NO LOVE LOST, OPEN!

[ANA DARKHOLME]

Lady Ana Darkholme of Crowskeep was…drunk.

She didn’t often have free time, and now that she had it she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. She didn’t know where the formidable Lord Darkholme was nor was she inclined to care, and as the tournament had carried on over the course of a few days she’d found herself distanced from him and pleased about it. On the third night of her time in the kingdom’s capital she’d found her way to the three-story inn that was The Quill and Tankard and discovered a taste for ale, and the rest, as they say, was history. Unlikely as it was, she’d never been drunk before, which was a side-effect of having a protective older brother who was protective in only the most demeaning sense of the word, and it was safe to say that she was making up for it now.

Nursing her cup of ale which might have been her sixth or seventh, Ana wasn’t sure, she sat at one of the inn’s stools and pondered life. No, she’d pondered life earlier and that had been depressing because in all truth she wasn’t sure her life was the most interesting or the most fulfilling. She had settled to talking to the strangers around her, intrigued by the lives of the whores that frequented the tavern and the gruff commoners who came to spend their week’s meagre wages to get roaring drunk and flirt with the whores who were there for that very purpose. They were all very poor, and she felt out of place among them, disgusted by her own affluence, but she’d sat with their group for a while and guarded her purses like the best of them (because there were thieves all around the area and gods knew she needed what little money she carried, how else was she to buy ale!) and she found she liked them more for their honesty than most of the nobles she’d met in her lifetime. She’d laughed with their jokes, even if most of them had been at her expense.

But they’d gone off ten minutes ago, the whores having ended up in the laps of the common men, and who was she to deny them that, eh? So now she sat alone, booted feet knocking lightly against the leg of the table she sat at, her hands folded around the cup of ale before she lifted it and drank deeply, glancing around the tavern. Four hours in and she’d already lost her pretences of good behaviour, mostly due to the company she’d found, so when she turned and saw a man with sullen eyes and a sharp, dangerous mouth staring at her breasts she picked up a knife one of the commoners had left buried in the wood of the table (after slamming it down when a pickpocket had passed them) and twirled it lightly in one hand, putting the cup down with the other, “Do you like your eyes where they are, or would you rather I cut them out for you?” she asked breezily, and laughed when he moved away to the far side of the inn, diverting his gaze.

Who knew? Threats of physical violence worked as well as a sharp tongue.

[ZIENTHERYS PORT]

Zientherys traced the lines of the wood carved in fashion of a cup. Its contents now half-empty, its momentary owner long dazed. Time was a foreign substance fleeting from her fingertips. There was no else sheltered inside the wooden beams for Zien, it was simply her and her drink. That small window of opportunity opened led the bastard was free to wander. Take in the sights of the greatest kingdom in North America, they said. Find a handsome knight and bestow upon a kiss and plenty, they said. Like a flowery fairy, Zien smiled curtseying as she exited the view of her fellow servants. Armaments round the markets, more armaments by the Clutch, and hundreds more in lieu of the tournament for the king. There was nothing special about the Western Kingdom, in fact the colony of commoners mingled with knights and nobles melted her stomach and want to go home. Never in the Vale, not even her father’s house but had Zientherys the ability she would spend all her days in the sea. Turning away from a juggling jester and parting through a couple on stilts, she had enough and sought for solace elsewhere. She made sure to stay away from whence the merchant she called a wild beast set up his shop. Not out of fear, Zien reminded, but out of pity. The next time they meet, she would not be so kind. Growing up with Braya Port taught Zien not only to harden her skin against those who chose to beat upon her with their tongue, their fists and repay them in kind. Us bastards have to stick together and we will, we’ll take no prisoners, Braya would say. The thought of her lifted the corners of her lips for a split second. Birds of the same feather flew in the same flock together. She drew the cup once against her lips. The liquid burning as she gulped it down to the very last drop.

The drink was no more yet Zientherys bore a look inside, tipping it over to confirm what she already should know. “All gone,” she spoke in a singsong manner. A spark and a twinkle grew brighter as she found an exorbitant humour in the empty wooden cup in her grasp. The woman shot to her feet, the sudden need to wander across the jungle of hazy tables, cackling harpies and a pit of black toothed wonders. Eyes narrowed. Zientherys was determined. Treading as carefully as she could, else she’d fall inside a trap and never find another fill. She managed to steer herself closer only to scrunch her features after travelling a foot at a loss of her goal. She swung her limbs in front of a woman with dark ringlets and a full poofy skirt. Noted by those around her, Zientherys was teeter-tottering with what should be happiness, nearly crossing the threshold of drunkardness.

She pointed to the fancy woman with most likely fancy pants. Her head titled to one side as she swayed slightly to keep on her feet. “You...” Zien shouted. Her words remained unslurred. At least for now. Grabbing the empty seat before her, its wooden legs scrapping the floor, she declared: “This is my seat.” She proceeded to sit, scowling at the dark haired fancy woman until her face broke into a wide grin. “I don’t know who you are but I think I like you...” She sniffed the air around them. “You don’t reek of beer, sick or piss, more like wine, apples and, and gardenias...” A smile plastered along the woman with gazy eyes. Suddenly she straightened up, a look of menace aimed straight at her companion. Her voice hushed, nostrils flared and jaw tightened, like a dirty secret she was about to share with eyes wide in horror. “You’re a noble, aren’t you?”

