way out. She couldn’t bear to leave any girl behind…”
"You don’t understand!”
"Don’t I?”
"Regina,” one of the girls outside the door began to call again. "Don’t hurt her!”
"They’re choking on fear right now just as they were then,” Max continued ominously. She imagined the dagger still shaking in the girl’s hand just beyond the barrier separating parties. "Not you. You didn’t kill out of fear, Regina. They were ready to make the leap of faith when you stepped in…”
"She was a traitor!” Regina doubled down, eyes welling with defiant tears. "I had to stop her before she got them all killed!”
"Liar! Your hate led me straight to you!” Max moved menacingly toward Regina, who stumbled several steps backward in kind. The Rusalka Fanned the Flames of Spite she knew already existed with her words. "There will be no audience for you here. Drop the fucking act.”
The tears stopped falling from Regina’s eyes and she offered a resigning sigh. Her cowering frame straightened and her bereaved expression dissipated into one of deep, impatient resentment.
"Alice was a little fool,” the traitorous slave hissed. "She could’ve been something, more than a servant or a whore. She could’ve made something of herself but instead she squandered it. She was weak, and she worried about liberty and coddling the girls instead of ambition. The girls trusted her, and some of the Guardians would’ve too if she didn’t trouble them with every little whimper of right and wrong. She didn’t deserve her position.”
Regina gave Maxine’s ire-filled gaze a heartless laugh.
"Besides, I didn’t want to go home. To what? A family who would hurry to sell me back, only this time with torment to make a girl wish for a drink of poison waiting as punishment for absconding? No. My future is here now. She could ruin the chance she couldn’t see, but not me.”
Regina cupped her chin while she regarded the tense Rusalka.
"I admit I didn’t believe she had someone on the outside, let alone someone like…whatever it is you are. I regret nothing. Alice was an idealistic, stupid girl who could never promise the girls the dream she was selling.”
"She was in your way,” Max accused venomously.
"So what if she was?” Regina spat. "I probably saved these girls from Alice’s bleeding heart. Better yet, I suppose I honored Alice in convincing them to save themselves. She didn’t expect it from even me in the end, but Harriet’s knife? After everything Alice did to protect her over the arcs?”
Regina sucked her teeth and shook her head.
"While Alice was busy plotting escape, I spoke reason into these girls behind her back, for their own good. I stopped them from leaving with her, and told them what the Guardians would do to them and their families to punish them for escape. I tried to warn her not to go against the Guardians. She didn’t listen. So I removed her.”
The other side of the door had gone noticeably quiet. Regina glanced toward it, but what was said in a burst of honest spite was already said.
"So what does that make you now?” Max raised an inquiring brow, glancing about the room complete with a giant bed, dressers, and all indications suggesting this master room was for one woman. The safe house had far fewer guards than any other Guardian hold Max had slinked into. She could conceive a reason. "Head Bitch in Charge?”
"Something like that.”
"Hm. Settled in quick too, and without consequences. How convenient.
"Loyalty is rewarded.”
"Yeah, what an honor to betray your own to please your master.”
"It’s every girl for themselves out here. I did what I had to do. If you don’t know this you’re a fool too.”
"You think you’re a survivor then?”
Maxine’s fingers itched for her sheathed blade. Her gaze found Regina’s, noticed how the woman waited in tension to see how the Rusalka would move. She expected there was some weapon tucked under the woman’s blouse. Probably the same weapon she used to stab Alice, the other of its likeness in the hands of one of the manipulated girls banished to the hallway.
"The head of this Guardian outfit in Westguard, where is he?” Max asked her with a tilt of her head. Regina’s jaw tightened with apprehension. The Rusalka saw that too. "Oh, don’t be like that. Let’s skip the lie where you try to convince me you don’t know. You’ve already given up so much to get here just to die a trial or two in!”
"They’ll kill me if I tell.”
"I’ll kill you right now if you don’t.” Max jerked a thumb at the door behind her. "Call out to them. Ask them to check the downstairs and the cellar, see if they agree with me about who is the more immediate threat to your life.”
"I’m dead either way.”
"Everyone is. I can just promise you’ll die before you ever see the outside of this room if you deny me.”
”Damn Vri, the one who calls my name,” Regina hissed.
Max slowly pulled her knife from her belt. She played with it in her hands, teasing the point of the blade with her fingertips and whistling a quiet, slow tune while Regina cursed and paced her options. Tears of frustration spilled from the blonde traitor’s eyes now. Her throat caught, not over the innocence slain but because the world she started to build for herself was falling in with no victory on the table.
"Where?” Max demanded sharply.
"I don’t know exactly,” Regina sighed, shaking her fingers through her hair.
"That’s a disappointing choice.” Max eased closer with the knife and Regina found herself finally backed against the wall.
