The Lyn Twins, very first sketch I did of them
I'm tired, out of breath and dirty after having had to run in front of those stupid Shems who didn't want to part with their heavy purses in the Market District.
Eve tried to confuse them and I think a couple of the guards they called followed her into the Alienage, but the rest of them didn't take their eyes off me and I couldn't leave them behind until I jumped into the Pearl's rear window.
I'm sure the couple there won't be very upset. At least now HE will have something interesting to tell. Shayla is a cutie but Sanga has often told me clients are bored with her, she doesn't show enthusiasm with her work.
When the guards were gone, I thanked Sanga again, promised I would consider her offer to work with her once more (I'm not interested, more over since she wants Eve too, and I want something better for her; but one can't say no to a job offer these days, so I always tell her I'll think about it) and walked out through the front door as if I had had all the right to be there.
Right to the alienage, where Evelyn was already waiting for me in our own secret place…
At the alienage, however, the welcome is not warm. People look at me in a suspicious way and point at me while whispering.
I’m used to that, they never liked me or my sister, but this time I feel
something different… dangerous. I don’t dare to go to where Eve should
be waiting for me, because that would attract them to her too. I walk,
proud of my self, as if I had nothing to regret, to the orphanage. It
seems the most sensible thing to do.On my way to the orphanage, my eyes met Dorian’s single bright blue eye. We never liked each other, but for a moment I feel concern in his face. He says nothing but I see his lips moving. “Don’t go”, I read on them. Don’t go where? To our usual hideout? To the orphanage we share also with him?. And is he warning me, or leading me to a trap? With Dorian one never knows… I decide to ignore him, as I always do, and continue as if nothing happened.
But he was right. At the orphanage, they are waiting for me. Crap. So they already know where to find us. Time to find another place to sleep, then.
Unfortunately, I can’t do nothing but note that for when they release me. Because as soon as I cross the doorway a group of human guards surround me. I can hear one of the nurses agreeing. “Yes, this is her”. You bitch. You’re happy to get rid of me, aren’t you? I’d spit at her but she’s out of reach.
The guards are too many to be defeated, so I don’t fight. That helps. “Which one is this?”, one of them asks. The nurse hesitates, but my attitude has fooled her. “The meek one, I think. Evelyn”. Exactly, bitch. That’s what I want all of you to think. Leave my sister alone.
“The other one is harder to tame, she must be hidden somewhere”.
“We’ll come for her later”, says one of the guards.
They don’t seem very interested anyway. They already have one prey, I bet that will content the Arl. So I don’t protest and let them carry me away. I’ll find my way out later. I bet I can.
My crime isn’t a very serious one, after all. A local merchant whose purse is stolen usually is too ashamed to admit it, because even the guards will laugh at him
.
Unfortunately I seem to have run over a wealthy one who has reported it to a higher authority, and the guards had to do something to justify their wages. I can hear them laughing and teasing, satisfied for their well done work.
Can’t blame them, they’re just doing their job. I bet sergeant Kylon will just reprehend me and let me go. As he has done other times. Fortunately for us, things have changed in Denerim since Commander Raleigh disappeared in strange circumstances years ago.
Adaia used to tell me being caught by the guards those times was a sentence for a long death.
When I arrive, though, the sergeant isn’t at his office.
There’s an officer who informs us he’s on duty somewhere else, so he suggests I should wait for him in one of the cells. Great. This is new… and doesn’t sound nice. But I can’t fight, not yet.
The officer smiles when he looks at me… but his smile is not a pleasant one. He takes a bunch of keys from the wall. “Come with me. I’ll show this cutie her new… bedroom”.
I stay silent. Anything I say will be useless. Two of the guards outflank me while he leads the group through the dark corridor. They look the one to the other and I don’t like what does that look imply.
The man in front of us is different from them, even they can feel it. Someone they don’t want to mess with. Someone who hunts for the pleasure of the hunt, not because he’s earning a wage. So he sees it as a game… and it is dangerous. I mustn’t lower my guard.
He opens one of the cells and we enter. I don’t like this. The cell is big, but there are some torture instruments scattered here and there. They seem unused, though. The layer of dust over them may date from Raleigh’s times. It’s a bit (just a bit) reassuring.
Unfortunately, he reaches to a set of chains and handcuffs which hang from the wall.
“Bring her here”, he says. The guards look puzzled, they think, as I do, that chaining me to the wall is too much for a thin small elf like I am… but they obey. What can they do?.
Hearing the “click” when the handcuffs close around my wrists creeps me out. But a part of me keeps calm. The chain gives me some movement. I can lockpick them when they’re gone. So I don’t fight yet. Patience…
Once he has me tied to the wall, he waves the guards off. “You can go. You surely have some patrol.. whatever you constables do”. They don’t argue and go away. But he stays. I don’t like it. I’m sure he doesn’t want to talk, exactly.