[ANA DARKHOLME]

The Quill and Tankard was never quiet, she had to give it that. Ana restrained herself from drinking awhile, since her vision had started to become confusingly blurry (and though she’d never admit it, that had scared her slightly more sober, being unfamiliar with the effects of drunkenness) but cupped the flagon in her hand possessively, staring around the little inn with a grin on her face that might have read to strangers as ‘I’m not quite sober and not quite sure what I’m doing but gods, am I enjoying myself!’ although perhaps not in so many words. She shifted in her seat and after a while took to drinking again, laughing into her cup as a group of commoners nearby burst into a merry song, and held her flagon in the air, unable to sing along since she didn’t know the words. It was, she felt, a very rude song, and the whore they were singing it to should by all rights have thrown a tankard at them or something, though it was too funny not to laugh at.

Nearby, she saw when she looked away from the group and the song faded into the quiet background hum of the inn, there was a woman teetering around the tables, with a sharp, memorable face and long, dark hair, empty cup in hand. Ana watched as she moved lithely around the obstacle course of tables and people, not going unnoticed by a group of rugged-looking farmers in the corner, who started yelling for the woman’s attention, hoping to attract her over, no doubt. In a move even Ana herself couldn’t have predicted nor explained she found herself draining her cup of ale and threw it at them across the room, and laughed unabashedly when it hit one of them in the shoulder, splashing the last few drops of ale she’d missed across his neck. When she looked up again the woman was in front of her, and Ana canted her head, smirking when the other woman swayed and shouted at her. “Me?” she raised her eyebrows, affecting confusion far too well, but it didn’t last; it was drunken laughter that followed and she leaned forward, elbows on the table just like her late mother had taught her not to do. The other woman kept talking, and Ana pressed her lips together, barely containing a grin and barely keeping her silence, but then the dark-haired woman’s expression changed into one of something that might have teetered between horror and hatred, though Ana couldn’t tell. You’re a noble, aren’t you? Was she a noble? She couldn’t remember. Oh, yes – she was Lady Ana! “No,” she replied with a deadpan expression settling on her features, “I am a unicorn.”

Laughing, she reeled back off of the seat and towards the bar, finding her steps far more fumbling than she’d originally intended, though eventually she found her bearings enough to walk straight. She placed her hands on the bar when she reached it, ignoring the dirt and scum all over it, and turned back to her new friend, smiling wickedly, “I’m buying you a drink, missus!” she called, all formality gone as the ale worked its way through her and made her cheeks glow with warmth. Ale served to her and coins exchanged, she returned with careful steps, blinking rapidly as she wound her way around the mass of tables and people, the inn seeming even louder. So it was when she reached the table the other woman had joined her at that she sat down heavily, slamming the two cups down in front of herself and, well, her friend. Expression sobering, she cocked her head and studied her new acquaintance, quite pleased with herself, “Drink up, it’s good. I’m Ana, who’re you?”

[ZIENTHERYS PORT]

A series of tables matched with seats along with those whom sat on them, as they plotted around the popular inn in the kingdom, were dancing behind the gaze of one inebriated Zientherys Port. It was a strange sensation as she waged a war with gravity, holding herself upright at this point. She spread her arms out in attempt to regain her balance with her eyes scrunched closed. As she forced her heavy lids open, something whirred over her shoulder and caused a commotion. A eruption of laughter went ignored as Zien tuned those concerns out as she trained her dark eyes over a girl with a face of innocence sitting on her lonesome. There was something fairly familiar about her. Something that she could not name but that could have been the drink swaying the maiden’s grasp on what was real and what was conjured from thin air.

A noblewoman, that’s what Zien accused her of and yet the sweet smelling girl stoned her face refuting her with a straight and simple no. But before Zien could challenge her reply, the girl thwarted her in reintroducing herself as a mythical creature, a unicorn. The girl was unicorn? Zien blinked twice, matching the deadpanned expression on her present companion before bowing her head as she slammed her cup on the table. Her long black hair curtained her face. She tightened her grip on the cup as her whole body began to tremble. “A unicorn?” More a statement than a question. Zien charged her torso forward until she was a nose away from the other. Their bodies divided by the table between them. “You’re a unicorn?” She repeated, more hushed than before. Her eyes went wide and bright. Her laughter unrestrained as she fell back, charged her empty cup in the air. The unicorn earned a rich guffaw sincere from the Southerner’s belly. “Gratitude to the gods, I’ve longed to be in one’s presence since...” Zien frowned. “Since I was a little girl.”

