Chapter 7: Nobody

As it happens, what Pitney needed from Duke Gaban was a devourer's egg. The reason he needed it was for more bug problems, though, as she drew near to the fields where the bugs dwelt, they apparently did not count as the same kind of bugs as the ones that were crawling inside her. They writhed with fury when they sensed a rival hive burrowing under the ground a few hundred yards hence.

Pitney had taken the egg and asked if Gaban had given her any trouble, to which Lilith responded that he had forced her to retrieve the egg herself. Pitney apologized to her. Actually apologized. "Sorry about that, missy," he'd said in a warm and gruff voice, "if it weren't you it'd be some other unfortunate slave." And perhaps one who deserved it, she thought, but caught herself before wandering into thinking that all the other slaves deserved it. She didn't want to stumble into insulting a perfectly respectable peasant like Hathorn again. And then she was thinking about Hathorn again. She didn't know that Saberlin would hurt him. He was busy, and maybe he just couldn't be bothered to kill slaves over potentially dire news. He was just a slave, after all, how much harm could he do? And in any case, Hathorn had said himself that he owed Lilith his life. Plus even with everyone in their proper station he was a peasant and she was a noble and dying for her was his job. To say nothing of the fact that it was really that new Ashford Guard captain's fault for breaking the seal on the letter in the first place (what was her name, anyway?).

More importantly it was in the past, and Pitney was in the present, and was actually giving her money. "Here's for your trouble," he said, "if the Guard asks, it's a token for your master for occupying his property's time. Between you and me, I won't tell anyone if you spend some for yourself," and he winked.

"M-May I go, sir?" Lilith had asked, momentarily stunned at being paid to do something. Did peasants just do this, offer money to slaves for errands they were legally required to perform anyway? Weren't Adelbern's taxes keeping them at the brink of starvation? Well, she supposed not all of them would be, but what were the odds she'd run into two in one day? Ten gold, Lilith counted. Nothing to sneeze at.

"Gonna count it right in front of me?" Pitney asked with a grin.

"Oh, sorry, sir, I didn't mean to be rude," Lilith said, "I just...Well, I didn't expect this kind of generosity."

Pitney chuckled. "Aye, I suppose doing things for free is sort of the point of slavery, innit? Wasn't raised to be in anyone's debt, though, even if they weren't in any position to collect. You done me a favor, I done one for you. Fair's fair." There was so much wrong with that but Lilith didn't want to make him angry and anyways peasants could hardly be expected to know better. "You can go if you like, I've got work to do now," Pitney said, "unless you can find some way to convince that new captain Devona to do her damn job and protect my fields."

So that was her name. "What do you mean?" Lilith asked.

"Fields are full of worms. Giant ones. It's what the egg is for, bait to lure out the queen. I can hack up the little ones on my own, but the queen, she's a nasty piece of work. Gotta try, though. So long as those worms are chewing up my fields, I won't have near enough to feed my family through winter come harvest time."

“Meet me in the fields in an hour” Lilith said, “I can help.”

And that's how she ended up walking towards a field full of worms to kill them all. She had used the hourlong detour to pick up her staff from the cave, relocating it and the egg to another, more convenient hiding spot inside a rather spacious hollow in a tree, and planted her wand in a different hiding spot in what had been a rabbit's burrow before she yanked the rabbit out and snapped its neck, just in case the first was discovered. She hadn't actually put the staff in the tree yet, of course, as she'd need it for the worm killing.

Sneaking to the fields with the staff proved difficult, however, because the nearby hills were absolutely swarming with bandits. Some rookie elementalist, hardly good for more than getting campfires going, had tried to ambush her and take the staff, and now she was covered in burns only partially healed when she had latched onto the short man's neck and sucked the life out of him. She still had a cuts healing from her fight with the skale in the morning, plus the punctures in her shoulder, and several of the bee stings hadn't healed entirely, and there was her split lip, her bloodied nose, and then the hole punched into her shoulder and back by the devourers, all only mostly healed by her blood-drinking frenzy. She was pretty sure she had traded out every drop of blood in her body for someone or something else's, and worried briefly if that meant she was no longer a noble, but then the locusts crawling through her veins began acting up and she realized she was at the field. There was Pitney with the egg.