“I bet nobody has searched you, honey”, he says, getting closer to me. I feel his hands in my waist and I can smell his breath. He doesn’t even smell as if he was drunk.
He has no excuse. I feel sick. He takes his time searching under my armor, but of course he finds nothing. Mainly because he’s looking for nothing. What he’s doing is just touching me.
“I’ve been told you’re two”, he says. “Identical. I wonder which one you are. Better said, I wonder where your sister is. But I hope I’ll get both of you once. And at once. That would be delicious, wouldn’t it?”
My hands are chained over my head, but the chain is lose enough to let me move. I would be able even to sit down if I wanted. He takes advantage of it, after all my body is light.
He can move me as he likes. I don’t resist him.
Not yet, even if my body shivers of disgust at each of his caresses. It is funny. A part of me is oddly calm and thinks that this man is not so disgusting. If he had asked politely, I might even have given him a chance. But it is the fact that he asumes he can take me without even asking what really pisses me off. Of course, too, that’s what excites him, I see.
He reaches my back and starts to release the buckles of my chest armor, until it hangs from my shoulders since he can’t take it off completely, not without releasing me of my chains. He slips his hand under the leather piece to start rubbing my small breasts anxiously.
His mouth searches my pointy ear and whispers dirty things while licking it. It makes me shudder. What I hate most of it is that I also find it exciting… my ears are too sensitive. I can’t help it and I shake them. He finds it funny, I see.
“Kitty ears”, he groans, and I feel how his right hand goes down to his trousers, while he holds me close to his body with his left arm. It’s now or never.
“Wait”, I whisper, trying to sound seductive. “Let me move a bit… to get a better position… for you and me”. He seems surprised, but he’s in that moment in which his blood isn’t exactly in his brain, so he doesn’t think clearly and he releases me a bit.
Enough for me to raise my knee with all my strength, and sink it in the parts of his body he has just released. He falls on his knees almost without a sound. And I feel an unhealthy pleasure thinking how much this must have hurt, both his balls and his pride.
Now he’s on his knees, I hang myself on the chains and kick his face over and over until he falls unconscious. I feel his nose bone break and blood running all over his face, but I don’t stop until he’s out of reach
I wish I had broken his neck, but I hear him breathing with a gurgling sound. I have not been lucky. I must hurry before he wakes up.
I try to reach the keys he has left to fall on the ground. Fortunately they’re near enough for me to reach them with my feet, so I sit down on the floor and after a couple of attempts I get my big toe into the keyring and raise my foot over my head near enough to grab the keys with my chained hands.
After this, which has taken me five eternal minutes, getting rid of those handcuffs is just a children’s game. And as soon as I release myself, I jump over the fallen body of this rat and take his dagger out of its scabbard. I’m about to slash his throat, helping the world to get rid of his scum, when I hear the door opening.
I don’t move. Now I’m lost.
“Maker’s breath!!!” I hear, and I must resist the impulse to get up and hug the Shem who has just screamed this. Because there, in the doorway, stand together Ser August with Sergeant Kylon.
And I can imagine the scene they’re watching: Me, with my chest armour still unbuckled, kneeling with a dagger on the throat of a fallen man whose face is full of blood (and I hope that he’s lacking some of his teeth too) and whose trousers are down. None of the men need explanations to understand what happened, what this filth has tried to do, and how lucky I was to be able to avoid it.
The sergeant rushes to cover my half naked and shivering body with a blanket, while Ser August just kneels in front of me and asks:
“Did he…?”
I shake my head. No. But it was so close… I realize my hands are shaking, and suddenly all the fear, all the tensions, all the excitement of the figh, all the emotions I’ve been blocking fall over me like a gravestone and channel into a river of tears. I hate crying, but I seem unable to avoid it. I just sob, and cling to his armour.
“Take her out of here”, Kylon says, while taking the dagger from my trembling hands. “She’s been lucky… This is going to be difficult to explain to his parents, but at least he’s alive. If she had killed him, she would have been hanged. You know it. I’ll report that she escaped before he could chain her. And I’ll make sure he doesn’t speak. He’ll be too ashamed to admit a knife-ears… no offense, darling… has left him in this state”.
I’m too tired, too scared and too exhausted to feel offended. I just let Ser August hug me and carry me away from that horrible place. He explains me a bit during our way but I hardly listen. As I had guessed, that man was the son of some noble, one of many which are sent to Sergeant Kylon to “become men” doing something useful.
