Play The House Down Ruby Roux

[Ruby]

I.

[Leopold]

Berevar - The Ahyark Tundra

“If she finds out what we’ve done we’re going to discover the fates worse than death.”

Jeren frowned. Lately, it was all he seemed to do in his employer’s company. Though he enjoyed their mutual adventures very much (when they weren’t being threatened with a painful and agonising afternoon), he began to doubt the need to stay in The Winchester Rose Trading Company. The time to develop professionally, sic, to leave damned quick, was approaching.

“Why would she discover where Duffy is, Leopold?” The captain of the guard could only shrug.

“Knowing him as well as I do, he will not want to stay out of the spot light for long.” Leopold bit his lip.

In the back of a wagon in the back of beyond, neither man found a solution. The cold outside seeped in through the thick canvas’s cracks, and in silence, they shivered themselves into a constant state of dreaming awareness. The uncomfortable journey did little to appease their growing anxiety. Leopold’s for his marriage, Jeren’s for his pay check.

“I tell you what. Forget it happened. Forget Duffy is rampaging his merry little six-string-finger smith self across Raiaera.” Whilst easier said than done, Leopold’s silence told Jeren his employer agreed. “Let’s get this delivery done and get back home.” Jeren stared at Leopold, though the merchant stared at the rickety floorboards of the wagon. Through a thin crack in its bottom, he idly watched the white and grey tapestry of the Ahyark tundra pass them by.

[Ruby]

Scara Brae - Market Square

“Is it really that hard to hit C sharp?” Ruby barked. Her eyes, wide as dinner plates, tore through the last of the interviewee’s confidence.

A girl, barely in her twenties, ran from the hobbled together stage crying. She flew down the stairs with her eyes practically closed, driven from Market Square on blind instinct and a growing desire to be anywhere Ruby Winchester was not.

“Well done,” commented the matriarch’s eternally suffering husband.

“Oh, don’t start,” she spat. Turning to lock eyes with Leopold Winchester, she found him turned in the nick of time to look south to the line of potentates to the former Tantalum troupe’s crown.

“I guess you could consider this many young, attractive, and potential talent bound women wanting to be you as a compliment.” Every word in his statement cut like a knife. He practically felt his wife’s anger grow in intensity. “Perhaps we should take a short break for luncheon, before putting you through another exercise in futility.” Now he dared to turn to face her glare.

“I am only growing irritable, husband dear, because I explicitly stated in the flyers that a C sharp to baritone range was required of anyone wishing to audition.”

“I’m not sure half of Scara Brae knows what a note is, never mind the multitude of octaves they have to choose from hitting them.” Leopold only understood musical theory because Ruby had drilled it into him the centuries they had been bonded in not always happy matrimony.

[Leopold]

Berevar - The Ahyark Tundra

“Where are we going, anyway?” Jeren asked, almost an hour after both men gave up fighting amongst themselves. The sound of snow compacting beneath hoof, wheel, and marching guard seemed thunderous to them. Jeren spoke half to break the monotony, and half to get an answer out of Leopold at long last.

Leopold smiled weakly.

“The Ice Henge.”

Jeren wanted to immediately slap Leopold. Though he doubted his place in the company, he knew that wherever it was, it would be better than a demotion to a guard and having to walk all the way back to Salvar.

“Ah. Why?” Jeren folded his arms across his chest and leant back against the side of the wagon. The wood frame took the strain off his back, and the wagon canopy offered a pillow of sorts.

Leopold shuffled under his cloak, trying to get comfortable. Every rise and fall of the tundra loosened him from his perch. He sorely regretted choosing to ‘rise with the boys’. Had he remained in his own wagon, he would be sat at the front, on a cushion, and in the rising glow of the soon-to-shine sun.

“You expect me to just tell you my business, just like that?” the merchant asked playfully.

“You’ve made it my business by including me in your little god-bothering deceptions.” Syrian started to seep into Jeren’s calm face, and the taunt in his voice told Leopold all he needed to know about winding either of the men up. Definitely not now.

[Ruby]

Scara Brae - Market Square

Ruby deigned to ignore her husband. Instead, she walked right at him. He melted to one side and muttered profanities under his breath.