Zien shook her head, peeking under the table, behind her. Something was wrong. To be sure, she checked inside her cup and saw nothing but wood. Something was very wrong. The unicorn was gone. Where could she be? At the corner of the inn, a band of musicians gathered together by the fire and began to play jovially. The Quill & Tankard roared life as those around them began to dance but Zien slumped her shoulders at a loss of a newfound friend. She found herself in the seat where the unicorn sat before. She rested her chin on her knuckles as she drummed her fingers, swung her feet to the beat of the drums. A thousand yard stare befallen, Zien pursed her lips. Perhaps it has been a long while since I-

Two cups appeared before her with a bang and it jerked Zien sober. She squeaked in surprise. A full grin formed out of her as the unicorn who answered to the name Ana returned with a drink for each of their name. “Many thanks, generous Ana! I am Zientherys from the South kingdom. But do call me, Zien.” she gave Ana a curt tilt of her head. Mirth blown into often stoic features, Zien still could not name the blanket of familiarity that cloaked them both. It was as if something tied them together, to an invisible elephant maybe. As Zien mused these things, it felt like there was a weight lifted off her shoulders. She’d been wary of coming to the west with lady Asha but the turn of events, the meeting of a stranger who shifted into an acquaintance in less than an eighth of an hour and now presented her with a free drink. It seemed Zien had made a new friend. She grabbed her cup and rose it in the air. “To Ana, the unicorn I’ve been waiting to find since I was a wee lass.” A toast and a salutation, Zien sipped her drink. Flowers bloomed around her. It was unlike anything she ever tasted and Zien knew what that meant. She swallowed the drink with a roar. “By the gods, this is the best ale I’ve ever drank!”

[ANA DARKHOLME]

She was drunk, so she didn’t think anything of how weirdly familiar the other woman’s face was the way she might have done when she was sober, and it stood as testament to her drunkenness that she hadn’t…well, usually she’d have picked a fight with anyone who looked at her the way Zien had looked at her for half a moment, long enough for her to notice. No, instead she had said she was a unicorn, and found herself holding the gaze of her new friend when Zien deadpanned her expression too, then slammed the cup on the table and started to shake a little; Ana, still miraculously deadpan, hoped she hadn’t just made her new friend have a fit. “A unicorn.” she confirmed in all seriousness, nodding once more when the other woman repeated it, a nose away from her own. And then, after a moment, the poker face fell away and her expression changed in its entirety, transforming into one of genuine hilarity, a spark of humour in her eyes; she laughed along with her new friend, watching as Zien fell back, cup raised, “I am sincerely glad to have made a little girl’s dreams come true.” she murmured with a light-hearted grin.

Her vision was still a little fuzzy, so she shook it when she waited for their drinks, and by the time she’d turned back with their drinks in hand she could see better and – and her new friend was in her seat. No matter. With slightly swaying steps she’d made her way back over to the table, walking to the beat of the band who had piped up in the corner of the room seemingly to give her a soundtrack to walk to, how convenient! In fact, her companion seemed to have slumped a little by the time Ana got back to the table, but she got a good hearty laugh out of seeing the dark-haired woman jump when the cups slammed down on the table. Ana, for one, was pleased and surprised that she hadn’t spilled much with the force: it wouldn’t do to waste good ale – it would not do at all! No, those cups (good, nice, sturdy cups) were still almost full to the brim, and Ana smiled, pleased, her gaze moving to her friend who’d shot up in her seat, squeaking, when the cups were set down in front of her.

So she settled in the seat her companion had formerly taken and grinned all the wider at the stranger-friend’s thanks, nodding in mock gracefulness, “Quite welcome, Zien!” the familiarity that surrounded them became all the more familiar with the exchange of names, and she held her cup tight for no good reason at all, knuckles whitening while she grinned at the woman before her, “It’s most good to meet you.” she told her, in all solemnity, though her eyes danced with brightness and the familiarity of the other’s face that she couldn’t quite place. Zien had a face that looked quite solemn herself, a face that did not look like it smiled for no reason or without its owner’s express permission, and Ana grinned all the more for being able to see so solemn a woman in her cups, for being able to have a friend to drink with, especially one so lively as Zien. Cup in hand and still grasped tight, she raised it in the air in a mirror of her new friend’s actions, careless and joyous at the toast, “And to Zien, who believed in me most faithfully!” the words were – were garbled nonsense to anyone listening in, but Ana was not someone listening in, and she was enjoying the conversation immensely. She drank, and laughed, the ale spilling down her when Zien’s roar caught her off guard again, splashing over the front of her dress – not much, but enough to stain; Ana laughed anyway, “I told you! I told you it was good.” she insisted, reaching through her pockets for the dainty silken handkerchief embroidered with her house’s sigil and words, as though dabbing at it would do any good and not, in fact, ruin the family heirloom, “Gods, why was I made so bloody oafish?” she chuckled, dabbing away, then, “Oh, hells take it!” she threw the handkerchief across the table in a fit of mock disgust when she had to give up, and drank from her cup again instead.

[ZIENTHERYS PORT]

Once struck by a faraway gaze at the absence of the pretty unicorn, Zientherys pondered why she had been given leave from her employment. From the tasks the young maiden took inventory prior to her leave, Zien knew she had done everything that was on the unwritten list of chores she was responsible for and she’d executed them beyond the magnitude of satisfaction. It’d been a curious matte when the older maids pushed her skirts to wander, frolic and prance about the capital. They stressed heavily in implications: embrace the pleasures heightened by cause of celebration. In other words, they wished for the pleasantly piquant Port to seek companionship. In a few words that left Zien vermillion in her apples of her cheeks, they wanted her find a man her fancy and scrump the life out of each other. The sight of Ana the unicorn provided the answer to her fellow maids’ plight. Yet the sway of Ana’s skirts and the soft features of her face proved otherwise a fault in their schemes. Besides what was the joy in laying with a man only tarry back to the Vale alone and dare she not say it, with child. Zien could not afford the luxury with seven little boys and girls to raise and a sickly father to comfort.

