Pathways

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

"He trusts you. You can get close to him."

The Silver Fang girl looks up at her with shock and fear in her eyes, but that is to be expected. She has the pride, the competitive drive, the need to prove herself. The feeling that her family's shame is her own.

She'll do.

The Athro smiles and steps away from her, leaving time to do its work. And the first, clumsy, uncertain kill will lead to the second, and then a third, and then one day the girl will look back and see the long, long procession of ghosts behind, like her own retinue of memories of Michael, of Tolly, of Jules, of the long, hard journey here. And everyone will fear her, and no one will love her, but the family's honour will be intact. And that's all that matters.

Speaks-Death idly traces the glyph painted on her arm, the same now as it was when she was young, and called Speaker for the Dead, and heard those words herself for the first time...


"He trusts you. You can get close to him."

Those had been Sedna's words at their last, hurried meeting. Well, almost their last meeting, after she had been passed the warning and refused to hide, refused to risk their long plan failing. Their very last meeting had been the one where Death's Kiss and she, painted black with flaps of skin on their arms for patagia, had sunk their claws into the Theurge's eyes. It had been easy. It had been the last of the long, dreadful journey to get here.

And now, with Sedna's last gift in her hands, she rises and goes to where her alpha sleeps. She has kept a long, long time silent, but now she has one last thing to speak for all the dead, and she speaks it into Death Comes Quiet's ear as the blade slips home.

"What Falcon has raised up, let none of us cast down."

The pack tear her apart, of course, as she intended. It gives Paul and Jamie just long enough to get everyone into position. And after one long, bloody night there are none left to tell trusting children


"He trusts you. You can get close to him."

The words are as true now as they had been then, though in a different way. She clasps his arm where he lies, in the litter they have improvised for him, for old and drifting as he has become still he refuses to miss this day, a day he has seen, he says, since first she stepped off that train. It has been a long journey, from then to now.

She walks into the court a stranger, for in her three years in Russia she has grown beyond all recognition.

"Edward Ryder," she says, silencing the babble that has begun around her refusal to kneel, in the ringing voice she had learned in the courts of Blood Red Crest. "You who call yourself," she spits out the word, "King. I am Speaker for the Dead, Elder of the Nation. By my rank and by my blood I call you assassin, I call you murderer, I call you unfit for your high position, and I say I will prove the truth of my words upon your body."

He stands, his face flushed dark with anger. "To the death, then, young Yekaterina?"

She nods, and raises Stalwart Guardian, reforged all those years ago by Jules but never yet tried in battle, before her face. "To the death."

Katrina wakes as the train jerks. The long journey is ending. This is her stop.