“Next!” the matriarch roared.

She stopped at the top of the stairs. At their bottom, the next candidate awaited a summons. Ruby examined her from head to toe as she walked brazen and defiant onto the stage. Unlike the last thirty interviewees, the woman before Ruby was both familiar, and entirely unafraid of the spell singer’s virulent reputation.

“It’s good to see you, Ruby.”

Standing centre stage was Lisa. Long ago, when Ruby had been the leading lady in a theatre troupe called The Tantalum, Lisa has been the seamstress and set designer. Quite skilled at casting a scene, her acting talents were rudimentary at best. In truth, Ruby’s ego had given the female members of the cast little chance to shine. Without that unwitting tyranny, Lisa had, to say the least, blossomed as woman, writer, and witch. Power oozed from her every pore.

“Well.” Ruby said flatly. “This is quite the surprise.”

By now, it was close to midday. Since dawn, Ruby and Leopold had watched a hundred women warble their way through cruel renditions of Tantalum songs and Scara Breen folk classics. Nobody had impressed the spell singer enough to come close to getting a call back. Though they had a past, Lisa’s presence sparked a bitter self-loathing, and a faint spark of hope.

“What song would you have me sing?” Lisa asked, politeness personified.

[Leopold]

Berevar - The Ahyark Tundra

“That is fair enough,” Leopold replied. He folded his arms across his chest beneath his cloak, and took a moment’s reprieve to put his words in order.

The caravan had rolled out of the ruinous slums of Knife’s Edge three days prior. Neither of the three men had slept a wink since. The guards got shut-eye on rota, but too much was at stake for the chain of command to bow out for a nap until they arrived safely, with the cargo, at their destination.

“When we were last at the Ice Henge, I was thrown into the veil between worlds. War rose, freed at last. Clarissa revealed her presence, and her continued state of unfortunate life, and I…discovered something.”

“Tell me more,” Jeren implored. To emphasise his interest, he produced a hip flask, Leopold’s favourite, from his fur. Leopold rolled his eyes, though was impressed at the man’s duplicitous nature. “Here, have a drink on you.”

Leopold took his own flask, a deadpan expression reminding Jeren and Syrian to stop helping themselves to his things, and drained it. Bourbon. He remembered filling it in Salvar, and was now very glad he had done so. Kinsman. The rarest bourbon out of Salvar. A month’s profits spent ill-advised ten years prior worth its debauchery now. Roses. Fire. Brimstone, followed by syrup.

“Thank you.” Leopold stuck out his tongue. “What I discovered amounts to sway over a Thayne. I found, in the nowhere depths, a glistening Keystone. The Ice Henge’s power source.”

[Ruby]

Scara Brae - Market Square

Ruby picked the first thing that cropped into her head.

“Lux Aeterna.” Her eyes narrowed.

White birds, a mix of doves and gulls flew over the expanse of Market Square. East to West, drawing in the day’s fishing to roost in the towers of the palace. Scara Brae went on through another midday lull whilst the two woman on the stage at its heart did battle.

“Really?” Lisa asked, incredulous, but confident.

Without further comment, the leading lady of the Restless Fugitive moved to the northern edge of the makeshift stage. She looked out across the square longingly. Here, the troupe had done wonders to keep the spirits of the bedraggled people of the island up.

“Tell me,” she began. The cool breeze that rolled in from the road that lead to the palace soothed her. She had sung in practice since well before dawn. “Why would you of all people ask me to sing that song? Of all the songs?” Lisa turned. She was resplendent, a fraction of Ruby’s age, and already on the road to greatness. Ruby loathed her for all the right reasons.

“Because you wrote it,” was the spell singer’s only reply.

Lisa prepared. She stood feet a foot apart, clenched her fists till they whitened at the knuckles, and straightened her back so that the air in her lungs was forced out in one, effortless, angelic breath.

“Verse two of Lux Aeterna relates to the efforts of a strong woman in a weak man’s world."