“I hope you're good at keeping secrets,” Lilith said as she approached, deciding not to even try to hide the staff from him. Surely he wouldn't report her when she came to help him. “I think it goes without saying that this,” she shook the staff, “is something I would appreciate the de Roblis estate not hearing about.”

Pitney raised an eyebrow. “Where's a slave get a trinket like that?” he asked.

“Among the dead in the devourers' cave. And fortunately I know how to use it. I was a noble before I was sold.” It suddenly hit her just how much of a risk she was taking, and her bravado shrank backwards. “I...Really, please don't tell anyone,” she said, “I hardly know any witchcraft but they might kill me for using any at all. I wasn't even a slave when I learned it.” That last part wasn't entirely true, but the last thing she wanted was to end up with her head chopped off anyway after all the effort she'd put into keeping it today. A week she'd been a witch, and only today was she threatened with execution no less than three times.

“I was always told witches ain't good folk,” Pitney said.

“If you really think just knowing a few black arts is so bad, I've got a year's worth of whip marks to show I've paid for it,” Lilith said, “I'm here to help, and no one ever told me necromancy was wrong. Unpleasant, sure, but not immoral.”

Pitney sighed. “World's complicated, and you're young. Certainly I wouldn't want you to lose your pretty head over it.”

“Thank you,” Lilith said, “give me the egg?”

Pitney handed her the egg, and the buzzing inside of her grew to a fever pitch as she stepped into the center of the field and dropped it there. The other worms ignored her; they just burrowed out from the ground, devoured a few stalks of wheat, and then returned beneath the earth, paying no heed to her even when she was scarcely five feet away. One of them fought a losing battle with a savage wolf on the outskirts of the fields. But once the egg was planted, it didn't take long for a half-dozen of them to surface, fighting over it. One of them was larger than the others, bit off the head of one, bit through the middle of the other with a crunch until it collapsed, and the rest retreated. The queen grasped the egg in its jaws and swallowed it whole. Lilith hoped Pitney wasn't planning on making an omelet from that.

Lilith's swarm flew from her again and...That was the end of it. Moments later the locusts were picking the meat off the inside of its carapace. “That was it?” Lilith said, as Pitney stepped closer to examine the queen's corpse, “that was the big finish? I was kind of expecting more of a fight.”

“You and me both,” Pitney said, “maybe I should've just killed the pest myself.”

“Well, either way,” Lilith said and shrugged. She raised a hand to block out the sun and tried to judge the time from its position. She had several hours left before sunset. She was not looking forward to her return to the Roblis Estate, but she was starting to run out of time. If she stayed out past sunset, she'd be declared a runaway and declared kill-on-sight, and plenty of young knights appreciated the target practice. She was lucky to have been picked up by the guards before knights errant on the occasions when she actually had tried to run away.

“Not so fast,” Pitney said as Lilith began walking away, “I told you, fair's fair, and you came all this way and killed the thing, didn't you?”

“How much money do you have to spare?” Lilith asked.

“Enough to settle a debt,” Pitney said, opening up his coin pouch.

“Actually,” Lilith glanced towards the bandit camp she could just barely make out in the hills. “Do you think you could do me a favor in return?”

“Depends on the favor. What do you need?” Pitney asked.

“Well, you know those bandits in the hills?” Lilith asked.

“Course I do,” Pitney said, “they only rob me every week like they're the tax man.” And yet you still have gold to give out to passing slaves. Are you rich or just crazy? Lilith wondered.

“I need a gift worthy of a noble lady,” Lilith said, “a duchess, actually. I think their camp might have something.”

“Why would you need something like that?” Pitney asked, “a duchess?”

