Several nights after Autumn arrived at Xhex's cabin, a towel changed everything.
It was just a white hand towel, fresh from the dryer, destined to be rehung in the aboveground bathroom and used by either one of them. Nothing special. Nothing that Autumn hadn't handled either at the Brotherhood mansion or up in the Sanctuary over the course of decades and decades and decades.
But that was the point.
As she held it in her hands, feeling the warmth and the soft nap, she began to think of all the laundry she had done. And the trays of food she had delivered to the Chosen. And the bedding platforms she had made. And the stacks of johnnies and scrubs and towels...
Years and years of maid service that she had been proud to do...
You've been making a martyr out of yourself for centuries.
"I have not." She refolded the towel. And unfolded it again.
As her hands made work for themselves, Tohr's angry voice refused to yield. In fact, it got even louder in her head as she went out and saw the floors gleaming from her hand-polishing, and the windows sparkling, and the kitchen neat as a pin.
That symphath was your fault. I'm your fault. The weight of the world is all your fault -
"Stop it!" she hissed, clamping her hands on her ears. "Just stop it!"
Alas, the desire to become deaf was thwarted. As she limped around the small house, she was trapped not by the confines of the roof and walls, but by Tohrment's voice.
The trouble was, no matter where she went or what she looked at, there was something she had scrubbed or straightened or buffed right in front of her. And her plans for the night had included more of the same, even though there was no demonstrable need for any more cleaning.
Eventually, she forced herself to sit down in one of the two chairs that faced the river. Extending her leg, she looked down at the calf that had not looked right or worked right for such a very long time.
You enjoy being the victim - you're all about it.
Three nights, she thought. It had taken her three nights to move into this place and slip right into the role of maid -
Actually, no, she had started in as soon as she had woken up after that first sunset.
Sitting by herself, she breathed in the lemon-scented fragrance of furniture polish and felt an overwhelming need to get up, find a rag, and start wiping tabletops and counters. Which was part of her pattern, wasn't it.
With a curse, she forced herself to stay seated as a replay of that horrid conversation with Tohrment churned through her brain again and again....
Immediately after he had left, she had been in shock. Next had come great waves of anger.
Tonight, however, she actually heard his words. And considering she was surrounded by evidence of her behavior, it was hard to dispute what he had said.
He was right. Cruel though the expression of the truth had been, Tohrment was right.
Although she had couched it all in terms of service to others, her "duties" had been less of a penance, more of a punishment. Every time she had cleaned up after others, or bowed her head under that hood, or shuffled off to stay unnoticed, there had been a satisfying lick of pain in her heart, a little cut that would heal nearly as quickly as it was inflicted....
Ten thousand slices, over too many years to count.
In fact, none of the Chosen had ever told her to clean up after them. Nor had the Scribe Virgin. She had done it herself, casting her own existence in the mold of worthless servant, bowing and scraping over millennia.
And all because of...
An image of that symphath came back to her, and for a brief moment she remembered the smell of him, and the feel of his too slick skin, and the sight of his six-fingered hands on her flesh.
Yet as bile rose up in her throat, she refused to give in to it. She had given him and those memories far too much weight for far too many years...
Abruptly, she pictured herself in her room at her father's manse, right before she had been abducted, ordering around the doggen, unsatisfied by everything around her.
She'd gone from madam to maid by her own choice, pitching herself between the two extremes of unqualified superiority and self-enforced inferiority. That symphath had been the binding agent, his violence linking the ends of the spectrum such that in her mind one flowed from the other, tragedy overtaking the entitlement and leaving in its wake a ruined female who had made suffering her new status quo.
Tohrment was right: She had punished herself ever since then... and denying the drugs during her needing had been part and parcel of that: She had chosen that pain, just as she had picked her low station in society, just as she had given herself to a male who could never, ever be hers.
I've been using you, and the only person it's working for is you - it's gotten me nowhere. The good news is that this whole thing is going to give you a great excuse to torture yourself even longer....
The urge to attack some manner of dirt, to scrub with her palms until sweat beaded upon her brow, to work until her back ached and her leg screamed was so strong, she had to grip the arms of the chair to keep herself where she was.
