Long rough draft piece of my Rook de Riva being confronted with her past while Lucanis is stuck trying to reconcile his knowledge with his emotions while feeling protective.
One day, eventually, in the course of many much more impossible events, one day after an entire life time, Arsinoë de Riva finally walks out of an Eluvian and into the gaze of one of her Apostate mother's former collaborators.
After, Arsinoë will explain that he recognizes her because the name she gives the innkeeper was one of her mother's years ago. In the moment, all Lucanis knows is that they're being followed.
Lucanis and Arsinoë both immediately pick up on the fact that this elderly "farmer" has too much interest, is following a little too close. In the slight shift of a stance, a glancing look at the other's face, they come to agreement, easier than even he and Illario once could. They both have weapons ready as they turn into a deserted side street.
(Bellara is not quite as quick on the uptake despite their subtle efforts.)
The glint of steel and then Lucanis is moving. There is light and heat pouring over Arsinoë's gloved hand, a second away from bathing them in fire.
But the Elven man hasn't drawn on them. Instead, he's placed himself between Bellara and a red-crystal blade, swearing back in colorful Antivan when the Venatori exalt the name of the Great God Lusacan. Blood follows, and magic, the sweep of violet wings and the gleam of Bellara's bow.
Blood follows. Then silence as the man turns to look at Arsinoë critically, athame still unsheathed.
Lucanis doesn't move to put himself between them. He is a Crow: she is a Crow; it would be an insult to them both and all their training. Still, the urge is there, amplified in Spite's hissing demands, all of them centered on Rook.
The stranger seems unconcerned by Lucanis or by Bellara's rushed questioning. He keeps one brow raised as he asks "Corina Soldati, huh?" When Arsinoë doesn't answer, he adds 'You look like her, you know. More scars, but the face is the same."
Arsinoë doesn't twitch, but it's actually the stillness that gives her away. It would to any Crow — that unnatural, frozen poise of a child who has been beaten until they learn not to react, not to let the gasp or whimper slip past their lips.
Spite senses it too, his agitation palpable and roiling behind Lucanis's eyes, pushing for movement, to bring steel against this stranger who has FRIGHTENED startled Rook. Lucanis, like that same Crow child, does not react. He holds, ready, waiting for the shift in Arsinoë's stance that will give him permission to strike.
"Corina...Soldati?" Bellara asks, eyes flitting back and forth between Rook and the stranger. "Wait, is that a real person? Am I supposed to know who that is?"
Lucanis has never heard of a Corina Soldati in any capacity connected with the Crows, or in any of Caterina's careful strategizing around the merchant princes and their houses, but that doesn't have to mean anything. The part that matters is why the man cares.
If this is some past job come back to haunt Rook, it would better to end this now, quickly, and make their escape back through the Eluvian towards Treviso, where Viago can be apprised as Arsinoë's Talon. How Bellara would take that, though –
Rook still has not spoken- as uncharacteristic of her as her stony face, and that's setting off its own alarms- when the man interrupts his silent strategizing.
"She had other names. Antiklea, maybe. Antiklea Zangari?" A pause. "Fuck, you two don't know anything, do you." It isn't a question. "Well then, kid, what name are you using these days? When you're not using hers."
ROOK. IS QUIET! WHY IS ROOK? QUIET!
Lucanis couldn't answer Spite even if he wanted; he's never seen Arsinoë freeze like this, but there isn't time to dissect it. Bellara has moved to put herself between Arsinoë and the old man, Crows be damned, so Lucanis jumps in to speak the same way he would watch her back in a fight.
"De Riva." He answers for her. It's the only identity of hers a target has any right to know. "Why do you care?"
"We go back a ways," the man says, and finally sheathes his mage knife. Tucked into his belt, it looks as deceptive as he is, a farmer's hunting weapon without the glinting silverite blade. "You might have been too young to remember though, kid. And Antiklea didn't bring you around much."
"No." Rook doesn't move. She's normally an expressive talker, hands in constant motion, but she is still holding, eyes watchful. Waiting for the signal, as if young and bruised again."No, she didn't. Not when she didn't have to."
WHO. IS IT?
Lucanis bites back the question, instead making a deliberate point of not sheathing Rialto. He doesn't know of an Antiklea either, but something about this is throwing Rook is off her game. He can't afford to make more openings in her guard.
Footsteps go past the narrow mouth of the street and all of them, even the man tense. Spite hovers behind the man's shoulder, violet, violent light spilling over the stranger's face for only Lucanis to see.
SMELLS LIKE. RAIN AND DUST.
"Do we have a problem here?" Lucanis asks, at the same time as Bellara turns to Arsinoë, her back left open, FOOLISH , "Wait, do you know him Rook?"
