Chapter 59

Alayne's estate was a beautiful building, with steeply pitched roofing, steep cross-gables, windows with pointed arches, vertical siding, and a deep porch tucked behind sensible twenty-foot granite walls.

The butler at the door immediately tried denying access to her. "Lady Caine is not receiving guests today. Please leave." His response was curt, but not quite rude. Katarina explained herself and repeated her request. The butler refused a second time, but an attractive maid agreed to allow her in.

Katarina was shocked at the transformation Alayne had gone through. When she'd met the woman ten years prior, Alayne had been stiff-backed, hard faced, imperious and exacting, with clothes starched stiff and crisp.

This woman was completely different from that image. She was lounging in a plush chair in her study, negligently dressed in a simple housedress and wrap. Her hair, always kept in a tight bun at the back of her head, now tumbled about her shoulders. Her face was lined with age, and she radiated an air of indifference and laziness borne from inaction.

She sat at a wooden table, stained dark and polished until it gleamed. The room was well lit and furnished with bookshelves lining the walls.

She gave Katarina a baffled look as the Witch Hunter was ushered in. "Who are you?" She demanded, but waved her hand dismissively, already uncaring. "Leave. I don't care what you want, I'm not seeing guests today. Or ever."

Katarina glanced down at herself. "I guess it makes sense you don't recognize me." She replied, and then added with a smile and a roll of her eyes, "It has been ten years, after all."

Alayne looked up and gave the visitor a second look. The woman was tall and beautiful, with a thick braid of lustrous silvery-white hair streaked with gold that hung down to her hips. Whoever she was, she had a regal, imperious beauty, but the posture of a man.

"Nope. Can't say I do." Alayne remarked dismissively.

"I'm Katarina lon Pavlenko." Katarina replied, stepping further into the room.

That name made Alayne raise her head. Years ago she'd tried to steer Katarina to the Inquisition. Katarina had staunchly refused, and a grudging respect had eventually sprung up between the two of them.

This woman didn't look anything like Katarina. Katarina had been a few inches shorter, more solidly built, with white hair and pale, watery green eyes. This woman was slim and narrow-hipped, taller, with blonde-streaked hair, and the deepest green eyes she'd seen in her life.

"Well then, if you are, then you should hie on outta here just as fast as your legs can carry you." Alayne replied, slipping from the more formal speech rhythm to something more casual.

Katarina pointed at one of the other chairs. "May I?" She asked, and Alayne gestured meaninglessly with a roll of her eyes.

"What do you want, Witch Hunter?" Alayne asked with a weary patience as Katarina sat and crossed her legs in the manner of men, one ankle balanced on the other knee. Alayne grimaced at that.

"I need to speak with you discreetly." Katarina urged. Alayne gave a disinterested shrug and pointed out the obviously empty room. Katarina sighed.

"Since... since Norn- no." She began, and frowned. Why was she suddenly so hesitant? She cursed under her breath.

Alayne watched her struggle for a moment and then sighed. "Some wine?" She offered, and Katarina shrugged at first, and then nodded.

Alayne got up and went to the door of her sitting room, and called for her maid.

"Have you had brandy, Katarina?" Alayne asked, as she reclaimed her seat.

"I don't think so." Katarina replied doubtfully.

"You probably have, but just never realized it. Peasants often make their own type of brandy. They usually call it 'fire-wine' or the like. It's a lot more potent than wine or ale. The important thing to remember though, is that it's absolute rubbish." She remarked. "I had some of it once, up in Nauders. Some jackhole peasant came up with the idea of distilling apple wine into something he called 'applejack'. Horrifying, to say the least. The resulting brandy was just as bad."

Katarina blinked and raised her head. "Applejack is pretty good." She replied, and Alayne gaped at her in utter bafflement. "No, it's not." Alayne denied. "For a proper apple brandy, you need calvados."

The maid returned with a decanter and a pair of low glasses. She poured for both ladies, curtseyed, and left.

Alayne watched Katarina follow the young servant with her eyes, and an amused glint came to her own.

"Nope. I won't let you have Sawyer, Katarina." She snorted. "I'd've never thought you like that." she added as an aside.