"Wait! Wait. I don’t know where he is now but I know where he’ll be!” Max rolled her eyes and made a “go on” gesture with the knife. Regina sucked in some air, relieved at the Rusalka’s pause. "The tavern near the gate. James has a meeting in the beige house behind it. I can’t say where he is now but he should arrive there tonight. He sent this this morning.”
Regina retrieved a folded piece of paper from her pocket. The seal was broken and the paper was folded and crumpled, but there was writing on it when she opened the message for her eyes to regard. Max pursed her lips and rover the paper with her eyes as though she was reading. Then she brought her gaze to Regina’s face, studying her far harder than she did the useless words in the letter.
"Meeting with who?”
"A Guardian assigned to the city. A scratcher. That’s all I know.”
"That’ll do.”
Max gave her knife a twirl and Regina exhaled as it lowered toward the belt sheath. Then her eyes widened when it didn’t. The Rusalka’s hands tightened their grip on the handle instead and a blackness came across Maxine’s features. Regina’s heart faltered in its thunder. Panic set in before action did.
Maxine lunged for the woman before she got to the knife hidden in her blouse. The Rusalka pinned Regina’s reaching hand to her ribs, smashed both their bodies into the wall so she could pin the other woman’s hips, and paralyzed her enemy with her own dagger pressed to Regina’s throat. The blonde servant’s movements ceased. Max used the momentary forced compliance to fish the weapon she was reaching for out of her possession. The shining dagger skittered across the floor behind her, well out of Regina’s reach.
"What is this?!” Regina gasped with wide eyes against the dagger. "I gave you what you asked for!”
"You’re a turncoat,” Max pointed out with a snarl. "You twisted those girls with fear and lies to do your bidding, and kill someone they cared for that cared for them far more. For greed and jealousy. For a power that can never be yours because of everything that you are.”
In a whirl Maxine turned and slammed Regina on the floor at their feet. Her knee dropped across the woman’s chest and her fingers laced through her hair, tugging the head to one side to expose the arteries of the neck. Regina screamed. Her chest heaved against the shin crushing down on it, hands flailing for a dagger loaded toward Maxine’s ear too far from reach.
The door screeched open as wood splintered away, pried apart by a diligent dagger and it’s wielder. The Rusalka didn’t look away from her squirming quarry. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Harriet with her knife, stare empty and knife shaking in her hand.
"Harriet!” Regina screamed, trying to crane her neck against Maxine’s hold to make eye contact with the other slave. "Harriet! Help me! Kill her! Please!”
Harriet remained paralyzed in the doorway.
Maxine grunted as she swung the dagger down. Regina’s screaming hit a high octave. Then it stopped with the thunk of the dagger point driving deep into the wood. Regina’s chest rose and fell rapidly, tears streaming from her eyes blinking incredulous disbelief. She was alive. Had the killer missed?
"You deserve to die for what you did,” Max said harshly. "You’re not dead because Alice asked me to promise not to kill you. Her last words, a mercy you don’t deserve either.” She shoved Regina’s head roughly into the floor to release it and dismounted. Then she spat at the woman’s feet. "Even in death she’s fucking better than the whole lot of us. Ain’t that a fucking bitch?”
The Rusalka sniffed and slipped her dagger into its sheath finally. She stared down at Regina for but a moment, watching the snot and the tears and the relief all at once overwhelm the woman. Then she scoffed her disgust and wrenched her head away before her emotions outlasted her promise. She turned on her heels to find Harriet, the statue, shuddering and gasping through tears too.
"I-I’m sorry for what I did!” Harriet burst out and dropped the dagger at her shoeless toes. "I-I-I-I’m sorry! I was scared and she said if we didn’t they would torture us and send scratchers for our families back home!” The girl dissolved before the Rusalka, falling to her knees in a fever of shakes. "They have my brother in Rhakros I think. I was just so afraid. I’m so sorry, I should’ve listened and left with her!”
Max watched in silence as the girl leaned to the floor before her in her grief and guilt. Her jaw adjusted and her eyes burned. Harriet couldn’t have been more than eighteen. Just barely.
"Listen now,” Max offered without consolation. "Flee now. You’ll not have my help, nor a way out of this city waiting anymore. Or stay and risk a traitor’s death. You’re on your own.” She glanced toward Regina next. "I’ll be done before you send word. They’ll know it was you. Try to kiss your master’s feet again, I doubt they’ll grant you the mercy given here. Your position is forfeit. This window of opportunity will close quickly.”
Max glanced around the safe house and stepped over Harriet, leaving Regina behind her. Her face twisted into a deep scowl beneath her face covering.
"I don’t give a fuck about any of you girls or what you do.”
As quickly as the wrathful stranger came, she was gone to continue her hunt.
