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 The Queen's handmaiden handmaiden counted counted the bodies bodies of the hanged hanged every morning. morning. Hung the previous day from the gibbets, they were carried o by the executioner's men in the middle of the night while the city slept, and suspended to the balustrades so all the people could behold them when they arose in the morning. When dawn broe on the hori!on, the bodies were silhouetted, star as a woodcut against the rising light.  This morning morning was no dierent. dierent. The sy sy was cold and and blue, streaed streaed with with long waves of alternating paleness. "rom the merchants' stalls rose the various scents of their wares# smoed meats, cured cheeses, spiced wines. "amiliar odours, which never failed to $ll %laria with a strange sense of closeness and perhaps even nostalgia no matter how many times she smelled them. &s she passed by a stand with several bins brimming with fresh fruit, she heard a voice call out to her. '%lle Hey, %lle' The handmaiden turned and beheld a smiling face. & young girl,  (ust seventeen or so, ran up up to her, panting panting and wiping wiping her blood)stained blood)stained hands hands on a rag already deeply saturated a dar scarlet. "rom her belt hung a cleaver on a leather thong, its deceptively)sharp blade *eced with specs of gristle and sinew. '+aterina' %laria smiled warmly, greeting her friend. +aterina was the butcher's daughter, tall, strong and fetching. The handmaiden had nown the girl since the latter was eleven and (ust beginning to dabble in her father's profession  a trade in which she,  (ust six years later, would would become more more silled than even even her mentor. mentor. -t was both for for this and their long friendship that %laria often freuented her shop, which was now renowned across the entire ingdom for selling the $nest meats, when her mistress reuired her to purchase victuals for an upcoming banuet. '/ut buying groceries, love0' the girl ased, noting the woven baset which dangled by her friend's side. '"airly early, don't you say0' 1he nudged the baset with her foot, rocing it against the handmaiden's side. 'Hey -t isn't that early' %laria laughed. '2ou can convince yourself that you haven't been out for long,' her friend smiled, 'but you're almost full,' pointing at the baset and laughing. 3ooing down, %laria noticed, to her slight dismay, that the baset was indeed almost $lled to the brim with assorted victuals  and she had hardly even been out for long. 1he sighed inwardly. '1o, how've you been0' she ased, stepping aside slightly to allow a man carrying a sac of grain past. '/h, (ust the usual,' +aterina said, snatching a peach from her friend's baset and taing a bite out of it. '"ather warns me that business might surge in a little, all this tal of 

 

war and all going around and maing people all cra!y, but - don't buy much of it. %ither way, though, - put in extra orders of stoc that should be coming in at the docs some time this wee, so we'll be ready, even if the rumours turn out to be true.' 1he shrugged, too another bite, then continued. '2ou hear anything about that, love0' 'Well,' 'W ell,' %laria began, then stopped. 1he wasn't supposed to tal about matters of the court to anyone  and especially  not  not to a 'commoner'. 4ut what would a little gossip hurt0 1he would (ust eep it vague. 'Hm0' +aterina mumbled through her chewing, her large eyes wide and intent on her friend. 'There's tal of armies amassing in the east,' she told her, recalling a short snippet of conversation she heard while passing the commanders' uarters. '4ut even supposing that that is true,' she uicly added, noting her friend's loo of concern, 'they're at least several hundred miles away from what - can gather, and pose negligible threat. 4esides, the city's well)defended against virtually every form of attac, so, for all our concerns, concerns, all this tal about war is, lie you said, pretty cra!y.'  The girl $nished $nished the peach peach and tossed the core into into a nearby barrel, barrel, dipping her $ngers into a small waterfall pouring from a gutter above them.

positing what protasis  suggesting what cause0

 The $rst time they they had met, the girl girl had been sitting on the the stoop of her porch, weeping into her hands and clutching a small stued animal. %laria, then eighteen, had been out on an errand fetching herbs from the apothecary, and was returning to the castle when she had come across the young girl.

 

   2ears, ears, the night has wandered. wandered. +enturies, +enturies, perhaps. perhaps. The (agged roads roads contract contract and  2 expand lie the entrails of a writhing beast. "or each time they shift, a terrible roar trembles the darness. +enturies +enturies he has wandered yet the farther he wals the less reason he $nds in going on. 2et he persists anyways in his dogged pilgrimage. Why, he does not now. -t doesn't matter. the road is good enough. -t gives him purpose, meaning. 3ie all others, he has heard the legend of the "air 3ady. The princess in the tower, longing for salvation. +hildren's stories, he tells himself. He doesn't believe it. &nd even if he did, why him0 %very one of his previous mistresses, he's failed. &lways, he awaes from the end of a chivalric dream, a sword in hand, staring down at the body of a woman he was supposed to protect. & failed lover at times, a failed guardian, always. %ven if the "air 3ady were to exist, what would it matter0 He'd (ust let her down. &nd so he wals. &t $rst he told himself he was looing for something beyond him. 5od, perhaps. Truth. 4ut whatever noble intentions he had within him at $rst have since crumbled. He wals now (ust to run himself into the ground. When he cannot wal any longer, he drins. He wants to drown himself in an ocean of drin. He wants to bury his head at the bottom of a smoy wine)bottle sea, an ocean without a bottom, where the ten)thousand $shes rise up to sing to the pale blue sy and the harvest moon shines without end on endless miles of wavering cornstals.  Too long he's tree  Too treed d the bottomless bottomless halls of the the palace of the perpetually perpetually)setting )setting sun and roamed the corridors and spiral staircases of the last church in the universe. He longs for purpose. &nother mistress. 1ome days he dreams of the "air 3ady, in her tower high. He wonders what she dreams of, how her heart beats. Whether her hair falls lie the ones of his former fell, whether he could ever be by her side. 4ut alas, he drins it all away and laughs her o. He writes of her in the lonely nights yet in the mornings he tears away the pages and folds them into imaginary castles to rival those of the emperors bygone. /ne day, he swears, he shall hurl the noteboo o the face of existence, himself with it after. He's always longed to see the sea. 6erhaps he shall set sail in a paper armada. 3oad it up with all his paper memories of paper people in paper mass. &nd when the ships become waterlogged and sin, he too shall sin with them. "or so the ship and thus the captain.  Then one night night he hears a whisper whisper on the the wind. 1omeone 1omeone calling. & beautiful beautiful voice. Why him0 He taes another drin. 4ut as the days pass it grows on him. +ould it be )0 7o, love is a concept foreign and long forgotten to him. 4ut, wait ) how beautiful it is He longs to strive after it. He doesn't now what he wants. He wants her, the one behind her voice.

 

He loves her, yet he's never seen her. & voice on the wind. He doesn't care. He doesn't care.

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