In all her efforts of keeping her exterior like unto stone, Ana the unicorn phased through her strongholds without the need to bleed between them. Their positions exchanged. Their cups full. They rose their cups in the air, spewing intense nonsense above their tables feeding off the same spirit present in the famed inn. The beat of drums heralded a new song, one much livelier than the last and accompanied by the bagpipes rose the people’s hearts aflutter. The drums picked the pace. “To mark this momentous occassion, I don’t know any other agnomens for such so I, Zientherys (who shall be known as) the Kraken dub thee, Ana the unicorn with a more comely title: Ana the Pegasus!” Zien thought it was an accurate allusion. Ana deemed fit to grace the heaven as an equine creature blessed with wings, she’d rule the heavens as Zien dominated the waters beneath it. The two made a glorious match indeed tethered by myths humble and intimate. Zien found herself smiling freely, welcoming the mirth felt upon the companionship of Ana.

Her abrupt roar met others roundabout in return. Camaraderie beknownst to those afflicted with the merriment flourishing in the Quill & Tankard, Zien savoured at the price of ale wetting her dress. An apology readily formed in habit of her subservience, Zien shrugged it aside and chuckled at Ana proclaiming displeasure and her likeness to an oaf. “Oafish you are not allowed to be, Ana. You are the embodiment of the majestic.” She fluttered her fingers apart like how she imagined wizards, wise men and witches gestured on account of a spell. “Think majestic, be majestic.”

She gulped down a lion’s sip of her ale. Her eyes trained at Ana more studiously than the last. The curious familiarity wrecked her muddled mind with onslaught of queries, speculations and probabilities without end. She must have seen her before elsewhere. Had she ventured down South? Voicing her present concerns whispered out of sweet drink and air of instance seemed too premature for Zien to voice. She kept such thoughts locked in mental confinement. The turning key appeared solid and made of silk, projected from the grasp of Zien’s Pegasus and snatched in the Southerner’s grip.

It floated mid-air for a moment before toppling before Zien. She knew or rather was heavily inclined that the expensive silk cloth marred by ale knocked Zienthery’s box open. “Where did you get this?” She grasped the silk handkerchief Ana threw at her side. Her tone edged with confusion as the furrows on her face deepened. “Answer me.” The tiny hairs all over her body unanimously stood as Zientherys fished her pockets for the soft, smooth cloth whereby under the candlelight was seen marred by time and circumstance. She laid both together side by side. They were not similar. They were significantly the same. The lettering, the measurements of the cloth, the material was silk, the shape Zien wondered many a times was in fact a crow. What in the tetrad’s names was going on here. Zien steeled her gaze. It must be a joke, a real sick joke by the old hags and this pretty fool. Zien charged over the table, grabbed Ana by her shoulders and willed her tears to retreat. “Who put you up to this?” Make fun of the bastard. “Tell me or I will gut you like a fish.”

[ANA DARKHOLME]

If she’d been sober, she might have found herself bemused that their exchange had started out so serious – she had been accused of being a noble, of all things! Imagine that! – and then grown into hilarity. Indeed, she might have had cause to ask Zien why Ana’s being a noble was such an important point to her, but then she’d told her she was a unicorn and things had snowballed somewhat. Now they were laughing together, and Ana was as good and drunk as she’d ever been (and indeed wondered why she had never been before) and now the music playing rose to a lively tune. It was the type of song that made her want to dance, joyous and melodic at the same time, and Ana turned to her new friend with a mischievous glint in her eye when next Zien spoke, nodding joyously, “The Kraken and the Pegaus, yes.” she thought out loud, “Oh and together we will rule both sky and sea, and leave the earth behind!” she was no longer speaking words that made any sense to her, words that ever would; but she was a Pegasus and gods be damned, Zien was a Kraken; she had something proud in the glint of her eye that told Ana of a personality not so unlike her own, a spirit indomitable, and for that the young noblewoman smiled fiercely.

And the noise in the tavern soared higher, a wave of sound that came in response to Zien’s approving roar. People around them yelled and the music swelled higher, and feet tapped and glasses clanked down hard on wood. Ana’s dress was soaked when she’d jerked with laughter at the other woman’s roar, and she glanced up in enough time to give Zien an impish grin, grateful all the same to be reassured she was not an oaf, “I am thinking majestic, my friend, but being majestic is much harder with clumsy hands like mine own.” she giggled anyway, watching the flutter of the other woman’s fingers, magical and delightful. She straightened her shoulders and made herself feel majestic, but being majestic did not help her clean the ale off of her dress, and it was a good thing she was not particularly fond of the dress. In fact she soon gave up all pretences of being able to clean the dress off with that fancy silken trophy, and let it sail across the air in a way she would most definitely not have done had she been sober considering she loved that heirloom as a memory of her mother, who’d received it as a gift from her father, the solemn lord handing it over in tribute on their wedding day, a token of his house.

