>>6328755Sandora sways on the pier.
She is trying to hold it in, and not just vomit.
Not just blood.
No, it’s that searing light that every other light devours—shuddering and scraping against the boorish container that is her meat and bones.
“You ‘right Madama Mirari?” Asks the mariner, scratching his bald head, giving her a long look from where he’s busy setting together their expedition.
When the idea came to her, she had not realized how desperate it would be.
Desperate to even stay alive and not turn into a cancerous magic stain.
“Peachy,” she assures him.
She is a teacher. Lying is half her job.
Sometimes to herself first.
She stumbles and hits the metal railing, her hands closing like a bird of prey’s talons against it, breathing heavily. The sea swings forwards, about to devour her—she pulls back, reaches for her third vial of Silt—she is wasting all her money on it and demand is soaring faster than Ansàrra’s sun.
She uncorks the vial and downs its contents, the glistening powder covering her tongue and her throat. It hits the inside of her mouth and dissolves, rushes inside her veins, calming the terrible energies that would burst out of her like a scalded egg.
Starless Night.
What is going on? That door… that door that needed to be shut was instead creeping open.“You better be still alive and kicking, Argia Candente,” she grumbles, drying the side of her mouth. “You over there…” she adds, pointing her gloved finger at the mariners. “Pick up pace! This is a diplomatic mission!”
Diplomatic in the sense Carnaval gave it.
The letter of Marque inside her robes spoke as much.
Perhaps, if luck served her for once in her life, it would just be enough.
Or—
Not luck.
Argia Candente would probably say that everything had already been decided.
The idea clashes with everything she has seen, with her own life: rising to the upper echelons of slavedom, commanding all she can from the cramped living space the chains of the Treviri Throne allow her to.
The mariners better pick up their slack.
Or there might not even be a Throne to come back to.
[cont.]
