The new royal bodyguard had been taller than the queen, this much Corrin had noticed right away. With her pale skin and red hair, she looked like an Ansellan which meant that she stuck out against the darker coloring of the other royal bodyguards. When she smiled, it was crooked, and did not quite reach her green eyes.
Corrin had instantly disliked her.
Varia had knelt before Kasora as the newly crowned queen of the Nord spoke the same words at Corrin’s initiation, which had been a mere year before. When Varia had carefully kissed the offered royal hand, Corrin had clenched her jaw to keep herself from moving. Kasora, as if sensing something was off, had shot her a warning glance. The shame then couldn’t compare to anything before.
Corrin’s initial dislike had eventually faded. Varia had blended in seamlessly with royal routines; the council meetings and discussions, the ongoing tutoring sessions in language and strategy and even the dawn exercises the queen did, a habit from youth. Captain Posari, the leader of the bodyguards, had been especially grateful that he had found a new volunteer for for those. He was getting too old to be awake before the sun, he had often complained.
But then once, Corrin had caught Varia watching her from across the room at a council meeting. Corrin, lost in a daydream as the meeting droned on, had looked up, met those green eyes and froze. The hand of the queen, surreptitiously trailing fingertips down the back of Corrin’s leg, quickly withdrew. Varia had watched her for a second longer before averting her gaze to some neutral point on the meeting table.
Corrin’s dislike had come back with force then. Had Varia seen? Was she jealous? Or did Varia find her inadequate as a bodyguard? This last thought had stuck with her the strongest; she had overheard other older bodyguards whisper derisively shortly after her inclusion to the royal bodyguards. Particular favor, one had called it, with a sly glance toward the queen. When she had asked Posari about it, his assurances to the contrary had felt fake.
Wondering about it had made her feel paranoid. The queen had said she was distracted and sometimes gave up and rolled away from her in bed. Corrin forced herself to ignore the new bodyguard’s scrutiny and instead focused on who dissembling who, exactly, Varia was.
When Varia had been introduced, she had given her family name as ‘Lucci’. Corrin, armed with this information, had begun spending her free time pouring over genealogy books in the royal library. She found nothing suspicious, just a long list of wine merchants stretching back to Ansello, but why would she have? ‘Lucci’ was a perfectly suitable name for a family who had immigrated to the Nord from Ansello decades ago.
Turned out that it wasn’t far from the truth.
Hirore.
Varia’s true family name was ‘Hirore’.
Everyone, high-born or low, was wary of the Hirore. A clan whose family business was assassination-for-hire, they had more than earned their bad reputation. Murder was the Hirore game, for a price. A hundred years ago the clan had attempted to usurp the Ansellan Imperial throne and had been hunted down and exiled for it. Now, they had made their home here in the Nord.
Corrin felt fear rise in the back of her throat as she schooled her face into polite blandness and tried again.
“Varia, I’ve been sent by the queen to find you,” she said, carefully forming each word. Anger still simmered in the back of her mind.
“So she’s still alive after all,” Varia’s expression was carefully bland.
“The queen needs your help and—“
“I’m sure what you have to say is very important,” Varia cut in “but we need to get off the streets now, unless you like having prison rats for roommates.”
“Of course not.” Corrin shuddered.
“Follow me then,” Varia gestured with a hand as she made her way to a large pile of crates someone had carelessly left stacked against one alley wall. The assassin quickly knotted her ankle-length skirt above her knees and, with surprising speed, clambered up to the top of the crate pile. She got to her feet and turned, glancing downward.
Corrin stubbornly met Varia’s green-eyed gaze and followed the assassin up the creaking crate pile. By the time she had reached the top, Varia was already carefully making her way up the side of the building. Corrin followed her, leather gloves pinching as she climbed from brick and plaster and then up a rain pipe, the smell of iron thick in her nose.
She reached the top of the building, heart pounding steadily in her ears and a good familiar burn starting in her shoulders and arms. This was different to climbing trees and cliff-faces, but the muscles involved were the same. She reached the top, pulled herself up over the edge and got to her feet on the flat rooftop. She almost missed seeing where Varia was standing.
“How long have you been in Voltagi?” Corrin asked.
“Five years, I think.”
For a moment, Corrin was breathless with anger. Five years and Varia had simply lived in peace in one spot, while she and the queen had survived starvation and being on the run year after year. In the low light, Varia’s eyes were almost black. She brazenly stared back at the assassin.
Nearby, a line of forgotten laundry flapped in the light breeze.
“Come on,” Varia turned away.
The assassin led the way through an urban maze of dirty, narrow alleyways shifting to middle class apartment buildings, shops and wide plazas anchored by fountains or statues at their centers. An Ansellan troop marching across one such plaza forced them to scramble behind a shop’s trash bins. When the troop had passed, she and Varia darted across the square. Thunder rumbled overhead. Corrin wondered if the assassin could feel her own gaze boring into the back of her head.
At a wall surrounding an immense brick apartment building, Varia paused, becoming statue-still. Behind the wall, a set of heavy footsteps came close, accompanied by loud sniffling. They both instinctively crouched down and waited until the footsteps, and sniffling, receded into the nighttime silence. On the other side of the wall was a small garden bisected by a stone pathway that led from the building’s entrance out to the gate. There was a single oil lamp at the entrance and no other light; it was fully nighttime now. Varia veered sharply to the left, slipping by the building like a shadow. Corrin followed, squinting; Varia didn’t appear to have much trouble seeing in the dark, walking confidently ahead.
The assassin wove her way through, what Corrin guessed was, a courtyard until they reached a small, discrete door. She produced a key, the door opened soundlessly and they slipped inside. The hallway they stepped into was lit at intervals by oil lamps, their flames low, but it was enough to see the mirror sheen of the marble flooring. Marble was expensive in the Nord, because it was imported from Ansello across the Needle Sea, but the wealthy in Voltagi clearly loved it. It was even in the Nordi royal palace; Kasora had always told her that the Ansellan palace at Calabri was made entirely of white marble.
“Come on,” Varia shook out the wrinkles in her skirt as she walked down the hall. They entered a stairway and climbed until the sixth and top floor was reached. There, at the end of the hall, Varia unlocked a door and stood to one side to let Corrin enter. Corrin stepped inside, her fingers curled on the handle of a knife under her cloak.
“Sorry I’m late,” said Varia and then the beautiful woman was in Varia’s arms, her own lithe brown arms wrapping around the assassin’s shoulders.
“I’m sure it couldn’t be helped,” said the woman as they separated. Her heavily-lashed gaze landed on Corrin. “Are you going to introduce us?”
“Of course,” Varia stepped aside as she said this. “Corrin, this is Elena Damare, she’s a friend of mine.”
A friend? Corrin doubted it was just that.
“And this, Elena, is Corrin daMorr,” Varia said “a bodyguard of the queen, Kasora.”
Elena started, her dark eyes widening.
“So she is alive.”
“Yes,” Corrin felt tension ease from her shoulders “very much so, lady.”
“Oh praise Niva, this is excellent news.”
“Elena—”
“Don’t start, Varia,” Elena held up a hand and smiled warmly. “Corrin, welcome to my home. Will you be staying long?”
“I-I’m not sure of that yet,” Corrin said. Exhaustion dragged at her now, after the climbing and running, the weeks of searching, sleeping rough and—
“No matter, I have plenty of room for one more,” Elena said “follow me.”
Corrin followed Elena out of the living room. She didn’t miss the frown on the assassin’s face as she passed.