[attr="class","sumreign-triangle"]

[attr="class","sumreign-1"]






The nature of their cooperation had been made clear as soon as it began, one awful night in fall with ash on her tongue and the unfamiliar weight of a blade in her small, shaking hand. Lorne would walk wherever she deigned, do whatever she pleased – and if young Gloria was standing in her shadow when she turned, then so be it. Staying at the woman's side was a conscious choice. One that came with expectations that would weigh heavier than any meager knife in the palm, certainly, but a choice, no less. Gloria could leave at any time.[break][break]

In practice, things weren't quite so simple.[break][break]

The first time Gloria spoke about parting ways was just over a year into her 'discipleship'. It was still the 'honeymoon stage', as Cecil would tauntingly call it later, when it was only teacher and disciple journeying over war-torn countrysides in pursuit of the city of Solnste. Though the image in her mind of those great golden spires and the crumb of hope that must lay within them had carried her through days far darker, it was on this particular evening that her fatigue finally caught up with her. An eclipse of the desire of familial reunion with the inability to face morning's coming trials had arrived to put this teetering 'partnership' to its early end.[break][break]

“This is our last night in town, so make sure you haven't left your detritus lying about before you sleep,” Lorne had been saying. Gloria still remembers how she'd undone the twine tying that awful burlap sack of even worse rations with her teeth, hands occupied with... well, the memory didn't account for everything. Sleeping the night in civilization usually meant a proper meal, but in the immediate aftermath of a mission, the mercenary's paranoia would often win out over her desire for something fresh to eat. Rations would need to be consumed eventually, anyway. “This shouldn't need repeating, but I want to make this clear: the guards will be on high alert after our mission today. Do not attract any unneeded attention on our way out the gates.”[break][break]

And maybe it was that – memory within a memory, recalling the last time she'd 'attracted unneeded attention' after one of her teacher's kills – that tipped her over. Maybe it was the rations, or the roaches that skittered just outside her vision, still somehow better bedside company than what would be offered once they were once again on the road. Whatever the cause, the words that had slipped out of her mouth then were not the expected 'understood' or 'yes, sir'. They were a miserable, “I can't.”[break][break]

“You can't?”[break][break]

Lorne was not looking at her yet. That only changed when Gloria said above a murmur, “I can't go with you anymore.”[break][break]

Even early on, she understood what the look her teacher was wearing meant – the one that was most often levied her way when her training wasn't coming along as well as Lorne had hoped, or when she spoke out of line in front of Lorne's clients and made a fool of them both.[break][break]

There were looks that could kill, and then there were these: the ones that communicated that, to the looker, you were already long dead.[break][break]

“Alright then. I'm sure you've thought this through right and proper, or else we wouldn't be having this conversation now.”[break][break]

For words that spoke of such finality, their speaker did not break eye contact. Gloria could read the expectation for confirmation as clearly as if it had been penned in ink before her eyes, which could only mean that her teacher was, as wasn't uncommon, deliberately setting her up for failure. When all she could offer was an anxious look back, the woman asked, “You have thought this through, haven't you?” Still, nothing. “Good gods... Not a contract can go by without you throwing yourself a tantrum, can it?”[break][break]

Gloria felt her indignation boil over. After all the so-called 'tantrums' she should have been entitled to, that she'd swallowed for the sake of seeing her mother and father once more time –[break][break]

“I'm not – !”[break][break]

“Don't.” And, indignant or not, that tone would never fail to clamp the girl's jaw shut tight. “I've been more than patient enough with your emotional outbursts. If you can't tell me that you've considered the consequences of going out on your own as you currently are, then there's no logic in that decision for me to respect. You're a child not getting her way, so you're giving up in hopes I'll pick you up onto your feet, and whatever patience I've got left for you isn't going to be wasted on that.”[break][break]

“You – you make me eat rocks for supper, and you hit me if I don't say 'thank you'! Then we walk... we march! Days! And you hit me again if I can't – I can't keep up! Then you hit me again and again and again if I don't keep my head down when there's people who – when I could ask about my – Why would I want to stay with you? Teacher? Why?”[break][break]

Lorne had risen to her full height then, tall as the mountains and vicious as their peaks consuming a setting sun. “Because the alternative is nothing to eat, nowhere to go, and no one to save you. A spoiled little girl like you, all on your own? You've got about the same odds as when I picked you up out of that fire.”[break][break]