Katarina blinked and returned her attention to the former High Lady Inquisitor. "Like what?" She asked honestly.

Alayne shook her head. "I always pictured you with a pair of strapping well-bred young men on leashes to keep you satisfied. Like stud horses." She barked a laugh. "I guess I never pictured you chasing skirts."

Katarina blushed at the implication. "I don't know what sort of designs the Golden lady has for my life," She began, and took a sip of brandy, "but I'm not stupid enough to get myself knocked up when I've got a mission to do."

Alayne nodded. "Reasonable. Though some would say you're just man-shy." She gestured to the glass. "The thing to do with brandy is sip, not gulp." She advised.

Katarina shrugged at Alayne's earlier statement. "To the other, I simply haven't yet met someone equal to my former Master." She replied, and Alayne chuckled. "You set a high bar, indeed."

Katarina didn't respond her jibe, and Alayne was just morose enough to not care either way, when Katarina suddenly stood up, and began pacing about the study.

Alayne wasn't just a good study of character, she had made it her life. Katarina was nervous and fidgety; there had to be a reason for it. She'd introduced herself with the nobiliary particle- that was something new. Likely Katarina had paid her family a visit and that hateful shrew of a woman that was Katarina's mother had likely sunk in her claws. Had Katarina inherited the family title of Boiyar? It seemed likely. So why didn't she introduce herself with her title? Likely because she thought Alayne wouldn't care. And she didn't. Still, it would have made for a conversation.

Katarina was likely working herself up to say whatever it was she came to say. Strange to see that in her. Katarina had always been boldly confident. She'd mentioned something happened at Norn. The last time Katarina had been seen in Norn was a year ago. So what had happened in the last year to affect the dramatic changes in her physique, in her behavior?

Alayne watched Katarina pace about, hand occasionally brushing the eagle's head stock of her gun.

"Settle down, Witch Hunter." She remarked dryly, only to have the woman twitch as she turned to face the former head of the Inquisition.

"I am settled." Katarina replied truculently. Alayne shook her head and gestured at her chair.

"You're about as settled as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs." Alayne retorted sardonically. Katarina gave her a quizzical glance, but came over to the low table and poured herself a generous splash of brandy.

"Just on edge." Katarina murmured, and Alayne shook her head.

"Nothing to be on edge about. Relax." she urged, and then eyed the young woman speculatively as she eyed the door, the shelves of books, and the window. Checking avenues of escape?

"Katarina." She called, and Katarina snapped her head around. "What?"

"You don't spend a lot of time in churches, isn't that so?" She asked, and Katarina nodded, taking a drink.

"I don't. The longer I spend there, the more opportunities I give them to take advantage of me." She replied evenly. "Whether it's some hornball priest or acolyte that can't keep their eyes off my tits, or some lordling that wants to manipulate me into some ham-brained scheme he's cooked up, there's never a good reason to stay in a church longer than absolutely necessary to turn in my bounties and collect my next assignment." She replied simply.

"So you've never talked to anyone about your missions?" Alayne asked, and Katarina eyed her sharply, hand falling to her gunbutt instinctively.

"What? Why would I do that?" She asked with a frown. "There's a Witch, I kill them." She replied evenly. "Why would I need to talk to someone about that?" She asked, guardedly.

Alayne gave her a pained look. "Katarina," She began, but struggled to find a way to articulate her words.

"Witch Hunters and Inquisitors face other dangers besides the moral threats they're exposed to." Alayne began. "And don't roll your eyes at me, girl, because I know what I'm talking about." She warned the younger woman, "The fact is, the reality is that you're a killer." She stated somberly. "Oh sure, we pretty it up. You hunt Witches. But you and I both know that most of them are just ordinary scared people that've discovered they can use magic through no fault of their own."

She eyed the younger woman as she said this, gauging her reaction. She could see the muscles in the woman's jaw and neck work as she processed this bit of information.

"You're a killer, and you've killed hundreds of people. People, Katarina. That weighs heavily on the heart, no matter who they are. Each one of them weighs heavy on the soul, and you've been doing it for a very long time. Talking to someone about these sorts of things can ease the burdens." She suggested. "You've been killing for the Church- for the Golden Lady- for ten years. I can't begin to imagine the horrors you've seen." She added in a lower voice. "But it does no good to keep them bottled up." She finished. "If you like, I can be that person you speak with."