But it landed in front of Zien, and Ana’s expression changed the moment the southerner spoke, her eyes becoming guarded, wary, even, her features and her mind sobering. The other woman demanded where she had obtained the token but Ana’s lips pressed themselves shut in defiance, even more so when her new friend demanded an answer. She was not like to go out giving information without knowing why. Except all was answered when Zien fished a similar token from her pockets and placed it side by side with Ana’s own, the first of them edged with ale Ana had only moments dabbed away, unthinking. Her breath caught in her throat and she looked up rapidly at the southerner again, and she reached across the table to snatch her own handkerchief back, fingers curling in possession brought out in her by a tidal wave of confusion. But Zien did not seem to think in the same way as Ana, and Ana did not take kindly to being manhandled, as was like to happen after a lifetime of it – her expression twisted with confusion and anger, and she grabbed the other woman’s shoulders and pushed her away, not entirely gently. “Fuck you!” she exploded at the threat, the token clenched tight in her hand, “It’s mine. It was my father’s. It’s a token of my bloody house. House Darkholme. she scrabbled backwards until she found her feet, and her expression settled itself into stoniness and anger. “Who are you? Why do you have that?”

[ZIENTHERYS PORT]

The Pegasus and the Kraken were two particular creatures spoken and sung in legends. Nevertheless having the two conspire together as companions was as bleak as winds of summer in the north, Zien had never heard of stories or songs about the winged horse and the giant squid frolicking about in harmony but who was to say Pegasus and Krakens did not co-exist not just as allies but as bosom friends. This was the beginning of something new. Such nonsense breezed from mind to mouth with a permeable filter, Zien did not care. Let those around them think what they wished. They were simply envious of their merriment. They were on tipping up to the top of the world but how things quickly changed. Lifted by an amiable exchange and sweetened by drink, it was wonderful. Why did it have to end.

“I don’t understand...” Zientherys lashed out, wagging her tongue as a concealed weapon. The gods hedged her once more, never letting the maidservant forget who she really was. Fisherman Hartford brought her an infant to her home, with nothing but the momento of a silk cloth. The old man had taught Zien the cloth always came with her but whenever she pressed on of her whereabouts and her genesis, he fell quiet. She never knew that old fisherman Hartfood always knew. It took Zien her childhood to learn restraint concerning a sensitive subject. It should not matter the Hartfords had filled in the holes of family but no matter how they patched themselves in her life. The questions remained, gathering fire as people sought to see her fall and now the veil faded with the blaze of crows. Zien did not comprehend, she was uncertain if she wanted to. She was an orphaned bastard and that was what she will always be.

What Zien thought was a cruel joke from the old crones was in fact a reality. Ana cursed at her, shoving Zien backwards and had her crash a few patrons over, spilling their drink and herself on her floor. In a matter of seconds, they sucked the elation out of the inn. All eyes on them. They expected her a fight to break out between the two women, give them more reason to drink and stomp their feet but Zien stayed still. There was an ice cold grip on her neck chained in the same spirit to her heart. Blood ran somersaults all over its vessel. She felt sick, wobbling as she rose back on her feet and back on the wooden stool. Picking up her cup, she finished her ale and chucked the cup at the band of merry musicians, glaring at them to make merry once more. The silence filled by the fiddle, the lute and the drum. Those around them soon lost interest in the battle of glares between the two girls and cajoled themselves back to their own devices.

The image of both their silk clothes together stupified the maidservant. She wanted to go home. “This isn’t right, this is not right. I refuse to believe it...” Her gaze frozen, she tilted her eyes up at Ana. Her eyes were watery and her nose felt stuffed. She sucked the tears away, snivelling was not going to help her get through this. House Darkholme. Zien snarled. She knew Ana of high birth but yet here she remained almost too mechanical and overtaken by the fire, Zien paled. “You belong to the House of Darkholme, you are fortunate to know who you are. Because I, Zientherys Port, an orphaned bastard, I do not know. I do not know who I am anymore.”

A tavern wench strolled by and Zien halted her with a deadpanned glare. She wrenched the flagon off her arms and titled its contents to fill the brim of Ana’s cup. “Drink,” she nudged at the noblewoman before downing the flagon considerably empty and slamming it empty on the table. Old man Hartford knew whose house it was, Zien was certain now and he kept it from her. He lied to her all these years just as Ana had introduced herself a unicorn but never answering her status as nobility. Dazed, Zien looked at the pretty girl. Ana Darkholme had everything for her, she expected it as such. Fairytales and flouncy skirts, she wanted to weep away from the inn and in the comforts of her room where none could see. “Perhaps I shall find the answer at the end of this flagon...” Zien drank from the flagon to find it empty and called for another but the words could not come out. Her face broke and the tears marched down with a vengeance.

