who: @keirmorozov where: somewhere in the Silverlands when: presently notes: yippee yahoo wahoo
Time trudged along slowly as if the cells below the building housing Lórien’dal’s governance existed in a vacuum within which time was suspended. Then again, Artemisia had stopped counting the passage of days when her opportunistic cellmate vanished and the Faiman realized what a rotten bargain she had made. Every ticking of the clock was little more than a momentary barrier between herself and the inevitable and death itself was a barrier between an increasingly desperate life and an eternity of agony in the Abyss. This was no underdog’s story, there was no glimmer of hope awaiting her on the other side of the bars of her cell. Artemisia could take comfort in the fact she had given her sisters ever ill gotten advantage she could scrounge for to procure for them in this life, but the rest fell on her as if she were already dead.
A visitor had come days before, they stood before her composed of one dark shroud and two birds. One was a figment worn upon the collar bone visible only to those who were cohorts of the Nightingales. The other was a crow, its eyes wet and shining and its feathers iridescent as an oil slick. They spoke of news that never took material shape: a man of some noble stature in the back of the courtroom, they said. They described him as urbane, focused, and attentive. There was talk of greased palms and whispered deals, of called in favors and ledgers wiped clean. Artemisia found little comfort in the mystery of his presence. She saw no point in hope for her life when there was none left for her soul.
Little light filtered in from the sliver of a window that provided her only visage of a world beyond the cell block. She could not truly reach it to peer out at the world above her. Her circadian rhythm, stunted from the dark stillness of imprisonment, failed to wake her from her slumber as she awaited an inevitable verdict. Instead of the sun, a persistent cawing plunged her into the torment of the waking world day after day.
Days and dreams and cycles of futile resistance and soul numbing acceptances later, a warden arrived before her cell. They unlocked it roughly, stepping in and restoring to Artemisia the few things she had been taken into custody in: her mother of pearl hair comb with its cascading carved beads made to look like wisteria, her inky black dress with its snow white trim, her expertly cobbled shoes, the locket that had once belonged to her mother, and her five rings for each of her sisters. She was commanded to wash and dress; her hair was to be worn up, so as not to compromise sight of her neck. Thus, Artemisia made herself busy with the work of transforming herself into a pretty corpse.
The weight of the terrible things Artemisia had done for the sake of herself, her sisters, and others like the Abelen girls had been a heavy mantle for some time. She had learned to carry it, and to carry it well. When she followed the warden through the dark hall of the cellblock her head was lifted and her posture pristine. She refused to allow her shoulders to sag in defeat or her gaze to be directed anywhere but forward, even as she was almost certain she heard the fluttering of wings as she passed through the threshold to the winding stairwell that would allow her to rejoin the rest of the world if only for them to spectate as her head was cleft from her shoulders.
When the warden opened the door before her she was not blinded by the sun she had not seen in weeks but with the cool countenance of a man sat looking smart and languidly all at once waiting for her instead of the deadly blade awaited only the most ruthless criminals. A fine desk of deeply stained wood was between them, a contract for bargained freedom in exchange for discretion or gold or whatever still interested mortal men on the table waiting for the ink to dry. She heard the door close behind her, but Artemisia forced herself to meet his eye and hold his gauze undaunted. Her head canted to the side only a few degrees before she floated across the marble floor and sank smoothly into the seat across from him. “You make a rather queer looking guillotine.”