“That's not –” Did the tears start then, or had they started their traitorous descent at the start of this 'tantrum', drawing out her truths as rope to tooth? “I just... I don't want to see anyone else die.”[break][break]

“Then get used to it, or leave.”[break][break]

And that was that.[break][break]

Of course she had understood, however abstractly, that walking out their door in that moment, or loitering as her teacher departed by herself in the morning spelled for her a long demise. The privilege of a noble's daughter called for certain sacrifices, as did the misfortune of a common birth; it was just that the 'sacrifices' she'd been raised through cost her the odds of surviving in the man-eat-man world this country had become. Always had been, if Lorne's pessimistic tongue was to be believed.[break][break]

To lay down beneath the covers tonight, her few belongings carefully tucked away for the journey tomorrow – to walk with her head down one pace behind her teacher as they departed Krysah and started for the long road out – it was the choice to survive. But in that way, was Lorne's frosty indifference toward her disciple digging her feet in to stay behind not a choice of its own? Another kind of killing, deliberate and bloody? It was, the woman herself would say, what she'd always done best.[break][break]

It wouldn't be until the creaking of their door was accompanied by the smell of something unexpected and not unwelcome that Gloria realized she'd lost time in favor of her own misery. Their bed had dipped under the weight of a bigger body, and a fresh plate of casserole (the exact nature of which beyond 'deliriously delicious' had escaped her both in present and in past) placed beneath her watering mouth drew her fully back to reality.[break][break]

“Eat.” Commanded in the same voice that delivered 'duck' or 'distract' or 'strike' or 'out of my sight' with no room for question or error. It came at odds with the surprising gesture of goodwill, from a woman who seemed at times physically incapable of any such thing. “Sleeping on an empty stomach isn't going to do you any favors, Gloria.”[break][break]

And because Lorne asked it, Gloria obeyed.[break][break]

After the disaster that was Solnste, the mere thought of leaving was hunted out of Gloria's mind to extinction. Taking back her own life was a matter of exploring every inch of Sila herself, hoping for a missing person's poster with a sketch of her own face, or rumors in town of two famous opera singers and their long-lost daughter. Even as the years passed and her ability to self-sustain grew, following Lorne and her mercenary work was just the more convenient option. In war, people from all over wanted their enemies dead; that it was civil meant all their morbid work could be done entirely within the perimeter of Gloria's search.[break][break]

By then, the 'honeymoon stage' was a distant (often embarrassing) memory. Lorne had taken over command of her old mercenary company, meaning there were more than just the two of them watching one another's backs, and while their group did occasionally take on work that called for a more delicate hand, and fewer of them on deck, the bulk of their payload had become bolstering the strength of noblemen's private armies in their never-ending conflicts of give-and-take.[break][break]

Extended time spent in Sila's towns and cities became increasingly rare, and so it became increasingly precious. Any clue to be found therein could be the one that set her free from this unwanted life of a hired killer, even if at that point, it was half her life down the drain.[break][break]

Betrayal then would be especially earth-shattering. Just the idea of it threatened to ruin a decade's worth of trust built between an otherwise inseparable duo.[break][break]

“Songbird. You're late,” Lorne said with arms folded and eyebrow raised, looming (one of her favorite activities) over a miniature rendition of tomorrow's coming warzone. The strategy meeting had been called an hour ago, and it had been at the top of everyone's priority list as soon as it was – for all except one, whose face was stained with wrath's red even before it was struck by the tent's candlelight, whose vestigial wings trembled with violent emotion on the cusp of explosion beneath her dark and heavy cloak.[break][break]

'Late' meant punishment, later if Gloria was lucky. In that moment, it barely scratched the surface of her mind.[break][break]

“Are you sabotaging me?”[break][break]

Lorne's other eyebrow rose to meet the first. Someone coughed; probably Hilde, the gossip monger, settling in for a show.[break][break]

“I'm holding a meeting. One that, mind, you were expected for quite a while ago, and are now choosing to disrupt instead of partake in.” Voice dipping, Lorne warned, “You had better start remembering what a proper apology sounds like, Gloria.”[break][break]

“Oh, that's rich. I wouldn't be interested in giving you one even if I was stupid enough to believe it'd make a difference.”[break][break]