"Mahmen?"
She twisted around and tried to pull herself out of the spiral. "Daughter mine, how fare thee?"
"I'm sorry I've gotten home so late. Today was... busy."
"Oh, that is fine. May I get you something to - " She stopped herself. "I..."
The force of habit was so strong, she found herself holding on to the chair again.
"It's okay, Mahmen," Xhex murmured. "You don't need to wait on me. I don't want you to, actually."
Autumn brought a shaking hand up to the tail end of her braid. "I feel quite undone this evening."
"I can sense that." Xhex came forward, her leather-clad body strong and sure. "And I know why, so you don't have to explain. It's good to let things go. You have to if you want to move forward in your life."
Autumn focused on the dark windows, picturing the river beyond. "I don't know what to do with myself if I'm not a servant."
"That's what you need to find out - what you like, where you want to go, how you want to fill your nights. That's life - if you're lucky."
"Instead of possibility, I see only emptiness."
Especially without -
No, she would not think of him. Tohrment had made it more than clear where their relationship stood.
"There's something you should probably know," her daughter said. "About him."
"Did I speak his name?"
"You don't have to. Listen, he's - "
"No - no, do not tell me. There is nothing between us." Dearest Virgin Scribe, that hurt to say. "There never was - so there is nothing I need to know about him - "
"He's closing up his house - the one he and Wellsie stayed in. He spent all last night packing up stuff, giving her things away, getting the furniture ready to move out - he's selling the place."
"Well... good for him."
"He's going to come see you."
Autumn burst up from the chair and went to the windows, her heart thumping in her chest. "How do you know."
"He told me so just now, when I went to make a report to the king. He said he's going to apologize."
Autumn put her hands up to the cold glass, the pads of her fingers going numb quickly. "For what part, I wonder. The insight that he was right about? Or would it be the honesty with which he spoke when he said he felt nothing for me - that I was merely a vehicle to free his beloved? Both are true, and therefore, short of his tone of voice, there is naught to offer apology for."
"He hurt you."
"No greater than I have been before." She retracted her hands and began rubbing them together for warmth. "He and I have crossed paths twice now in our lives - and I can't say I wish to continue the association. Even though his assessment of my character and my flaws is correct, I need not have that elucidated again, even gilded by syllables of 'I'm sorry.' That sort of thing sticks with one well enough the first time."
There was a length of silence.
"As you know," Xhex said quietly, "John and I have been having problems. Big ones, the kind of shit I couldn't live with even though I loved him. I really thought it was all over - what convinced me otherwise was not what he said, but what he did."
Tohrment's voice came back: You know damn well the only reason I'm with you is to get Wellsie out of the In Between.
"There is one difference, my daughter. Your mate is in love with you - and at the end of the day, that means everything. Even if Tohrment lets his shellan go, he will never love me."
The good news is that this whole thing is going to give you a great excuse to torture yourself even longer.
No, she thought. She was done with that.
Time for a new paradigm.
And though Autumn had no idea what it was, she was damn sure going to figure it out.
"Listen, I have to hustle," Xhex said. "But I'm hoping this won't take long - I'll come back as soon as I can."
Autumn glanced over her shoulder. "Do not rush on my account. I need to get used to being on my own - and I might as well start tonight."
As Xhex left the cabin, she was careful to lock up behind herself - and wishing she could do more for her mother than just turn a dead bolt: Autumn's emotional reorientation was extreme, the female's interior grid turned upside down on itself.
But then, that was what happened to people when they finally got a clear picture of themselves after aeons of sublimation.
Not a happy place. And it was hard to witness. Hard to leave behind - but Autumn was right. There came a time in everyone's life when they realized that in spite of how hard they'd been running from themselves, everywhere they went, there they were: Addictions and compulsions were nothing but marching bands of distraction, masking truths that were unpleasant, but ultimately undeniable.
The female did need some time to herself. Time to think. Time to discover. Time to forgive... and move on.