“I think it's one of those tasks assigned a slave just so you can punish them for their inevitable failure,” Lilith said with a sigh, “but I'm not giving up yet.”

“Well I can't hardly storm a bandit camp for you,” Pitney said, “there's a difference between taking a risk and a suicide mission, and attacking that camp is the latter. Takes more than a few hungry bugs to scare them off, and the Guard won't deal with them, either. Says they don't have the men, sent 'em all north of the Wall.”

“Yeah, I don't need them dead, just distracted,” Lilith said, “I can look for something valuable, snag it from their camp, and no harm done to anyone who doesn't deserve it, right?”

“Hrmmmm,” Pitney pondered for a moment. Lilith could feel precious minutes slipping away. She hoped whatever distraction he was thinking up wouldn't take a whole lot of time. Then Pitney smiled. “I'll drive the wolves to them,” he said, “scare 'em right into the camp with some fire. The bandits will turn out on one side to beat them off, then you can slip in the other and nick something.”

“Sounds good,” Lilith said with a smile, and thanked Thorn for delivering the craziest peasant in the kingdom to her. Risking his life on a distraction for a slave just because she'd done him a favor he was legally owed? The best kind of crazy she'd met all day. When she was back where she belonged, this peasant was getting himself a sack of platinum.

The shadows were beginning to grow, making it easier for Lilith to sneak towards the bandit's camp. There she waited until she heard the howling and snarling of wolves, and the sounds of battle. Darting towards the camp, she found her way blocked by a torch-wielding sentry. Swearing, she raised the staff to blast at him. He weakened just long enough for Lilith to tackle him headlong to the ground and bury her fangs in his neck. She didn't bother sucking him dry; the wolves wouldn't fight long, she suspected, so once he went into shock she rose to her feet and shoved the bottom of her staff through his eye socket. One less bandit in Ascalon, at least.

 She was in the outskirts of the camp, and it was mercifully deserted. Frantically she searched for something that might be valuable; the sounds of battle were only fifty feet away. Several of the bandits stood on alert in the heart of the camp even closer. She slipped into a tent. A chest lay in one corner, but of course it was locked. A quick glance around revealed no key. She had no time for this! She put her fist through the soft wood of the chest, wincing with pain as it shattered and sliced up her hand. "What was that?" she could hear a voice saying, and she grabbed the contents of the chest, some pendant, and slipped out of the tent, running to hide behind a nearby bush. One of the bandits cautiously approached the tent, pulled back the flap, poked around inside. Lilith held her breath as he emerged again, his eyes scanning the nearby area.

But then he left. "Whatever it was, it ran off," he said. Had he not noticed the broken chest? It was rather dark...Or maybe it was just that there was something else in the chest, and the bandit pocketed it for himself rather than sound the alarm. Either way, Lilith started breathing again and found the sentry. She still needed parchment for this gift, and his skin would do.

Pulling the corpse down from the hills was terrifying for about the first five minutes, but the discipline of the bandit watch left a lot to be desired. They just seemed to sort of mull about in the general area of the camp and call for backup whenever they saw something they couldn't handle, and most of them didn't even make themselves very hard to spot. It was probably a bad thing that they had gotten so bold only a mile from Ashford, and not much further than that from Ascalon City.

Pitney was fine. He seemed thrilled, really. "Saw one of them get their throat ripped right out!" he said, "serves the thieving bastards right. What's that one for?"

"Gonna make him into parchment for the duchess," Lilith said while using her knife to rip away the corpse's clothes, "you should keep the skinned body. Make a scarecrow out of him, leave him somewhere in the hills, far away from your property. Bandits won't know who did it, but they'll know someone has it in for them."

"I just might," Pitney said with a grin.