Katarina's entire mien frosted over as she took it in. Her face was cool, her eyes inscrutable.

"No." She replied immediately, voice cold. She hesitated, and it seemed in that moment as though she thawed a bit. "Thank you, Alayne, but no. It's not such an onerous burden I carry." She added.

"Why are you here, Katarina?" Alayne asked, going to the door and calling for her maid. She gave some instructions to the young girl in a low voice that Katarina couldn't pick up.

"Since I was in Aston, I've been having visions." Katarina began after Sawyer left, and Alayne's eyes sharpened at this. "Visions and dreams followed by..." She paused. "Convulsions. A feeling as if insects were crawling under my skin." She held up her hands. "And this. These changes." She stopped, and in a choking voice, she continued. "In Begierde even my own parents didn't recognize me."

She took a longer swallow of brandy and held the lumpy blue glass until she calmed down. "I know in my heart, that the visions and dreams are from the Golden Lady, but..." she paused. "I need to know for sure."

She looked up at Alayne. "I need confirmation. I can't go on, not one step further without knowing for certain that this," She gestured at her body, "Is the work of the Golden Lady."

Alayne was silent for a long time.

"You've made some outrageous claims." Alayne began. "Dreams and visions are one thing. We can verify those, that's not difficult in and of itself." She explained. "But to say that the Golden Lady has changed your very body?" She offered with skeptical anger, "That borders on heresy, Katarina. Dangerously so. We can confirm that, too, make no mistake, but I want you to understand: No matter the result, your life will change irrevocably."

Katarina let out a long, slow sigh.

"If it's mutation, I die." She replied simply. "If it's the Goddess, then..." She shrugged. "What happens then?"

Alayne set her glass down. "Remember your lessons and think back to Saint Andrianna." She replied dryly. "I'll summon a few clerics and priestesses that I know I can trust."

After a quiet half-hour of conversation and drinking, Katarina took a deep, shaky breath and choked. The air was filled with a musky incense that overwhelmed her with a sense of familiarity, but she couldn't place it. She looked to Alayne, but the older woman just shook her head. Suddenly it seemed as though Alayne was looking at her from the end of a long dark tunnel, that the world was falling away in a spiral.

The last thing she heard before she lost consciousness was Alayne observing, "I thought for sure you'd resist longer than you did, Katarina. You've disappointed me."

Elizabeth stretched herself vigorously after extricating herself from the marvelous ship that had brought her across the ocean to a whole new land.

"So this is Katarina's city." She observed, absently adjusting straps on her gauntlets as she looked around the docks. Night had come to the city, with the exception of the docks district, which was filled with ramshackle inns and whores cribs that stayed open and active at all times of the day and night.

"I think it's time you came back inside." the captain called in a low voice. "I can hear a lot of footsteps approaching. Armored."

Elizabeth jolted, and cocked an ear. Sure enough, she could hear a number of metalshod footsteps approaching.

"Hey you!" The captain hissed. "Guards! A fuckload of them! Hurry!"

The woman scrambled aboard quickly, Elizabeth ducking into the hold.

Suddenly there was the sound of a great many footsteps overhead. "The Witch Hunter that arrived on this ship- where did she keep her belongings?" A voice cracked out. Elizabeth tensed up. There was a box they were meant to protect until Katarina came for it; was it in her cabin or was it down here, in the hold?

"Everything she had, she took with her." The captain replied. "I know, because she took over my cabin for the trip. You can look it over if you like, but there's nothing of hers left on the ship."

"We'll be the judge of that." The voice replied.

There was the sound of shuffling feet and some indistinct conversation along with a few muffled thumps.

"Where are you headed?" The voice asked the captain.

"I've been asked to run a crate of Yamato tea to some nobles in Einsamkeit. Milk run, but the pay is good. Yamato tea is the big thing down there. Personally, I'd rather run tobacco from Tassili or spices from Khmer because at least then it doesn't stink, but" there was a pause, "steel is steel."