[ANA DARKHOLME]

Only two minutes ago they’d been Ana and Zien, the Pegasus and the Kraken, and laughing merrily over their drinks about it too. Now everything had changed, and the look on her newfound friend’s face sobered her more than a bucket of cold water to the face might have done. Ana fell silent as the other woman backtracked, talked of lack of understanding; her own gaze stayed very firmly on Zien and her tongue, which had been working fine and merrily as she talked and laughed before, now felt like lead in her mouth. What was there to be said? What more could she ask? The inn had fallen silent around them – even the musicians had stopped to gawp at them, because the two of them seemed the most unlikely pair to fight in the whole inn only moments ago. Indeed, Ana didn’t even remember having pushed Zien away from her but suddenly the other woman was on the floor and she knew she’d done it. But the other woman had threatened her…hadn’t she? Her mind was spinning. She didn’t know any more. There was a lump in her throat that tasted like the memory of tears.

Even when Zien glowered the other patrons into going back to their own business, threw her empty cup at the musicians to have them play, Ana stood tense. She still held her own heirloom tightly in her hand, and glanced down at it again for only a moment, her thumb brushing fondly across the stitched sigil – she’d never even thought of it as a token of her house, gods be damned! It had been the last memory of a mother whose features were fading in the back of Ana’s mind, whose voice was just an echo, and yet it had caused the two of them so much grief, thrown a rift between them. She held it tighter, and wished that the comfort she’d always gotten from it would come back this time; it wouldn’t, and she felt hollow and angry and hurt all at the same time, without being able to even explain why. Why any of this. What was going on. Who was Zien? She smoothed the silk with deft movements of her fingers, and stayed on her feet, tense, even when Zien returned to her seat.

“What’s not to believe? It’s here…they’re both…Darkholme.” she asked quietly, then slowly she leaned forward, to place her own heirloom back on the table, next to Zien’s. When she looked up again she met Zien’s dark gaze with her own, her throat tightening with the effort of holding back those tears: she had not cried in half a lifetime, she refused to cry now. “Zientherys Port. A bastard of the south?” that gave her pause, and her tongue worked, flickering against the dry roof of her mouth, “The south. Oh. Oh.” the pieces of the puzzle slid together in her head. Her fingers clenched and she slung herself into the chair, grabbing for the cup that remained half-full; its contents was nearly too warm by now but it didn’t matter. Ana needed a drink. She drank even before Zien waved over the wench and filled her cup to the brim, and then she drank afterwards and hoped it would dull her aching senses, because everything hurt and it hurt even more to fight back the tears and she didn’t even know why she was nearly crying. Maybe it was because she knew there could only have been one person in possession of that heirloom. One person Zientherys Port could have obtained it from. She had only had one uncle on her father’s side of the family…and Viscund Darkholme, the family’s secret shame, he had gone south. She had never met him, had been forbidden to speak of him…but surely…he had gone south.

And then Zien started crying.

Ana did not know how to deal with tears, but it did not take her more than a moment of deliberation to scoot out of her seat and round to the side of the table where her friend was. “You are Zientherys Port. That is who you are.” she insisted, but her voice cracked and she leaned over and hugged Zien close without a second thought about the matter, the lump in her throat tightening. “When I was little, my mother told me of my father’s younger brother…my uncle, Viscund Darkholme. He had – he had the only other one of…” she reached for that silk cloth and held it up, biting her lip. She couldn’t say it out loud, didn’t know what to think – didn’t know whether putting it into words would make any of this easier. And oh gods, to find she might have had a cousin all along, when she’d thought all her family was lost to her. Ana waved another serving wench over and got them both another cup. And fought back her emotions all the harder.

[ZIENTHERYS PORT]

“Darkholme.” The name perturbed the maidservant. “Ana Darkholme.” The name sounded alien. “Zientherys Port.” The name tasted bitter on her tongue. She scrunched her eyes at Ana. Unspoken words radiated by her face as if she sucked a lemon dry. What was a fancy noblewoman doing in the Quill and Tankard on her own, chugging down a tankard of ale after ale without her escorts? Zien speculated the inner workings of Ana only to fall short of patience when the noblewoman spoke meekly about their silken square clothes with the identical embroidery of a crow. “No, don’t do that.” Fingers splayed out as Zien shook it outright. “The last thing I want is your pity, highborn.” Quickly she dove in her coin purse and scooped the right amount of bits and shoved them at Ana. “Or your charity.”

Content with her debts paid, Zien turned down the birth of their companionship by slight of judgement. She had not been thinking right, failing to note the embellishments on Ana’s dress in comparison to the plainness for hers. She should have known her place, they should have known their place. Zien allowed an onslaught of annoyance to slow her down. The young woman opposite Zien absorbed the knowledge of the territory she was birthed twenty summers ago. The bastard maidservant found nothing significant of her belonging to the south, if anything she casted Ana’s interest as a passing curiosity and wonderment. “You are Zientherys Port. That is who you are.”

Zien scowled, hating the tears that so freely streamed down he cheeks. She never cried in the company of another, finding it difficult to stomach to be called weak. She raised seven children on their steady way to adulthood, had them schooled and more learned than she. Hunting in the grounds of the sea where no man, woman nor child could breach, Zien had conquered her mountains save for the one she wished to reach the pinnacle of. Who I am? “I am no one. A mere name shrouded in obscurity.”

