NAME. Iseult of the Red Hands
AGE & BIRTH DATE. 35 & February 11th, 755 CE
GENDER & PRONOUNS. Non-binary & He/they
RACE & CLASS. Halfblooded ( Regenerative Healing )
OCCUPATION. Sellsword
FACE CLAIM. Mahesh Jadu
( tw: abuse, violence, murder, prostitution )
Iseult, when asked, will say he was born from the sea. If you squint, you can nearly see it—hair like the lapping harbor, eyes lucid as abalone, teeth bared in pearly grin, heart just as blustery and wont to dash ships to pieces. However enigmatic a story it is, the bone of truth to it is this: the sea would not have him, and in her rejection he was born anew.
Their given name was lost to the foam, but they were born to the winter’s frosts. Raised by a hardworking mother in the tall-masted shadows of passing ships, one of which she swore would carry his faceless father back to them in a ritual that repeated each evening: her callused hands tucking the corners of a threadbare quilt beneath him, her voice low and like molasses, and a mythic ship that never came. The stories she parted with were vague. Only that he came from another land. Only that it was no fault of theirs he’d had to leave them behind in this one. When the youth was nine, she settled for a Camelot-bound brigantine. Mother and child stowed away in the merchant’s orlop in search of better prospects, soon to find the impetuous whims of the captain to be the arbiter of their fate. The ship had been set to sea for days by the time their presence was discovered.
There’d be no turning back to lose them at the nearest dock, a thrown schedule on such a ship was a femoral wound: they’d hemorrhage far more coin than two lives’ worth. Their trial was brief, the Captain’s claim was absolute: “to the sea, or to work for me.” So mother and son become cabin maid and swab—became consort and rat catcher. Became whatever they had to be to survive. They toiled for their safe passage until the long journey ahead fell short for his mother. “Infection came quick,” the surgeon broke the news to the youth before the captain’s cracked door. “At sea, sickness makes mincemeat of even the strongest men,” and while by nine the youth had seen so much, he’d never seen a sickness that purpled the throat.
Without her fearsome hand to guard him, the next slip up before the officers landed him at the ship’s rail again, the Captain’s hand snared in his collar. To the sea, or to work for me, became “to the sea, or your chances with me.” The youth was spared the decision, chance made it for him. The Captain produced a coin and flipped it, and he watched as it turned in the air between them, revolving thrice in those breathless, fear-strung moments, before turning up a Pendragon’s face. A benign, gilded face that imprints his memories still. But for now, the odds were not in his favor, no matter how he willed them to be. Maybe it was always up to the whims of chance and fate. Or maybe only this Captain, with his kingdom of groaning timbers.
There was the brigantine, and now there was only the sea, the open sea.
Years later, a knife in his neck, Iseult would wonder if this survival was the first evidence of his halfblooded nature. Another one of fortune’s many jests. But back then, the longshoremen of the harbor that hauled him up in their net that day, dripping the salt of Camelot’s coast, chalked it up to impossible luck. To one of fortune’s many blessings.
When he stopped retching seaweed, the harbormen brought the youth (of all places) to the town square’s brothel. The very nearest place with a spare bed, hot bowl of soup, and hosts willing to take in another mouth to feed. Through them, Iseult came to know the nooks and crannies of the world oft took shape around a certain closeness. The grand dame of the house turned out a far more hospitable guardian, and far more reluctant to have him swallowed by the sea. It was there, in the hearth-warmed corners of the kingdom’s underbelly, in the arms of their loud and vibrant leaning buildings, that the youth earned his keep. Earned a name, too. Iseult. “It means icy battle, for that chill in his eye!” The elder cook had argued. “No, it’s one who watches,” volleyed the counter girl, “for that owlish look he’s always got.” “Or iron ruler!” for the wise counsel he provided the women as he swept the brothel floors: “no, that colour pales you terribly. Yes, I think the lace is nice.” In the end, the only thing they could agree on was that the youth be named for a beauty: “noble in heart as in hair!” cackled the madame as she braided theirs back.