"I don't think so." the voice replied. "You're sequestered. Your ship shall be considered 'locked down'. You're not leaving the harbor for now."

"Are you fucking shitting me? Unfuckingbelievable." The captain complained.

"Relax. These things usually take a week." There was a pause. "Unless maybe you've got something to help forget to serve your papers." the voice offered in a low voice. "Like that tobacco you were talking about."

The captain muttered a curse. "Caught me at the worst time, my friend. All's I got in my hold is a box of nails from Blackwall and that tea I mentioned."

"Well, that's a pity." the voice replied. "All right boys, let's move out."

The footfalls faded.

Some indeterminate time later, Elizabeth found herself jostled awake by the captain.

"Wake, you." He urged. Elizabeth lifted her head, wiping drool from her lip, and across the stack of crates and barrels, the captain chuckled at her.

She glared at him as she rose to her feet, but the captain raised his hands defensively. "Relax, relax. My little sister used to do the same thing." he said by way of apology. "Did you hear that prick? We're stuck here for the time being."

Elizabeth nodded. "Did they find anything?" She asked, and he shrugged. "Wasn't anything for them to find." He replied. "If you're still heading to Begierde, you're welcome to stay. Lady Katarina paid well, so room and meals are covered. Else if you want to test your luck you can disembark here and we'll call it good." He gave her a look, and rubbed the side of his nose. "I have to say I feel right uncomfortable hiding you in the hold. Aye and that I'm a smuggler," He added by way of justification, "but trafficking humans was ever a dastardly lot. It feels uncomfortable." He finished, and she nodded.

"I'll stay a bit longer." She advised him, and he nodded.

She awoke in the morning to hit her head on the low ceiling of the hold. Biting back curses, she headed for the ladder that would let her up into the ship. She was going to the Librarium Lexicanum, the largest repository of books and accumulated wisdom this side of the Gulf of Mirras.

The first thing she wanted to do was look up was Evangeline Blackwood. Katarina had told her that the sword she'd given her belonged to the woman, but did not tell Elizabeth anything about her. The other thing she wanted to learn was about the giantess they'd traveled with through Rothgar. Katarina had said that the woman was not something to be feared or killed, and indeed, the giantess was agreeable and biddable enough, but she had to know how the Church felt about the tribes of giants that lived hidden lives in the jagged mountains in the Sarkomand Highlands.

Elizabeth left the ship discreetly, accepted a peace-binding for her sword from a guard, and began the laborious trek through the titanic city.

Strange sensations across Katarina's skin, under her flesh. In the air above her, between her toes like cold, jellylike mud, the scent of orange blossoms in her nose, the unique yielding crunch of bacon between her teeth. Warm, slippery panting next to her ear and a stirring in her loins. A voice, from far away, a voice calling from a long tunnel.

"Go away in your mind to a dream. A dream of happiness, of bliss unending. Something that fills you completely."

When she next became aware of things, she was in her dormitory room with Frederika, the room they'd shared ten years ago as they attended classes together. Frederika was sitting across from her, feet crossed at the ankle.

"I love you, Katarina." She declared simply. "I've loved you since we met."

Katarina nodded. "I love you too, 'Rika." She heard herself reply, and she knew it for truth.

The vision changed, then.

Hands twining together, bodies striving against each other, silvery hair shimmering in firelight, violent eyes half-lidded gazing back at her, heavy with lust and passion. Lips dragging across each other. Slow lust burning like embers, like fire in her belly, the desire to be whole, be complete, to become part of something greater than herself with the albino girl. Frederika dug her nails into Katarina's shoulder and suddenly a voice, light and sweet like a skylark remarked in her ear,

"Frederika loved you, you know. Nauders does not share the same perspectives on love as we do, however, so she buried that love behind the bonds of friendship and sisterhood."

Araya. And just like that, the vision, sweet as it was, shattered. Once more she was in the dormitory of the preparatory school she attended with Frederika. Once more she sat across from the willowy albino girl that was inseparable from herself.

"The desires I've felt for you, I couldn't express them." Rika remarked simply, the Nauders accent heavy on her tongue. "So instead of you becoming the thing I couldn't have, you became my sister, Kat. I treasure you above all things." She gestured. "That vision of us can never come to pass."

