Private Tales Cold Winds and Colder Hearts

[Shrike]

The sea spray stung Tydeus’ face. This time of year the ocean seemed a frigid thing, a denizen of lurking demons and sudden storms. He waited on a remote dock in Alliria’s great harbor, the sole figure there this time of the morning.

But not for long.

A new ship came in, with a hull blacker than deepest midnight - sails tattered and torn.

She did not fly the flag of the red moon and skull, not here, but Tydeus would have known that ship regardless.

Ravenna’s vessel. Why here, why now? He’d received only a scry message from Cerak to wait for the ship. Ravenna herself? No. She wouldn’t leave the island to come so far. Not these days.

Then who?

 

[Elidraena]

A ship groaned as it settled against the dock, the wood and rope straining, protesting her arrival. Elidraena stepped onto solid ground with the surety of someone who had burned every single bridge along the pathway to here. Alliria. The scent of brine and rot clung to the harbor, thick as the dampness of the air. But it was the weight of stolen freedom pressing deepest into her bones.

Ravenna’s ship- her ship now- loomed behind her, blacker than an abyss. A ghost on the water. A ship fit for the dead. She supposed she may join that rank once Ravenna discovered her great beast missing. She had stripped it of its colors. She had torn away the flags of its allegiance. But the bones of the great vessel still spoke of Cerak.

It was clear enough in the way dockworkers turned away from her. Clear in the wary glances cast from the shadows of the early morning. The eyes saw a thing that did not belong. Something that should not have come here.

Elide cared little for their superstitions.

Her gaze simply swept the dock, finding him with little trouble. A lone figure waiting.

Twice bitten. The only name she had outside of her home.

She approached him, wind tangling through the salt-damp strands of her white hair, the sway of the ocean still heavy in her limbs.

“You’re alone.” Not a question. Just a fact. A warning.

 

[Shrike]

The Shrike did not move to bow, or incline his head in greeting, or show any supplication her father or aunt might have expected. He stood unmoving as a limestone cliff face overlooking the crashing waves below. Scarred by the ocean’s lashing, weathered by time, but still and cold and unfeeling.

“I left the rest of my band…” he paused, something dark in his gray eyes, something sharp as steel. The memory of a trek through the wilds. Bodies on the wayside. Dead from hunger. Dead from disease. Dead by the hand of Snakemen. “…elsewhere,” he rasped at last, his voice a low timbre halfway between a whisper and a growl. As though a wolf had torn out part of his vocal cords and left him permanently hoarse. Not far from the truth.

“Ravenna isn’t on the ship, is she.” Not a question. A measuring, as of weights and scales. “No one is.”

If he walked on board he was sure he would find only a skeleton crew, in every sense of the word.

“Yet you have her look. Who are you?”

 

[Elidraena]

She stared at him, face unmoved, unflinching. The wind tugged at her coat, salt stinging her lips, but she made no effort to break the silence he left in his wake. Others would have bowed by now, lowered their heads, spoken her name with tight-throated reverence. Even if they had once spat it through their teeth. She had bled and starved and clawed her way through Cerak. Once, nothing more than a whore’s bastard. But time and pain had turned her into something else entirely.

Not that it mattered here.

His words drifted like fog curling around the docks, heavy with ghosts and silent truths. She hummed quietly to herself, almost a note of amusement that never quite met her eyes. “No,” she said at last, voice like the edge of glass (cut at 45 degrees), “No one is on board.”

There was a beat of silence. She let it linger, tasting the moment, letting him imagine what might have become or Ravenna and those who manned her vessel.

“I had no need for them.” The wind shifted, the boat groaned. “The vessel is mine now.”

He asked who she was, and her mouth twitched. Just barely. “Elidraena,” She sounded her full name out. “But you may call me Elide.” She supposed here, the name Princess of the Tower did not hold any weight. Not that it mattered.

“And you? The Twice-Bitten?”

 

[Shrike]

A frown furrowed the silver brow of the half-elf. The scars marring his face and body itched at the mention of that name. Twice-Bitten. Better than the low thrum of constant pain they usually brought. They’d been quiet since his journey to the Tree. Since being bestowed the blessings of the dark ones. A suppressed pain. More manageable now that in years gone.

“I see.”

Elide? Small wonder he did not recognize her. She was daughter to Agravayne, niece to Ravenna. A princess of that grim corsair fortress in all but name. A stranger when last Tydeus visited the black isles of Cerak At’Thul. Entirely off-limits to one like him. Refuse from a wreck at sea. Ravenna was protective of her brood.