For women forged of mettle and iron and a youth brined by the sea, it was a home. They say it takes a village, and this would have to do: with heaping servings of stew, a bed, and plenty of work to earn his bowl, Iseult grew and grew quickly. Their broom was traded for bruised knuckles, as was the street’s way. Their familiarity to its denizens and the grand dame’s word their ticket, they made quick work of establishing a name as a sellsword. A quick study, bruiser work for the brothel evolved into contracts throughout Camelot’s underbelly. The grand dame only needed to point them in a direction: Iseult would be their own star to steer by. No captain nor deity could sway him (but a melodic pouch of coin never hurt). As for the bloodier bounty hunting, Iseult fell into it the way one falls asleep. One evening the grand dame called them back for another turn ‘round the home front. A Captain on shore leave had overstepped his place in her establishment, and so invited the madam’s merciless grudge. In Iseult’s pursuit, the trail grew warm then searing. It was none other than the man from their memories once more come home to harbor. It would be his last time. Iseult would make sure of that.
The encounter unfolded in the earliest hours, on a balcony by the shipyard. Iseult, the youth he once was stirred to a fury within, drew it out. In his wont to make the man suffer he became careless and was run through the throat with a dagger: pitched half over the rail and eyes affixed to the waters below as he bled. Only, he would not stay that way. The marionette and the invisible hand, Iseult wound back upright and sprang upon the captain, switching their places and forcing his back to the railing. The sellsword reeled a single, gilded coin from a breast pocket, its weight tantalizing in his palm. “To the sea,” he rasped, “or your chances with me.” The coin turned thrice, and a Pendragon’s gilded face turned heavenward.
Iseult cleaned the knife that’d struck his neck, sheathed it in the tyrant’s, and watched as the sea swallowed the last of him whole.
When blood stains you it leaves an imprint long after the wash. There was no going back, and where remorse might live, Iseult found only hunger. Found only the outline of the brothel slouching in the city’s dark, windows yellow with warmth. Found only the underbelly, and the comfort in its litany of lives. He would make a name for himself there. And, turning the mystery of that night on the balcony over and over in his mind, fingers ghosting his own throat for imagined scars, he’d take it on faith that wounds would not find him here for long. Not yet. While the heavens, while whatever magic protected him, may well have something to say for it, he put his faith in something lower: the hand with which he wields his blade. It’s all the thrill of profiteering, when the bottom falls out and you’ve not even your skin to lose. The ‘why’ of it he buried deep for the duration. Drowned in debauchery, drowned in drink, drowned in card games and bets on losing dogs (for certainty is a comfort seldom afforded). In his youth, Camelot was an elusive land of promise, the way his mother’s words had painted it. A gilded expanse whose gates were long closed to them. Now it would be his lion’s den, and its underbelly would bestow him a fitting title. A name passed ‘round in fascinated whispers: Iseult of the Red Hands.
It would be such for some time, and each flirtation with Death would only deepen the affair. In the ensuing blur, Iseult would come to know how fish felt on the fillet block. Would come to recognize the subtle notes of poison by taste. Would come to know the thundering of hooves not just by their percussive roar but by the imprint of their shoes. He’s sure he can die as any mortal when the sword swings swift and true, but there’s no denying the extent of punishment his body can take. The speed with which it stitches itself back together. Where his line of work is concerned: such a talent is worth much more than his weight in gold. He keeps it close to his chest. God knows what the more enterprising would do with it.
Where life had sharpened his senses on its cruel and comic whetstone; the countless brushes with death would start to dull them, would whittle his edges until he barely recognized them at all. The magic that keeps him upright had a whittler’s touch too: the why of it, in time, would hollow him. He’d only ever thought himself human, and his mothers tales of the Otherworld just that: wishful thinking for the sort of journeys only the worthy have. Now, he thinks of it at the brothel’s corner table, taking supper with the aging cook. He thinks of it in line at the Bakery to buy his bread. While dealing in coin in the Town Square. He thinks of it in all the places where time marches forward. Is he human? Is he something less, or more?
Perhaps that’s why Camelot is where it must come to a head — laden with human and fey tension, Iseult swears it must be the one place where time’s march stops. This place that remade him, that sits so closely to the doors to the Otherworld, feels like an undeath in itself; and a recent summons from the knights of the round, to serve as a liaison and informant from the kingdom’s underbelly, even more so. Not to mention, the long, listless hours working contracts for nobles shying from their own dirty work. It’s been years since a coin flip could decide his fate, and years since his own hand could. So here, yes here, he turns the coin of his thoughts just as feverishly as the one in his hands. Here, he’ll swear on whatever life he must to find his answer: what am I? And if the answer is a creature of scorn, then why, Titania, why?
+ versatile, inquisitive, droll
– insatiable, capricious, vindictive
PLAYED BY ISHMAEL. They/Them.
