Calilla had turned away as Talvor departed. She did not need to see him leave. The ensuing click of the shop door closing behind him was finality enough. Retreating to her private rooms, she sighed heavily. Her path took her around the first of the white wicker chairs, her gaze briefly falling upon a plate of saffron buns given to her by Arelienbur. Snatching one up as she made her way to the second seat, she took a bite as she sat, finding the taste to be surprisingly pleasant upon her tongue. As she ate, she contemplated the last half hour.
She had not meant to see him that day, or indeed any other, meaning to abide by his desire to be rid of her. It had been chance only that he had come across her again in the Prancing Pony. No words had been exchanged there; barely even a passing glance for she had walked away upon seeing him. That should have been enough, but the Fates as Seaver would say, or this Béma so named by Talvor, appeared to have other plans. Calilla had never believed in any of that; she believed only in what she could see, in what she could feel and taste and touch and kill. The notion of a Greater Master guiding her hand after she had so neatly ended the life of her worldly owner was anathema to her. So what had this second meeting been then? Or the third? Coincidence? Did it matter?
He had found her there, picking flowers beneath the Yellow Tree. For the first time in her life, she had found herself grateful for the rain. Frigid and miserable as it was, soaking through her furs and chilling her bones, it hid her weakness from him; it had washed away her tears. They had spoken briefly of the differences in how their respective cultures viewed the notions of right and wrong and for a moment, she thought that perhaps she had finally made him see.
Blind in one eye, perhaps, but there was a certain lingering blindness to his mind as well. Larger truths had been necessary. He had followed her willingly enough to her shop, though she noted that he had kept his hand so very close to his sword at all times. It was only once she had shown him the extent of her wares and explained to him the difference in price between the Eastern stock and the Western items that he really seemed to believe her words. The latter had been freely traded, willingly and for coin. The former had been bartered with blood - even he could not blame her for taking the lives of her pursuers.
Apologies had been exchanged then, and some confessions made. Before he left, he had gifted to her a blade of importance to him - one of Elven design that he said had been given to him many years ago by a man of the Eglain. In return, she gave to him her most prized possession - the Haradian dagger that had once been the pride of her master, the very same blade that she had turned against him.
You will never find a blade that has drank more deeply of Khandish blood than this, she had told him. Every word of it true. She had used it upon every single one of her countrymen who had dared stand in her way, every one who had sought to take her home for punishment, every one who had sought to take her life for the honour of saying that they had been the one to finally kill her. What had started out as angry men seeking to make an example of a runaway slave had long since turned into prideful men wanting naught but the glory of the challenge. Each one in the ten years since her escape had met his end upon that single piece of sharpened steel.
Now it was lost to her; gifted to the very man who had shown her how to love, only to deny her any satisfaction or enjoyment of it. She wanted it gone. She wanted it to stop! She wanted these feelings to have never awakened her once-still heart. She wanted to be rid of this pain, to be done with this wretched heartache and to return to a life of feeling nothing!
She wanted to not be so alone.
Perhaps the first step was to fall back on what she knew best.
Taking the Elven dagger from its sheath, she traced the patterns of the hilt with her fingertip. This was real. This was true. This was tangible.
"You will be her new blood drinker," she told it softly. "Her little morroval."