And as for Tohrment? There was a part of Xhex that really wanted to take whatever had been said to her mother out of his hide. Except she had been around him, and he was suffering in ways that a bruised jaw couldn't compete with. Tough to know how much of it was the shit with Autumn and how much was Wellsie - her instinct told her they'd all find out soon enough, however: The Brother had only started by dismantling that house and giving away Wellsie's clothes.
His end game was pretty damn clear.
Then they'd see just how much he cared about Autumn.
On that note, Xhex dematerialized and headed to the east. She had spent the entire day on Xcor's home turf, never getting closer than a quarter mile away: The male's grid had been clear to her as soon as she'd gotten within range, and she'd been careful to get beads on those of his soldiers as well before she'd headed north to the mansion and reported to the king.
And now she was back under the veil of the night, moving slowly through the forest, throwing out her symphath senses.
Closing in on the area where the grids had been concentrated during the daylight hours, she dematerialized at clips of a hundred yards, taking her sweet time, using the pine boughs as cover. Man, shit like this made her really appreciate evergreens, their fluffy branches not just concealing her, but providing a snowless ground cover that hid her footprints as she went from trunk to trunk.
The empty farmhouse she eventually came across was exactly what she would have expected. Made of coarse old stone, it was sturdy and had few windows - the perfect bunker. And of course, the irony was that with its snow-covered roof, and its cheery chimneys, the place looked like something off a Christmas card.
Ho-ho-ho, Season's Beatings.
As she cased the environs, the van that was parked off to the side seemed to belong somewhere else, an unwelcome shot of the modern in what appeared to be a resolutely antiquated picture. And the same was true for the electrical lines that came in and were anchored at the rear corner.
Xhex ghosted to that back flank. It was impossible to know whether or not the power was live: No lights had been left on, the house dark as the inside of a skull.
The last thing she wanted to do was trigger an alarm.
Except a quick look at the glass of a window had her frowning. No shutters - unless they were on the inside? More important, no steel bars. Then again, the underground would be the priority, wouldn't it.
Going around, she looked in every window, then dematerialized up to the roof to check the dormers on the third floor.
Totally empty, she thought with another frown. And not well fortified.
Back down on ground level, she took out both her guns, grabbed a deep breath, and...
Re-forming inside the house, she was in full attack mode, her back to the corner of the empty, dusty living room, autoloaders up in front of her.
The first thing she noted was that the air was as cold inside as out. Did they not have heat?
Second thing was... there was no sound of an alarm.
Third: No one appeared from out of nowhere, ready to defend the territory.
Didn't mean this was a lickety-split sitch, however. What was more likely was that they didn't give a crap about anything on this floor or above.
With care, she dematerialized over to the doorway of the next room. And the next. The logical location of basement stairs would be the kitchen - and what do you know, she found what she assumed were them right where she expected them to be.
And gee-fucking-whiz, the door keeping her out was sporting a brand-new solid lock made of copper.
It took her a good five minutes to pick the bitch, and by then her nerves were twitchy. Every sixty seconds she stopped and listened hard, even though her symphath side was out in full force the whole time, her cilices left behind at the cabin.
When she finally worked the lock, she opened the door but a crack - and had to let out a dry laugh: The hinges squealed loud enough to wake the dead.
It was a reliable, old-fashioned trick - and she was willing to bet every door and window in the place was likewise unoiled; stairs probably creaked like an old woman if you put any weight on them, too. Yup, just like folks had done before electricity had been invented - a good ear and a lack of WD-40 was an alarm that never needed a battery or a power source.
Putting her penlight between her teeth so she could keep a gun in each hand, she searched what she could see of the rough wooden staircase. Down at the bottom there was a dirt floor, and she flashed herself to it, pivoting quickly into a defensive stance.
Lot of bunks: three sets of uppers and lowers with a single off to one side.
Clothes in big sizes. Candles for light. Matches. Reading materials.
Cell phone charging cords. One for a laptop.
And that was it.
No weapons. No electronics. Nothing that offered any true identification.
Then again, the Band of Bastards had started out as nomads, so of course their personal effects were few and very portable - and this was part of the reason they were so dangerous: They could relocate at the drop of a hat and leave no meaningful footprint behind.