His eyes turned to the horizon, studying the sails far out at sea. Might any of those be pursuers, or merely the many ships bound for Allirian harbor and trade? Impossible to say.

“You’ve come a long way from your Tower,” he remarked, finally looking back to her. Pale of skin, despite such a journey. Perhaps she traveled by night as her father had when he used to reave the coasts. Her hair was whiter still. Her eyes seemed to dance in color. Peculiar. But he could not deny the haughty countenance she bore, prouder than any Allirian banker. As proud as those old families of Vel Anir.

“Tydeus.”

The name of the Shrike itself would be undue in these parts. A wanted man, that Shrike. But Tydeus? Tydeus was just another mercenary.

“You have never been to Alliria, have you?”

He did not think she had ever indeed been off the island.

If something were to happen to her here… Ravenna would be displeased.

A dark room full of sharp instruments and screams. Not a fate he sought. Perhaps he could kill Elide now, dump her in the bay. Pretend he’d never met her? And then what? Burn the ship? No. Far too complicated.

The muscles in his jaw tensed. It seemed he would have a need to keep this girl alive.

 

[Elidraena]

Elide tilted her head, eyes narrowing slightly. Not in suspicion, but amusement. Tydeus, he said. She said nothing and only stared at him as though weighing his name against the ones whispered in the Tower's shadowed corridors. Her aunt called him many things. None of them Tydeus.

Still she did not challenge it.

Instead, her gaze wandered past him, to the sprawling stone of Alliria in the distance, cloaked in the morning haze. Ships creaked behind her. Birds cried overhead. The world beyond Cerak smelled...different. Less bloody. More...rot.

She breathed it in all the same.

"I have never left the island," She admitted, her voice a little softer but no less certain. "Never seen past its shores until now." She looked back to him now. Sharp. Cool. Expectant.

"So, give me the tour." Again, it was not a request. Not from the girl who had stolen her aunt's ship, arrived alone, and declared it hers. Not from the girl born of shadowed bloodlines.

"That is, of course, unless you plan to feed me to the bay." She raised a brow as if she had been listening to his thoughts. "In which case, we might as well start there."

 

[Shrike]

Ah yes, that cold demanding snap in her voice, bracing as a blast of frigid air. Certainly a blood relative of Ravenna, though that defiance in her eyes and the thirst for adventure seemed all her father. Tydeus wondered why Agravayne still secluded himself on the isle. Probably too drunk these days to remember the pirate he once was.

“No,” Tydeus said after a long moment, “I think the bay would spit you back up.”

A nasty twitch of his lips echoed the semblance of a smile.

“Come then, princess. To the walls.”

He led her away from the ship, doubtful that any tax officials would be awake at this hour to charge her duties for docking quite yet.

They reached one of the many gatehouses just under the wall and slipped inside, Tydeus tersely answering any questions as they clambered up steps until they stood atop the battlements.

Dawn’s fingers clawed up from the distant darkness in a red orange spray. Tydeus turned around and nodded at the city spread out below, a maze of buildings and narrow alleys coming alive in every direction as the morning bells began to ring.

“Behold, Alliria. The greatest city in Arethil.”

 

[Elidraena]

Elidraena followed behind without hesitation. Her steps were kept light, clearly unbothered by the rough climb, sea-salt still drying on her hair and skin as she trailed a little too closely behind him in a quiet, unsettling way that living in the Tower had taught her. She asked him questions- none of which that had mattered. Not yet, at least.

What is the bell for? Why are the streets so narrow? Why does this place smell?

Superficial questions. Idle curiosities. She barely seemed to even care for the answers he provided, filing them away just as easily as she dismissed them.

The gatehouse they had slipped into was of old stone, damp, dark, and cramped. Entirely unimpressive. She had grown up in worse, though.

By the time they had reached the top, dawn was clawing over the horizon, painting the sky in blood and fire. She watched as Tydeus gestured towards the sprawl beneath them and spoke as if it were something sacred.

Behold, Alliria. The greatest city in Arethil.

Elide stared at it all. Then blinked. Flat and utterly unimpressed. Her mouth tugged down at the corners. It wasn't quite a sneer. Not quite disappointment either. Just...expectations unmet. "This is it?" She said after a beat, words dry as old bone, while her gaze swept across a maze of rooftops, smoke curling from chimneys.

It would have to do.

"For the greatest city," she mused quietly, leaning over the edge, "it looks like it might sink beneath its own filth."

She paused. And then, a faint hum beneath her breath. Just to herself.

"I suppose it will have to work." For now. "Tell me, where do you reside?"