She wove her arms around the flagon. The return of merriment forced felt more natural when those peering eyes no longer stayed on them, on the bastard with no name. They played. They sung. They danced. They talked, about them most likely and their curious display not a few moments ago but Zien paid no heed to the rest of the patrons. She found no need to carve their face in stone and latch a lock in memory, finding no fault in them but her own errors. Ana the noblewoman, now stripped of her title as Pegasus along with the gentleness in Zien, posed a more curious suggestion. “And who is he supposed to be, this Viscund Darkholme?” A tap on her shoulder moved Zien to face the tavern wench she nicked the flagon from. She shooed her away with a glarer that should have been understood as: leave me alone, I’ll pay you after I drown my sorrows. The wench backed off for now.

“My father?” It was incredulous to even speak of such a thing. A crooked grin formed on the maidservant. “I highly doubt that.” Certainly on the account of a said cousinship between Ana and herself, Zien crossed it as improbable as princess Marjorie being a target of an assassination. The youngest daughter of king Hornebolt was the least likely to ascend the throne after the Hornebolt heir of a prince said to loiter amongst the common people. The chances of Zientherys Port to be the bastard of a noble, a Viscund Darkholme was unheard of as a plan to off the little princess. It caused Zien to scoff a chuckle before taking another drink straight from the flagon regardless of Ana calling for another cup. “Where is this Viscund Darkholme then? If he’s my father, why did my old man, fisherman and merchant Albus Hartford say he found me as a babe by the sea?” She attempted to hush her words and keep her dismay between Ana and her kerchief. Then a chilling thought expelled itself after a gasp and springing her hands over her mouth, “The old man did not take me from anyone. He didn’t take me…he didn’t.”

[ANA DARKHOLME]

“Yes.” she watched on, her expression sober now that the cheer of the meeting had been shocked out of her; Zien’s expression looked much the same, like there was a tang of bitterness at the back of her throat that she couldn’t get to go away. Ana kept her expression as blank as she could manage, holding back the irritation that came in a wave when the other woman, now knowing her noble birth, now knowing their differences, slid the coins back at her. I don’t want your pity, highborn. Or your charity Ana’s expression twisted a little and she looked down at the coins, fingers curling around them as she drew them back to her and pocketed them, indifferent. “Or my friendship?” she asked, and the bitterness resounded in the words. It always ended like this, she had to remember that; everyone she’d ever met had ended up in confrontation with her about her birth, or her stature, or her attitude, or, gods forbid, the width of her hips and the likelihood she would survive the birth of a child. This time the rebuke was for her birth, and Ana steeled herself against it like she always did. It was not hard to pull indifference over herself like a veil and shroud herself with it, even if she was as confused as the woman opposite her.

Even if the woman opposite her was crying, which she was; Ana was not a cruel person and she didn’t delight in seeing Zien like this, especially not when the tears on the bastard woman’s face reflected the confusion she, too, felt. This had all gone so wrong, and as usual it was her fault; trust her to have been the one who pulled out that damned handkerchief, that proof of her lineage shared by Zien. She’d had the beginnings of friendship and lost it all in a moment, all because of who she was, where she came from. Her birth always managed to work against her. Ana stared at Zien with a sullen, confused gaze, and when the other woman, dark haired and suddenly so much less welcoming, proclaimed she was ‘no one’, Ana only shrugged. What was there to say? What argument was she meant to make?

All she knew was that Zien had that heirloom and she did too, and if she hadn’t been given it or she hadn’t found it then Ana could think of no other conclusions to jump to. But she understood the other woman’s need for obscurity, for being unknown; Ana had come here seeking to be alone and to go unrecognised by the people around her, and she’d done so better than she could have imagined until she’d given herself away. Now the two of them were getting strange looks all around, and the merry jig the musicians were playing didn’t feel half so merry any more. It felt like somebody had forced a weight into her stomach; her limbs felt like lead. She took another drink and her dark gaze stayed on Zien over the cup, about to answer the question of Viscund Darkholme until the serving wench made an appearance, and Ana remained quiet until the woman had gone away again. “My father’s brother. When he talked of him he only called him the Bastard. He went south to take a wife.” her lip curled upwards in a mockery of a smile, her eyes flashing at the other woman’s words. “Could be he was your father.” she shrugged, and looked into her cup, drinking deeply the moment the serving wench reappeared to fill it again. “I don’t know what happened to him, I don’t even know if he’s alive or dead.” she reeled back a little, lips pressing into a line, when Zien insisted she had not been a child stolen from mother’s arms. “I believe that, I believe it.” she asserted, pushing the cup from hand to hand. “Look, I can’t prove anything to you. I don’t have anything more to tell, but believe you me – there’s only two of these.” she clenched the handkerchief tighter in her fingers. “And they belonged to my father and Viscund.” She was lost. How could she understand what there would never be an explanation for?

