Silver Blades: Dread Handed

Part 3, Section 1 - The Hand

Pertuli.

I do not trust Ivy Tyne. What she says is suspect. She cannot be trusted. 

My heart refused to leave its perch in my throat no matter how many times I told myself this.

Her intelligence concerning Riposte's "death" was, almost certainly, a minute fraction of an elaborate program to mistreat him in some way. As I made my way through the Temple Ward she was, no doubt, congratulating herself on the success of her stratagem while ransacking our rooms.

If that was her master stroke, I had little to fear. My room was the proverbial haystack in which no needle could be found. Rip's was so blanketed in dust anything of use would be decades out of date. I knew this, having ransacked his room habitually for years. The fellow really needed to invest in more modern locks.

Still, it begged the question: She had nothing to gain that I knew of—what if there was no game? What if Ivy was telling the truth?

I thrust the thought from my mind. Like an unripe tilwenna at Flowering, it was a devilishly insistent falsehood. Though admittedly that metaphor is so alluring I should find another for a fiction this horrific .... Luckily, her story didn't trouble me in the least. Riposte might be dead. Hah! Such a thing was impossible.

The citizens of Dragoskala, perceiving the thunderhead of my mood, parted before me. An older woman recoiled at my glare. A startled man made a sign against evil as I pushed him aside. I paid them no mind.

I snapped something at the courtesy guard to the Cathedral grounds who wished me good day. We would see. If Ivy's words hold any portion of truth, no one in my vicinity will think the day ought but ill.

The spearmen guarding Zane's Hall watched me depart the paved walkway and advance against them across the lawn, so their backs were up before I arrived.

"St. Zane's Hall is closed to visitors for the day," one guard barked, as I closed on them. He was tall, even for a human, and had a neck so thick his coif was undoubtedly custom-made.

"Try back tomorrow," the shorter one agreed, eyeing me warily. They both looked competent, and unafraid of a lone tilwenor.

It would take some nerve to get past these jesters without killing them. Time to skate the glacier's edge.

I slowed to a stop, planted my feet, thrust back my shoulders, and announced, as if to include an audience in the upper balconies, "I understand that you hold a prisoner by the name of Lord Koray Clasicant, Baron of Dumon. I intend to see him and hear by what charges he is held."

A swell of energy pulsed into me, fueled by the plants and animal life within the cathedral grounds. My hair rose on the wind as if electrified. My eyes flashed like the stormy green of lightning in the forest under full gale. Wind swirled the cloudy volume of my fog-grey cape about me, increasing my presence until my body thrummed with power. I was a tilwen lord in all Terrok's manifest glory, and the mere mortals who opposed me should avert their eyes lest they risk my ire.

I was the pride of Ill'Enniniess, the silver tongued, the wielder of words. The spirit of Terrok supported and ran through me and when manifesting, I seemed taller, prouder and more ethereal, and my words carried the weight of the world.

Or, rather, that is how it should have gone... I realized with belated irritation that I was standing on holy ground. Ugh.

The soil under me, claimed for the Church of One, negated my manifestation entirely, and the guards, none the wiser, were profoundly underwhelmed; uncertain how to react to the posturing tilwen before them.