She remembers a gentle hand placed on her elbow, attempted placation, but she'd shaken Esfir's aid off without a second thought. These words coming from her mouth were tantamount to a spade carving through dirt, self-inflicted grave, but she'd already stormed the tent with the intention to see this bridge thoroughly burnt. At her teacher's ever-souring look, the avian only felt the pyritic equivalent of emboldened, saying, “Forget about your meeting. The signs at the adventurer's guild. The ones that had my face drawn on them. You took them down, didn't you?”[break][break]

“Gloria.” Her name off Lorne's lips twice in a row, now, exponentially worse with each repeated use.[break][break]

“I knew it. I knew it! You've been doing this sort of thing since you took me to Solnste! Longer, maybe! Almost lost me to Grandfather and realized you couldn't have that, right? Have to ruin any chance of me getting away from you before I ever realize it existed? I don't know if I'm more upset at you, or for myself in being surprised that you'd –”[break][break]

“Gloria!”[break][break]

Oh – oh, the fear she'd felt then, still potent enough to relive perfectly through memory. The vague recollection of Esfir, frightened himself, whispering hastily from below, “Kid, you'd really better stop...”[break][break]

“Enough with your baseless accusations. Sit down, shut up, and listen. Now.”[break][break]

The first sign of flaking had come then: that her righteous fury had not been smelted from equally righteous gold, but a cheap imitation that would not hold up under the thunderous presence of her angered teacher. The sane thing to have done would have been to follow instructions (this was always the first step in keeping oneself whole in the company of Lorne) and quietly accept the beating she had earned herself later. If she took it quietly enough, remembered to apologize just the way Teacher liked to hear, Lorne might aid her in the recovery period that would follow.[break][break]

Her mother's voice, more and more distant with every year, the one she scarcely knew if she truly remembered correctly, was busy asking her the golden question. Is everything she's done to you worth what it's cost you? Is everything she will do to you worth what it will cost you? When again we meet, with what will you have yet to buy?[break][break]

Little, if anything. Obviously. But it's always been a matter of mitigation, since her childhood and future went up in pyrrhic flame.[break][break]

Sanely, she took her seat.[break][break]

Insanity would only grip Gloria later – nineteen hours, about – when she would think of the missing posters to the rhythm of war drums and discordant battle cries. When the enemy made it to her solitary choke point, and she herself would choke, dropping her blade and surrendering the right of passage. Her feet would carry her away from that place, along the outskirts of combat, thoughtless like the wind beneath a bluebird's feathers in flight, and Cecil would take her, hand in bloodied hand, back to a losing conflict. Back to her 'discipleship'. Back, back, back.[break][break]

“Ruin one of my missions like that again,” Lorne had threatened just once between breaking every finger on her right hand, “and you'll wish that fire had swallowed you whole.”[break][break]

It was a choice, to survive. (Maybe. Maybe it never was.) Eighteen years of use and abuse had made her forget that, when the worst of Lorne's inflicted cruelty had truly made escape seem impossible. It's humbling, of not pitiful that there is no grandstanding revelation that helps her to remember – no revelation of betrayal, or even the result of a despair old enough to be its own adult. Back then, after all, there had never been any proof that Lorne had sabotaged Gloria at all, and when the morning sun had shown on Krysah all those years ago, the avian had packed her things and followed obediently onto the open road.[break][break]

It's simply that 'freedom' has never been synonymous with the prodigal's daughter return, twenty years late to a mourning family. The realization comes between one beat and the next on an easy summer afternoon. Lorne walks wherever she deigns, does whatever she pleases, but there is no end destination that Gloria must seek to finally step free from her shadow. If giving up old hope must be her hope anew, so be it.[break][break]

Gloria accounts for every contingency. She thinks carefully through what life will be like should she continue as is, weighted against the death that will likely fall swift when she turns herself over to the law. (There isn't much mercy, after all, for someone who's aided in regicide.) She waits patiently for a window in which one mission ends before another has been set up to take its place, and completes every objective her teacher has given her to the very letter.[break][break]

While the others regroup in the aftermath of her last contract, however, their headcount will come up short. If she's lucky, they'll think her a casualty of just another senseless battle and not imagine her beyond a comrade fallen with honor. Fortune or its absence don't matter much in the end.[break][break]

Living or dead – at home or at peace – Gloria finally flies free.

[attr="class","sumreign-triangle-1"]