[ZIENTHERYS PORT]

Zientherys narrowed her eyes at the holed coins made of brass with the image of the celestial crown stamped on one side. She laid five bits before the highborn. It was her intention to pay the young woman back once they were red in the face, their hearts were fat and full with merriment. Such was the nature of a budding friendship sweetened by ale shared. However it was no more. It did not bode well for Zien to overstep her boundaries and leave her debts unpaid such was common courtesy. The maidservant was in lieu of formulating a method to make her intentions known but the ice fallen on her and out of her head, flowers of loathing bloomed and the highborn pocketed her earnings indifferent. Once again Ana proved Zientherys right of her kind. It stung to see her money hard earned fitted in the custom-made pockets of nobility. Nevertheless, Zien mirrored her indifference. “Or my friendship?” Were they even allowed to call a few moments of drinking sweet ale together such? Once Ana pocketed her bits, zien made no mutters. She saw the very act of the other accepting her coins reduced their bond as of an unwarranted transaction. On the seven hells, Zien swore regardless if Ana took her money or not the noblewoman was tainted for she belonged with them.

Her prejudice against was a double edged sword trained on ana darkholme. Everything the noblewoman did wrought effects of the same vein when she chopped onions mercilessly in the kitchens. Instead of a naked onion capturing a threescore scowl on her face, it was the very nature of her class, a member of the collective group she packaged as what was ultimately wrong in the world. The bourgeoisie...“My father’s brother..called him the bastard. He went south to take a wife.” Try as she might, Zien could not block the words coming out from Darkholme’s mouth. “How fitting, Viscund Darkholme the bastard of his house sired a bastard from the unknown.” She sucked breath in before her eyes shot up in confusion. “If he’s a bastard, why was he not named as Viscund…whatever they named bastards from wherever you Darkholmes came from…” She remained bitter yet more overcome by the sadness. It should not matter where she came from, who she was because no matter what people said and laid claim on her destiny. Her past should not have a say and though Zien braved come what mays, the inkling to know persevered. “And if Viscund is my father, what of my mother?“ The more Ana spoke, the more compliant Zien melted along the possibility. A family, her real family belonged to the House of Darkholme. “Does this make us cousins then? Almost cousins, whether it’s true or false.” She corrected. Not friends, Zien could pick those but family. That was if and only if.

Enticed with loose lip, Zien surrendered heself to the sweet waters flowing freely in the flagon. The veil lifted up asunder and made most of her thoughts known. Her curiosity took hold, grappling the kerchief betwixt her fingers like the many times she sought comfort like a babe to the herring of her past. “If we are cousins and that is a colossal if, what then?” Zientherys was wholly occupied nursing her flagon of drink, entertaining the link of her obscure lineage on a whim. “Am I supposed to believe you people would welcome a bastard into your fold?” She looked at Ana with a void, an answer already formed behind the darkness of her eyes. They were all the same.

[ANA DARKHOLME]

Ana didn’t know what she’d done to deserve such harsh feelings towards her aside from being of higher birth, which had not been a choice she’d been given to make. Either way, the other woman’s indifferent silence spoke volumes in response to her question, and Ana regarded it as such; if there had ever been buds of friendship between them they had long since shrivelled now, and so Ana watched Zien with wary eyes and an unfamiliar heaviness in her heart, and recognised it to be disappointment. Did things always have to end this way? She was half-expecting the other woman to lunge over the table and try and strangle her, for the way Zien was looking at her after she’d pocketed the money, but Ana couldn’t find it in herself to feel bad for that – taking the coins was something of a twisted act of defiance, even if she didn’t want or need them. So Zien did not want to be in debt to a noble? So be it. Ana would keep the coins and bear the brunt of the other woman’s prejudice, and wallow in the disappointment that came with seeing the friendship they’d come so close to having fall apart. She retained her indifference, and for her drunkenness her expression remained unreadable, closed-off, wary.

Why she even tried to explain to the commoner who so obviously loathed her for her birthright was beyond her, but she did so anyway, holding her cup in one hand while the handkerchief remained clenched in the other, and as Zien began to speak Ana took another drink, only the ale did not taste half so good any more, and sobriety, unwelcome, was beginning to set in. Ana sat back on her seat and drank some more despite it, finally setting the cup down before she met the gaze of the woman opposite her, aware of how confusing it all must sound. It would have helped, she thought, if she’d known herself. “He was trueborn, it was just a nickname. My father was not a good man, the nickname would have come from him, no doubt. But Viscund was a Darkholme.” why was she even explaining? She couldn’t have answered that question even just to herself, but part of her, unencumbered by the indifference, was excited at the prospect of having a cousin. Of having family. And that, she realised, was why she kept talking – the prospect of having Zien as a cousin, of not being along. Her brother did not count as family any longer, at least not in her mind. “I don’t know of your mother.” she replied honestly. “Like I said, we were forbidden to speak of Viscund, and all I know is that he went south to marry and my father never saw him again.” she tapped her fingers on the cup in hand and nodded, slowly. “Yes, I think so. Cousins.” though they would never know for sure.

Looking down as Zien drank once more, Ana studied the handkerchief in her hand, flattening it on the table in front of her before the other woman spoke once more, mulling over the idea of their being cousins again. Her face broke into a smile at cynicism in Zien’s question, though, and Ana set her elbows on the table, playing with the hand of the cup. “Fold? There’s only two of us, but I’d welcome you into it nonetheless. My brother not so much, though that would be a good thing – if he did, it’d be because he saw a profit in you.” she rocked on the two back legs of her seat. “I’d welcome you if you wanted to be welcomed.”