Arsinoë glances her thumb along the sharpened Everite edge of her blade and shakes her head. "You weren't one of the ones she left me with, were you?"
Left you with???
"No," the man agrees. " You wouldn't have been any safer with me than you were with her. She's dead now, you know. Your mother."
What?
That's what this was about?
Lucanis has known of course, that Arsinoë wasn't de Riva by blood, whether it be Viago's or the previous Talon's. She was compradi, purchased, the same as most Crow fledglings were, and of course she had to have come from somewhere but –
Your mother is dead.
Lucanis blinked away the sudden twist in his chest and saw that Spite had rounded back to leer at the man's face, echoing confused anger. Incidentally, this also put the demon closer to Rook. Bellara had reached out immediately to put a steadying hand on Rook's elbow, but –
Arsinoë seemed to relax, her body shuddering as she released a breath. The mage knife was moving in her hands, but it was the same as the way she fidgeted with her fork or quill, not the intricate weave of a mage casting a spell.
"I assumed she was, by now," Arsinoë admitted, "It's been long enough. And even back then, well... I guess even as a kid I knew she wasn't going to come for me. Either she was dead or–"
Or cutting her losses. The unspoken words hung in the air.
And Arsinoë had been compradi. He knew that, knew the long, sordid history of the Crows and the children they bought to raise.
But... surely not. This was Rook. And even Caterina had-
LEFT ROOK? LEFT! ROOK!
"No, she wouldn't have," the man confirms, but Bellara's face is more devastated than Rook's, "that wasn't Antiklea's way of doing things. A couple of us looked, though, for what it's worth. Got as far as Filomena's widow and a couple of Templars, but then –".
"Then the Circle," Arsinoë agrees. "And then the Crows."
"The Crows? ... De Riva. Fuck, kid."
Lucanis bristles, even though his own thoughts have been circling and circling, twisting around compradi and bruising and silence, the strike of a cane. Arsinoë's free hand brushes his glove in recognition, and then the twist turns to shame.
"Things are what they are," Arsinoë tells her mother's associate with no more defensiveness than a shrug. Finally, the heat and flame of her mage orb flickers out of view. "I'm sorry if using one of her names upset you. I didn't expect it to be recognized after this long."
"Rook-" Bellara exclaims, but the glance Arsinoë shoots her isn't one looking for apologies.
The man shifts a little awkwardly, as if its finally hitting him just how absurd this whole conversation has been. "There are a few of us still around. A couple of the others might have some things of hers, I think. A stave or..."
"No. No that's not necessary."
"Arsinoë... Do you still use Arsinoë?"
"It's fine," Arsinoë waves him off, which doesn't actually answer the question, but the man relents. "I don't...She wouldn't..."
Wouldn't what? Wouldn't want to pass on her weapons to the daughter she apparently didn't look for?
"Still, I could-"
"No. Thank you. But whatever debts were there back then, neither of us owes the other now. I'll be fine."
"Debts?" Bellara asks incredulously, then "Rook, are you sure..."
"Bellara." Lucanis's jaw clicks as he says her name.
Arsinoë gives them all another small shake of the head, then glances at the still cooling Venatori corpses. "We should go. Before these are missed, I mean." Her eyes look to Bellara, to Lucanis, seeking, as if worried they might protest the sudden departure.
As if they would be worried about the groceries right now.
The man relents with a nod. "I'll handle the bodies. We can still do that much. Go safe... Signora de Riva."
Arsinoë turns heel without another glance in his direction. Bellara scrambles after her, leaving Lucanis to follow. He watches even as he leaves, until the old elf turns to the bodies with a sigh.
"So that was-" Bellara begins as he's catching up, but Arsinoë throws a hand up.
"Bel. Please. Not here."
Still Arsinoë accepts when Bellara tentatively links an arm through hers, though Lucanis swears he sees her flinch. Bellara looks back over her shoulder at him, expression still clear and full of all the words Arsinoë has rejected.
That was weird, right? He can almost hear her voice when their eyes meet. That was really weird. And sad.
Unfortunately... Lucanis thinks he understands more than he might like.
"When we get to the Lighthouse," he offers, "I'll send Harding for anything we need urgently and then I can start a pot of ciocalta calda while the stove heats."
Arsinoë gives no sign she heard him, her face distant. He starts revising dinner plans and the grocery list he will give to Harding. The broth can be put towards soup, maybe. Something easy to eat, to sip at, and what's left of the bread to soak in it.
LEFT ROOK? SOMEONE. LEFT ROOK THERE? Spite demands. The demon is unusually agitated, even for Spite.
Lucanis wishes he had a better answer.
But isn't that always how it is with the compradi?