It took the better part of an hour to flay the skin off, and a visit to Ashford Village, where she had to offer a merchant five gold, about two and a half times the standard market price if she remembered correctly, for him to break out an identification kit and give her a few pieces of it so that she could examine the pendant she'd stolen. Slaves could not typically identify the magical properties of an object, but Lilith had made more use of her noble upbringing in the past nine hours than she had in the past year combined. As it happened, the amulet was cursed. Once worn it could not be removed, and it caused a sensation as though a dull bit were drilled into the wearer's chest where the amulet lay. Lilith decided against trying it on. Finally, she filled the pearl inkwell with her own blood (if it could even be called her own anymore, but plenty of nobles were necromancers who fed on slaves regularly, so clearly you couldn't actually lose your noble blood by drinking too many commoners).

Lilith held onto a dream. Dreams occupied that hazy point between fantasy and destiny. It wasn't really very likely. It wasn't an inevitability quietly marching towards reality. But it could happen. And the dream that Lilith held onto was that Osric would ask how a slave might find such a wonderful gift, and she would explain she was in truth a noble, and he would use his considerable power to have her restored to her proper place that instant and dare the Roblis' or the other Magi's to do something about it.

But she knew he'd probably just take it and tell her to get lost.

"Lord Osric," she said, having found him in Ashford Village.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"I have a gift for-" she nearly said Duchess Althea, then remembered she wasn't actually supposed to have heard that part of the conversation, "for a noble lady. You ordered me to find one this morning."

"And what have you got?" Osric asked.

"A golden feather quill fresh from the moa, an inkpot made from a hollowed out black pearl, parchment made from the skin of a bandit, and a cursed pendant," Lilith said, offering her parcel.

Osric took it and examined the contents. "Where does a slave get all of these pretty trinkets?" he asked.

"The quill was found outside a pen, the pearl found in a clam by the river, the pendant was taken from the bandit camp while they were distracted by some battle, and the bandit's skin was taken from the aftermath," Lilith said, "I promise you everything was legal, m'lord."

"Well then, let us see if the prince is impressed with what you've gotten for his fiancee!" Osric said, and gestured for Lilith to follow. Lilith sucked in a breath and trailed afterwards. This was not how she had hoped to meet Rurik. Why didn't Osric just take his prize and let her go? This did not bode well.

Shadows were growing long when they Osric pulled Rurik from the stands of Althea's theater. She was not actually performing tonight, but Rurik frequented her plays anyway. She put them on in the classical style of King Thorn, with a heavy emphasis on deviancy, humor, and the triumph of the royal family over their opponents. In recent times it was popular to use the charr as the antagonists, but Althea preferred to set her plays in the Holy Wars of years past, when Ascalon, Orr, and Kryta fought with one another in the wake of the overthrow of Kryta's Thorn-blooded monarchy by the White Mantle movement. It was something of a risque statement, but being a duchess, Althea could get away with it.

Rurik adored them, of course, which made Lilith all the more nervous about having her work presented during a performance. Being worth the Prince's time was hard enough when she wasn't competing with anything in particular. Lilith fell to her knees when he approached, hardly breathing. “So,” Rurik said, to Osric, “certainly she's done better than all the rest.”

“That she has,” Osric said, “it's quite creative actually.”

“What does this do?” Rurik asked, holding the pendant.

“Once worn it is unremovable without magical assistance and causes a constant grinding pain but causes no injury, Your Majesty,” Lilith said.

“How lucky that you were able to identify it as such,” Osric said, “and know exactly which laws to avoid breaking. And noble sensibilities. I do suspect you've received some sort of assistance. Has some daft noble shared their education with you?”

“I...I was a noble, m'lord,” Lilith said, “I was Lilith de Magi, and was sold for flaunting my support of His Majesty the Prince.”

“Interesting,” Rurik said. He stopped and considered a moment. He knelt down beside her, brushed a few strands away, and examined the Roblis arms branded behind her ear. After a long silence, he said “get up and follow me.”

Lilith rose and followed and wondered: Was this it? They were headed back towards the theater now. Was Rurik really going to help her? It was surely too much to ask that he re-enoble her. If the Prince had that kind of influence to spend on someone for fetching a nice birthday present, surely he'd be using it. But he could simply buy her, couldn't he? Maybe he would. She would still legally be a slave, but she would instead be a knight for the Prince. Could she be so lucky?

