Philippa attempted to mop up the crimson tide. It ebbed and flowed, not growing any smaller just moving back and forth. She dipped her wooden hand brush into the bucket, before sprinkling sawdust on the ballroom floor. Blood seeped through the sawdust, splotches still remained.
Philippa focused her eyes on the work ahead, hoping her ears could be as deaf to the world. The sound of steel hitting wood and the screams of dying men came through the thick walls. Philippa forced herself up; she stood on tiptoes to glance out the stained glass windows. Outside a group of men bearing the doublets and Sigils of the peregrine falcon that rested on her own breast awaited a horrible fate. An executioner stood atop a podium of wooden scaffolding, in black coat and mask, bore a bloody long axe. In the distance, dead men danced in the trees to the swaying of the breeze.
Another man also stood on the podium, a man in his early forties, his head shaved. Resplendent in the purple robes of his office, the High Justice glanced up with those pale eyes of his, and something froze within her at his gaze.
Before she knew it, a sudden crashing and banging echoed as Lord Dansen stumbled into room. His once fine indigo coat was dishevelled, ripped on one side, with dried bloodstains near his stomach. The most pitiful thing was that he was crying, a grown man crying like a child. Drunk and sobbing, this wasn’t the first time that Philippa had dealt with drunken men; her own uncle had been a drunkard until he had died in a duel.
His killer had been young, gallant until he took her maidenhead. Soon after she had men whistling at her in the street and couldn’t think why. Then she learned that he had bragged to his fellows. She had lost the only family she had known, she had lost a part of her that should have only been hers to give, and she had given it to a fool. Still being a woman sworn to the flame had never appealed to her, but losing her maidenhead had changed matters. She could still hope for a marriage to an apprentice at best, at worst she’d rather not dwell on it.
Her thoughts were disturbed by Dansen’s words. “They’ll call me Dansen Babe-killer, turncoat. Babe-killer? “My lord, what do you mean babe-killer?” Philippa asked. He looked blearily through bedraggled hair to stare into her eyes.
“I killed that baby before it drew its first breath.” "Whose baby did you kill?"
"The only person who matters, Merrin’s, she’s dead. I gutted her." Philippa put her hand over her mouth.
“There was no resistance, it went through and through, clean.” Dansen drew a dagger from his belt, stabbing it into the table.
Her stomach roiled, she had to ask. She had to know. “And what of the Duke, did he survive?”
“Survive? You think they would kill his men if he were still alive. That Bellachian Prince survived though. The whole point of the treaty was to lure Trystan here so we could murder him. There was no way of him ever surviving this.” Lord Dansen grabbed a wine jug from a near table, emptying it into his mouth, only getting droplets. He threw the jug against the wall making another crash in the hall. Philippa dropped the red stained hand brush.
“Did you kill him? You said that you… ended Merrin’s life, what of Trystan? Philippa felt tightness at her hips; she looked down realizing that her dress was in an iron grip, and she was gripping ever tighter.
“Trystan deserved what he got, he was a fool, he did not listen to counsel, but Merrin, Merrin was innocent. She did not deserve to die as she did.” Philippa felt tightness in her chest.
“Trystan…” “…was a fool and a bloody traitor and deserved what he…” Philippa’s hand tingled as Dansen was cut off. She had slapped him. She began to breathe shallowly, her chest rising and falling too quickly. She had slapped a lord, nothing good was going to come of this. Dansen put a hand to his face, a dazed expression passing across it.
“You hit me, how dare you hit a lord?” Dansen’s face turned puce before paling, Philippa turned away but she heard the slopping.
“You call yourself a lord but you are no more than a drunkard. I can see my uncle behind your eyes, a shadow of him. You’re a monster just like him.”
“A monster like him? Your uncle, he…” “Hit me, yes, when he came back from a tavern.” Something shifted in Dansen’s eyes. Dansen’s expression softened. “What happened to him?”
“Trygan killed him in a duel, and then he left me as well.” “You don’t sound too happy at being saved.” She felt the heat rise in her cheeks.
“He took my maidenhead.”
“Ah, then he left you.”
“Then he left me.”
Dansen looked away as though embarrassed; his face dry, unlike Phillipa’s own. Dansen’s voice was as soft as his expression. “How did you know Trystan?”
“I was a scullery maid in Seaward, when I was younger under my aunt, until she…passed.”
“Your uncle’s work I assume.” Philippa nodded. “Heather was a good woman; she did not deserve to go like that.”
“What happened to her?”
“The alchemika said there was nothing they could do for her, her skull had been fractured when he had beaten her.”
“I’m a drunkard but I want you to know life gets better.” “You say that life will get better but when? I am tired of being hurt, abused and left alone. ”
“I know that Trystan meant something to you. His death was necessary, as Alchemists would say his death was the catalyst for peace.” Philippa kicked the bucket a tide of bloody water covering their feet.
“What a load of shit! That is what you tell yourself to justify what you did to him. You think that because he has died there will never be another civil war or a rebellion? No this will happen again and again. Brave heroes will fall to other’s selfish needs.”
“You want to talk of selfishness? Your brave young Trystan’s selfish desire led to a civil war causing death of thousands of men. Do you know how many died at the skirmish at Hullsrock? Let me tell you, over eight thousand men, thousands of lives wasted for one man’s selfish desires, your precious Trystan.”
“He never killed an unborn baby. I’ll let you in on one little fact; you will see Merrin’s face every night before you sleep and every morning when you wake. You will feel your blade going in and feel her collapse when the blade is removed. She will forever haunt you.” Dansen’s face contorted in horror. “How do you know that?”
“I know because before my eyes close at night, when they open I hear my aunt struggling trying to breathe through the cushion, I feel her struggle. I still have scars from where her nails tried to pull my hands free.”
“You murdered your own aunt? How could you do that?”
“Have you ever loved someone, Dansen? Have you seen someone you love in pain, knowing that they will not survive, that is only a matter of time before they die? That their death will be horrific, that they will choke and drown in their own blood. That you have the chance to save them from it, you can grant them mercy, make it quick.”
“I loved someone once but she fell ill, they said that there was nothing that they could do, they call themselves healers but there are plenty of things that they cannot heal. That is their greatest façade, they only pretend to heal, and it’s the body that heals not the alchemists.”