Most of them think their status of noble, along with their status of guardsmen, gives them right to do anything… especially to poor helpless elven girls like me. Except that I am not so helpless, I think, proud of myself.
Evelyn is waiting for us outside, nervous. Seems it was her who went for Ser August as soon as she saw me captured by the guards. Brave girl. I’m still glad they took me and not her. I can’t forget that swine’s words: “I’ll get both of you once. And at once”. I shake my head. I’ll never allow that.
My mind is done. This is getting too dangerous, both for Eve and for me. I’m grateful to Ser August, but it’s time for us to go away. As soon as he thinks I can come back to the alienage, we’ll leave this city, this alienage, this place where nobody respects us. Forever.
The barracks are almost deserted. The templars are outside, doing templar things, and they have left only a couple of novices to guard them. We made sure Ser August wasn't there. Valendrian had told us he had an appointment with him, in the alienage, to see the girl which had arrived with the newcomers, and it's likely that he won't come back for some hours. It's the best moment to sneak in.
Eve hesitates. She's always been the softer one. That's why I always try to protect her. The world will hurt her so much if she doesn't change…
"I still think it is not a good idea, Mari… he's always been good to us… why do you want to rob from him?"
"Exactly because of that – he's fool enough to forgive us. And he's got a monthly income, so he will only miss the money until the next pay day."
Eve swallows, but follows me. She's a brave girl. She'll survive. I'll make sure of that.
We need to go. Our time in this filthy alienage is over. I'm tired of seeing how all the other elves look over our shoulders as if they are better than us. As if each time the Bann's guards get into the alienage looking for somebody who has stolen something at the marketplace it's our fault.
Okay, okay. It is usually our fault, but that's not the point. And things have been even worse since Adaia was killed. That was not our fault, but they act as if it was. Especially Cyrion. We've not been able to see her family again.
I miss the times when she trained us in the use of daggers, along with her child. She had guts, that woman. Maybe the only one in this stupid place. Eve says that may be what cost her her life, but heck, I'd prefer to die with my pride intact than to survive as a beggar.
I leave Eve the safest part of the job, even if it is the trickiest. She's the one who will be seen, in case anyone reports us, doing innocent things. She's talking to the youngsters who are guarding the barracks, telling them some nonsense about a message she has to deliver to Ser Englantine.
Something about Lady Sanga sending her to collect some debts he had contracted at the Pearl. I love Eve. Lets see how that stupid templar explains this when the guards tell him.
While they're distracted, I jump into the barracks building using one of the windows. Ser August's cell must be the one in the end of the corridor, since the others have several beds and seem to be the places where the younger recruits sleep.
He has told us sometimes he shares a cell with another senior templar, Ser Otto, and there's only one room with two beds in all the building. Lucky me.
The templar's room is a humble place. One would think the Chantry would give them better lodging, but at least our fellow elves in the alienage have some privacy. Just the neighbourhood is a bit better. It always is, when shems are involved.
Anyway, that will make things better. A single room will take less time to search than those wealthy merchants homes full of useless rooms, all of them locked with several keys.
I hear Eve outside, surely making the novices blush with her banter, while I get into the bedroom. Funny thing. I realize when I enter, that the door can be only locked from the outside. I guess that's why they call it "a cell."
There are two beds, each one with a locked trunk at their feet – there's also a bookshelf and a single table. I hesitate for a moment wondering which one of the beds is Ser August's, but then I can recognize his handwriting in some documents on the left side of the table. Let's try left, then.
For once, I am grateful to the templar for taking the time to teach Eve and me how to read and write.
I find a purse in the chest but at a first glance there are barely a few coppers in it. Maybe he has his savings somewhere else. I look under the bed. Alas! There is a small wooden box, with quite a complicated lock. I could pick it easily, but it would be better if he doesn't notice it, so I look around to see if there's a key somewhere. I empty the purse on the table to see if the key is amongst the coins. Something catches my attention, and it is not a key.
It's a locket. A locket I remember very well.
I rush out of the building with the pendant in my hands and head to the main door, where my sister sits with a bored expression where the young templars can see her.
"Eve", I whisper from behind the corner. She mumbles an excuse and rushes to meet me.
"What happened?"
"It seems we're going to wait to talk to Ser August, after all. Look at this."
I show her the locket. She recognizes it as well. How couldn't she? We had been seeing it around our mother's neck until the day she died, when that monster burst into our house and killed our parents. That's the kind of thing one never forgets, even if you're only five years old; moreover, when you watch it helplessly through the keyhole of the wardrobe where your mother has hidden you to keep you safe from all harm.
"He'll have to explain this. And his lack of memory is not going to serve as an excuse. Not this time," I say.
And Eve nods, agreeing with me.
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