The Prince led her backstage. The curtain had been dropped and the drama went on in the thin slice of stage between it and the end of the stage, while here, various stagehands prepared for the finale. A number of slaves stood locked into various cages and torture devices, and a fear began gnawing at Lilith. Althea herself was waiting next to a simple X-shaped rig, meant to bind a kneeling slave's wrists above their head.

“Duchess Althea,” Rurik said, slowly and with a flourish of his hand, “tomorrow is your birthday, but in my impatience I shall shower all of my gifts upon you tonight. You've received twelve already, and here is the last. She comes with a stationary kit and a cursed pendant, which is irremovable and causes a grinding pain in the wearer.”

“I think I want the trinkets and the slave,” Althea said with a smile, “fancy that.”

“Ah, but wait a moment, m'lady,” Rurik said, “this one has a story to tell. Go on, tell her who you are.”

Althea looked expectantly to Lilith. “I'm...Well, I was Lilith de Magi,” Lilith said, “I supported His Majesty the Prince over his father. Quite openly, towards the end. And my family sold me, your grace, and I swear by Thorn I am telling the truth and that my only crime was my support of His Majesty. Please, believe me.”

“Hmmm,” Althea said, twirling towards Rurik to lean against his side. “This is a tasty one,” she said with a grin, “I want you to do it.”

“Well, alright,” Rurik said, giving Althea a warm smile before giving her a brief kiss, “but only because it's for your birthday. I'm not a stagehand, you know.”

“Do what?” Lilith asked, and Rurik snapped his fingers and a stagehand ran towards him and offered him a small bag of tools. Rurik forced her to her knees in front of the x-shaped rig. “Your Majesty, please,” Lilith said, “I was born a noble. I'm not like them!”

Rurik retrieved a hammer and a four-inch nail from the bag, placing it above her palm. The stagehand began to shove a gag into Lilith's mouth, but Althea waved her hand. “Let this one scream,” she said, “I think they're about wrapped up out there.”

Scream she did as the nail pierced the flesh of her palm. She could feel the bones snapping inside her as Rurik pounded the nail through her. “I'm not chafe,” Lilith said, gasping for breath, “I'm a leader of the common folk. I'm educated.”

Rurik placed the second nail above her wrist. “You are chafe,” he said, and she screamed again as he pounded the nail into her. “Your parents support a cowardly merchant-king of barely noble birth, who repeals our ancient traditions to make money.”

“But not me,” Lilith said in a whisper so breathless it was barely audible, and then screamed again as Rurik hammered the nail all the way in. Lilith clutched at her arm with her free hand.

Rurik peeled her free hand back and placed it against the opposite beam of the rig. "You still don't understand?" Rurik said. "Half my blood comes from the line of Thorn, but the other half? Just the Baron of Drascir with delusions of grandeur. And my mother's mother was not of Thorn either. The blood has grown so terribly thin. And clearly I'm not the only one." Lilith shrieked again, tugged at the nails that now pinned both her arms to the rig, and a renewed agony flowed through her limbs. "There is some blood of Thorn in me. But the blood of so many noble families has clearly been diluted to worthlessness. My father's. Your parents'. And, thus, yours."

 "Your highness, please," Lilith sobbed, "I would have followed you into Hell."

"The de Magi line clearly died some time ago," Rurik said, "you might have appropriated the name, but it's obvious you were born de Nemo." He tossed the cursed pendant onto Lilith's chest, and it latched onto her collar bone. She gasped with pain as it began churning through her flesh, a pain that would never go away. "You are the scion of nobody, belong nowhere, and are worth nothing." He and Althea exchanged some sweet words, but Lilith could not hear them through the pain. She was dimly aware of the curtain rising and the play going on around her. Night fell, the stage brightly illuminated by lanterns, and she heard the audience cheering while her ears throbbed.

Through the whole performance, Lilith cried.