"I thought this was supposed to be a dream of my happiness." Katarina complained, and Rika laughed.

"You are far too pragmatic to indulge in something this unrealistic, sister. But that one has the right of it- you should pursue your happiness." She remarked with a gesture behind Katarina.

"That one?" Katarina asked, starting to twist around in her seat, see who she was pointing to, but her vision was growing dark.

"I'll hold her still, Sawyer. You get her feet."

Katarina blinked at that. What sort of voice was that?

When her vision cleared, she was in camp on some rolling plains. Ollara held her close. It felt ridiculous being sat across the giantess' lap, but Katarina allowed it.

"Did you get enough to eat, Katarina?" Ollara asked gently, and Katarina nodded. The woman nodded back with a warm smile. "Then I will take first watch. Sleep."

A breeze ruffled the hair on her head as she lay beside the fire, a breeze as cold as death, as hard and as brittle as ice, as sharp as a razor. The Apostle, the Living Saint, the Divine Champion of the Golden Lady stood before her, in the middle of the campfire. The flames didn't seem to touch her at all.

"Blood, Katarina." Celestine declared in a warning voice.

"Blood?" Katarina replied, baffled, sitting up. The other two, Elizabeth and Ollara lay beside the fire, asleep.

"The Goddess demands it." Celestine explained warningly. "The fruit of the fields, the fruit of your labors, the fruit of your loins, the fruit of your life, all of it paid for... in blood."

"Why does she need so much blood?" Katarina asked, baffled, and the angel grinned, flashing vulpine teeth in a savage, predatory sneer.

"Because you are the sheep, and she the shepherd."

The vision went dark, but not before she heard the thirsting laughter of malignant things rustling in the darkness.

Katarina stood- or perhaps she was suspended in some way- somehow above the Alstroemeria, the gargantuan, titanic six-lobed cathedral that stood proud and defiant, imposing its bulk everywhere, in every direction.

Katarina drew breath then, and it seemed a ceaseless, endless thing. She could never draw so much into herself before, but that did not seem to bar her this time. The sky boiled with black-and-silver clouds, staining the sky, rumbling with anticipatory thunder.

"I come before the world like the sickle before the harvest. Be trampled in my indifference. Be friendly unto me, for I am the servant of your goddess, lady of heaven!" She shouted, remembering Simurgh's furious announcement and raising her hand to the sky.

The clouds boiled violently, whirling in a tight spiral, a cone of compressed wind and fury. She dragged her hand down, and a bolt of lightning, the apotheosis of lightning bolts, a spear of brilliant fire and jagged energy thick as a merchant's estate lanced from the point of the spiral and crashed into the central spire in raw, elemental fury. The sound of the thunderclap blasted her ears, the roar of the collapsing Grand Cathedral was a dull roar behind that. The brilliance blinded her.

Her ears rang with the thunderbolt, throbbed with it. As the ringing faded, it resolved into screaming. Endless, ceaseless screaming, as surroundings resolved around her. Once again, she was in Alayne's study, laying on a low divan. Alayne was crouched next to the fireplace, face a rictus of terror, fingers splayed against the mantle, poised as if to bolt, terrified to her core.

Blood was everywhere, indifferently and violently splashed in gaudy, grotesque arcs. It dripped from the bookshelves, pooled on tabletops, trickled down rare glass windows.

"You killed him! I can't believe you killed him!" A voice shrieked in unbridled, senseless horror.

"You do not touch her." A snarling voice declared in a tone as cold as wintry tombs as darkness closed over Katarina's vision once more.

The disembodied head gashed his teeth at her, jagged, tumbled things stained red. "There are things in the world, Katarina Pavlenko." It growled up at her from the wooden box. It sneered up at her. "Endlessly hungry, endlessly thirsty, eager to pounce upon the unwary." it grated.

"Yes, but my Goddess is strong." She replied simply, closing the lid on the box. As the box closed, the shadow covered its face in darkness. She glanced up at the sky and was horrified to see a gigantic hand likewise closing a lid over her. Darkness closed around her once more.