His eyes are lined with kohl. I noticed that while tying him to a chair in my parlor, but now, almost five minutes later, it won't get out of my head. The eyes in question are an ocean color, and the kohl makes the gold in them almost glow. He looks go- no! I shouldn't be thinking that! Prisoners don't look good, prisoners look dirty and only look good when their noses have been broken and their hair has been matted for day.! I have to distract myself right now, take a few deep breaths and screw my head back on. Come on hon, you know better than this.
He is dressed impeccably, I grudgingly admit. Starting at the boots, which are leather, and were polished beautifully before I had to drag us through a kilometre of dirt and grime. The gold buckles appear to be real, and judging by the size, expensive. I think that's rather stupid, why pay extra when it can look just as good for less. Back at the academy, my roommate Catrin is a sewing whiz. Give her an era to imitate or a pattern to recreate, and it'll be done in days. The gown I'm wearing tonight, that I need to get off very soon because the corset may be killing me right now, is one of her creations. Hand-stitched on imitation silk that she has spun out of a kind of wheat another girl cultivated, it could sell for nearly 100 francs. It's fake of course, the beads painted clay and the boning metal and the red dye is made of seasonal vegetables, not rock. The boy's pants however, are dyed with lapis lazuli, a rare gem, and are some of the most expensive clothes I've ever seen. He wears a white shirt with white buttons under a blue vest with gold embroidery, and a grand, deep blue jacket, several decades out of style but still beautiful, over it all. It looks rather regal, Arthurian. I wish I could afford to dress like that, the suit jacket would look quite good with my complexion, but if he has a connection with it like a family heirloom I should save it as a bargaining tool for later. I brush off my skirts and stand, needing a break from the chaos this boy brings even while unconscious.
The water is pounding down on my back, as trails of muck make trails on the porcelain tile. It takes about ten hours for the laudanum to wear off enough for him to wake up, so I have ten hours of cease fire before the war. Steam rises from my toes to my ears, and I sigh in contentedness. I normally hate showers, so much energy for so little reward, but the spray is massaging the knots in my back and everything seems much more manageable in here so I'll stay until the water runs freezing. A small stream of red is moseying down my chest, and plinking on the floor. Plink, plink, plink. The bastard carved a tiny crescent circle right under my trachea with the tip of my new knife, and it's just a small red dot, but still annoying. It's directly above another small scar, this one from a sword fight with a fellow student. If this continues, I'll have a series of suture marks running down to my navel, like a cut here line. Unearned scars are badges of idiocy, and I think this one counts. So I scrub hard, until my skin is bright red all over, everywhere his lips grazed or his knife touched scrubbed clean of the imprints. I massage lye soap with rosewater and orange oil into my hair, and it makes the bathroom smell like home. Home smelled like powder and sweat and some kind of potato meal, and lip tint and books and satin and flowers. What I wouldn't give to be back there right now, sitting on my bed sipping tea with Cat, or shooting with Lena, or eavesdropping on the younger girls with Emme as they talked about stuffing brassieres, and the older ones who talked about kisses at midnight. I miss it with all my heart, even the interrogation practice, and the endless hours spent weeding the gardens and practicing the foxtrot. We are truly sisters there.
Standing in front of the mirror in a slip, I admit I look rough. I don't have Gaja's ability to cinch corsets within an inch of my life, so my waist is bruised in a circle. My hands are blistered from dragging him so far, my eyes dark and puffy, the wound on my chest bright pink, and my feet blistered and broken. Everything hurts. So much. I want nothing more than to crawl into bed and let Mister Sandman take me away, but things are to be done.
"Hi Flyta sweetie! Aren't you such a good girl!" She coos and leans into my hand, tilting her head so I can scratch in the crook of her neck. "Yes, good girl! I have a job for you, alright?" Flyta is my pet, gorgeous with pitch eyes, onyx feathers, downy purple legs and a purple satin harness. She's the smartest animal I've ever met, understands every word I say even if she doesn't know the command. Usually the school provides messenger pigeons, but I found Flyta at just eleven, had fallen out of her nest. I love her and I know she loves me back. "I wrote a message for you to bring home, I'm just going to tie it to your harness, and fly back, okay?" She bobs her head. I attach a two-page scroll to her underside, with the school's official seal printed onto it, a pair of evening gloves beneath sewing shears. I describe every necessary detail of my day, from where I met the boy to how I captured him, the turns I took in the passage to take him here, the food I stopped to eat, what he was wearing, everything. You need quite a good memory to work this job. Tucked next to that scroll is a larger one, with a simple diamond wax seal holding it together. It has everything I wrote officially to the headmistress, as well as useless but lovely details. What dress styles are in, the flavour of the cheese on my lunch. I consider for a long while writing about the boy, the color of his eyes, how his suit compliments them so much. My pen hovers over the paper until the ink rolls of the nib and splatters the bottom of the page. Well that's decided for me! Flyta gets some dried peas and grubs to munch on, as well as a sip of water, until I open the window and she leaves me with a sweet peck on the cheek. Everything I needed to do today was done successfully, this should feel right. Right? I probably should go over my checklist, make sure there's nothing important I forgot to do, but the bed looks so inviting and my feet are heading that way and my head hits the pillow, and I'm swept away into stars.
YOU ARE READING
Mad Honey
FantasiWIP - Azalea is an academy trained spy, an occasional assassin. She's sent on mission to find and interrogate a boy who has been watching the academy, and her. But things go wrong when she is kidnapped and thrown into a conspiracy much bigger than h...