This definitely was, however, their inner sanctum, the site where they were relatively vulnerable during the day - and they did protect themselves accordingly: The walls and the ceiling and the back of the door were covered with steel mesh. No getting down here, or out of here, but through that opening way above.
She went around slowly, looking for trapdoors, a tunnel entrance, anything.
They'd need an ammunition storage facility somewhere in here: Even as mobile as they liked to be, there was no way they could go out night after night buying just enough bullets to get them to the dawn.
They'd need a cache.
Refocusing on the single cot, she guessed it was Xcor's, as their leader, and it didn't take a genius to figure that if there was any hiding place, it would be in his area - he had just the kind of suspicious mind to not fully trust even his own soldiers.
Investigating the bed with her light, she searched for triggering mechanisms either to an alarm or a bomb or a trapdoor. Finding none, she sheathed her guns for a moment and lifted up the metal frame, moving aside. Taking out a miniature handheld metal detector, she scanned the dirt floor and...
"Hello, boys," she murmured.
Her handy-dandy piece of equipment picked up a perfectly square outline that measured about four by two and a half feet. Kneeling down, she used one of her knives to displace the soil around the peripheral edges. Whatever it was, was buried deep -
Xhex froze as her acute hearing informed her that a car had pulled up.
It was not one of the Bastards or their cohorts, however. The emotional grid was far too uncomplicated.
A doggen, arriving with provisions?
Flashing up to the head of the stairs, she shut the door as much as she could without reengaging the lock and then went back to the buried box. Moving at triple time now, she kept one ear pinned on the footsteps creaking around on the first floor....
On the long side of the delineated rectangle, she used her knife point to probe the packed dirt for a handle. Finding nothing, she repeated the investigation on the short -
Bingo. Brushing the earth away, she gripped a circular ring, put the penlight back between her teeth and heaved with everything she had. The lid weighed as much as a car hood, and she had to swallow her grunt -
Wow. Talk about an arsenal.
In the large box below there were handguns, shotguns, knives, ammunition, munitions cleaning supplies... all of it in a well-ordered, obviously watertight environment.
Among which was a long, black, hard-plastic rifle case.
She took the thing out and put it on the dirt floor next to her. One look at the lock and she cursed. Fingerprint activated.
Whatever. The damn thing was big enough to house one or maybe two long-noses. So it was coming with her.
With quick, sure hands, she shut the lid, kicked dirt back over it, and patted the surface so it was packed hard once more. Covering her tracks took less time than she thought, and before she knew it, she was moving the bunk into place again.
Picking up the case with her left hand, she listened. The doggen was moving around upstairs, the female's grid as unremarkable as it had been when she had arrived: She had heard nothing, knew nothing.
Glancing around, Xhex thought it was unlikely that the maid had the key to get down here. Xcor would be too cagey for that. But still, it wasn't safe to just hang out. Even if they gave the doggen the run only of the upstairs, one of the Bastards could get injured in the field at any time, and though she had no hesitation in fighting any one of them, or every fucking one, if the rifle was in fact in this case, she needed to get the weapon out immediately.
Time for a meet-and-greet.
As she dematerialized up to the head of the stairs, her weight on the top step released a creak from the wood.
On the far side, the doggen called out, "Sire?" There was a pause. "Wait, I shall assume the position."
What. The. Fuck?
"I am ready."
Xhex palmed the doorknob, opened the way, and stepped out, expecting to find some kind of Kama Sutra nightmare going on.
Instead, the older female was standing in the corner of the kitchen facing the juncture of the walls, with her eyes covered by her hands.
They didn't want her to be able to identify them, Xhex thought. Smart. Very smart.
Timely, too, as she would have had to waste precious minutes screwing with the female's head. Further, that "position," as it were, was going to save the doggen's life later, when Xcor eventually found out that his lair had been infiltrated while they were gone.
If you didn't see anyone ever, there was no way you were protecting an intruder.
Xhex shut the door, and the lock triggered itself, reengaging. Then she dematerialized right out of there, carrying the gun case against her chest.
Good thing it wasn't that heavy.
And God willing, Vishous was going to be off rotation for the night.