[Leopold]

Berevar - The Ahyark Tundra

Jeren had gleaned snippets of his employer’s secrets through his four years’ service. Each clue to the man’s origins had shed less light on the answer the caravan guard really wanted to learn. Why had they, three and a half years ago, travelled to Berevar? The caravan guard, and the merchant’s own wife had nearly died. Leopold, from what Jeren could remember, had perished.

“A keystone. That implies it opens something.” One of Leopold’s pressing questions about his employee boiled down to how a caravan guard interviewed so well, and knew something about literally everything.

Leopold smiled. In the gloom, his smile was a paltry acceptance of once again being one step behind Jeren Silvers.

“The Keystone both restrains, and opens the wellspring of the Tap. Like a tap, it allows the Tap to flow into, and out of Berevar. Out of Althanas proper.”

The wagon hit a bump on the tundra. It rocked sideways, sending shivers down both men’s spines and causing uproar along the caravan’s snake-like form. Sixteen wagons long, it was the largest venture the Winchester Rose Trading Company had backed since its inception. Worlds depended on it. Marriages, too.

“Do you intend to open it further…or close it?”

Leopold smiled. He adjusted himself as he chose his words carefully.

“I wish to open it just enough to fulfil obligations to my ‘kin’.”

“Obligations?” Jeren asked. He knew he would regret it before his question finished echoing in the confined space.

“Come sunrise, the Thayne Jomil dies.”

[Ruby]

Scara Brae - Market Square

When the final note of Lisa’s audition stopped echoing hauntingly through Market Square, Ruby began to clap. For once, it was not a sarcastic thunder. She meant it.

“I…” Lisa turned slowly, uncertain. Only when she clocked Leopold’s grin did she realise that for once, she, Ruby Winchester’s ego did not get in the way of progress.

“I see you’ve been taking every opportunity to put what you learned under my sister’s tutelage to good use.” Ruby folded her arms across her chest.

Unsure how to hold herself, Lisa went for aloof stoop meets confident strut as she returned to centre stage. The sun struck her from behind, and the warmth of a soon to be beautiful afternoon began to make itself known. The day dawned, at long last, on a sleep riddled Scara Brae.

“When will you let people know if they are successful?”

Ruby rolled her eyes.

“Lisa. How could I, in all good honesty consider anyone else after…,” she pouted. “Well, after you nailed it.”

The women stared at one another. Lisa’s earnest intentions clear in her shimmering eyes, Ruby’s bewilderment in her own fiery pupils. Crimson curls and brunette rolls mirrored one another’s eternal pursuit for happiness in beauty, betterment, and bedazzlement with their thespian graces. Ruby cornered the beauty, but Lisa had stolen betterment and now, bedazzlement.

“What does that mean for our troupe?”

Ruby saw through Lisa and got straight to the point.

“I will join the Restless Fugitive, and you will lead it.”

[Leopold]

Berevar - The Ahyark Tundra

“Forgive me,” Jeren said out of curtsy. He knew full well Leopold would do everything but for what he was about to say. “It’s just, I’m fairly sure you just said Jomil is going to die at sun up. Jomil. The Jomil. The immortal Thayne Jomil.” His deadpan stare only helped Leopold write up a paragraph or two in the post-shipment report.

Wearily, Leopold allowed his employee the once in a lifetime opportunity to speak his mind and question his judgement. No-one got the chance to do both at the same time and keep their pay check. Jeren’s tireless service had earned him the right to the occasional impromptu outburst.

“Two thousand years ago, the Old Gods lost their war against the Thayne. In the final days of the war,” he trailed off. He shuffled under his furs. His head was foggy with fatigue and the cold, but he pieced the pieces of his tale back together before continuing. “In the final days, I made a choice.”

“Kill the gods?” Jeren sighed. “Or get vengeance,” Syrian continued.

The change in the caravan guard was audible only at first, but his eyes darkened, sunken sockets of ghastly proportions, and then the sarcasm. It dripped from his teeth like snake’s venom.

“I chose to stay on Althanas, shirking my kin as they fell into the depths of the Tap to sleep. They chose sleep in the hopes that one day, one dark day, they could awaken.”

Syrian snarled.

“You mean enslave us?”