jeriendhal | Fic: Captive of the Red Vixen, Part Twenty-Four

I'm quite happy with this bit. We're coming down to the wire on the story now.

The news ran through the household and then out to the neighborhoods under the Darktail domain at just under light speed, once Rolas had informed his family. Reactions ranged from outright laughter to worried speculation of what the Countess would do to relieve her anger.

The answer came within twenty hours, when on the heels of the first public report of the loss of her House’s ship, two more were reported destroyed, both cut out of a convoy in a supposedly safe sector. Both crews were permitted to evacuate again before the ships were blown to pieces, this time without even taking their cargo. The subsequent chaos at the Countess’ manor, filtered down through the servant network, brought a deep smile of satisfaction to Rolas’ face.

“She’s going to be a bit too busy to worry about us, I should think,” he said at dinner that evening.

“I know,” his mother agreed. “I’m a bit worried about what this is going to do to the district overall though. We can count on her raising rents eventually to cover her losses, whether or not her own insurance pays out.”

“But what I don’t understand is why it’s happening at all,” Salli said. She had returned to the habit of taking meals with the family again, which heartened everyone considerably, though she was still too thin by half compared to when she had left home for her nightmarish marriage. “It almost sounds as if she’s getting hit by privateers, like in a war. Why attack her ships when there’s no profit in it?”

“Moral satisfaction, perhaps,” Rolas ventured. “You can certainly argue she’s getting a taste of the Holy Den Mother’s own justice, taking such a hit to her House’s purse.”

“I’m disinclined to think we’ve got a pirate as a friend. Not unless you want to assume that the Red Vixen is really alive, and all of that unfortunate speculation about you and her was true, Rolas,” his mother said.

“Hardly,” he replied, about a half-second too late judging from his family’s curious expressions. “Oh, for the Mother’s sake I wasn’t in league with her or anything. It’s just that, well, ah… she demanded an explanation from me, when your message came through about refusing to pay my ransom. So eventually I ended up telling her the whole terrible story about Salli and that bastard and what Countess Highglider was doing to us and what a disaster it was that our ship was taken. She was actually quite upset about the whole thing.”

His father looked appalled. “Rolas, there’s a Council seal on the whole affair. You’re not supposed to talk about it to outsiders.”

“You spoke to Melika about it, Father,” Salli pointed out.

“Yes, but she came to us first, from the Countess Brushtail. This is different.”

“Frankly, I don’t see how,” Salli said. Her expression grew more determined. “As a matter of fact, frankly I don’t see why we should be worrying about the Council seal at all. It was put in place to protect the Highgliders’ reputation, after all.”

“And yours as well, dear.”

“My reputation is intact, aside from all the nasty talk that went around after I divorced my poor, injured husband.”

“Oh, you heard those,” their mother said weakly.

“Yes, I did. I’m coming to the conclusion that we’ve worried too much about what the Council could do to us if we started speaking the truth. It’s not as if it could be anything worse than the Countess has done to us already.”

“They could strip us of our family’s title, Salli,” Rolas pointed out.

“We were going to be stripped of it anyway when we took off for Whiteland, what difference would it make now? It isn’t as if our House is generating much profit at the moment. We’re barely staying out of debt, trying to shield our sworn commoners from the rent increases that the Countess has imposed.”

“Salli, I understand why you above us all would be frustrated by our situation…”

“No, Rolas, you don’t,” she interrupted. “Dear brother, I love you and I am proud of you, and I know how my injuries hurt you as well as myself, but no, you don’t understand. I am very tired of wearing a mask, of pretending that everything is all right when everything certainly is not. Countess Highglider is a bitter, evil vixen and her son was a violent, insane bastard who should have been strangled at birth. Their reputations don’t deserve an iota of protection, particularly from us. If I can work my will, I’ll tell anyone who asks what was done to me, who did it, and what his mother is doing to us in retaliation. Let the Council try and cut out my tongue if they want to shut me up. I’m used to pain.” Then Salli stood up from the table, gave them all a polite curtsey, and walked out of the dining room.

“Well,” their mother said, into the silence that followed in Salli’s wake, “that physician Lady Melika provided has certainly shown her how to be more assertive.”

* * *

The rest of dinner proved to be a considerably more subdued affair. Afterward, Rolas made his way up to Salli’s suite, knocking politely on the door. “May I come in?”

“Come in, Rolas,” her voice called back faintly, “I’m in the Necessary.”

“Oh, well I can come back then.” Better that he didn’t disturb her. Dr. Quan had given him a longish lecture on the subject of body control issues and matters of personal space when it came to Salli, and he was loathe to violate her strictures for the sake of his own pride.

“Don’t worry, I’m decent. I’m just finishing up.”

“All right then.” He slipped inside, standing somewhat uncomfortably in her sitting room, listening to the water run in the bathroom sink.

“What do you want, Rolas?” she called out.

“I just wanted to apologize to you, Salli. You were perfectly right about the Council’s seal being a bunch of bloody nonsense. I suppose I, myself and Mother and Father, even when were planning the Exodus, had been half-hoping this would all work itself out, that things might go back to how it was before… before…”

“Before I married that bastard,” Salli said, emerging from the bathroom, drying off her face with a towel. When she lowered it, Rolas’ breath caught in his throat from shock. She had washed out the dyes she habitually used to disguise the scars of her face, leaving four pale lines in her pelt, crossing diagonally from the center of her forehead down to her cheek, one line bisecting her eye. Her eye, which now did not look like a natural eye at all, just a black, shining camera lens, void of white or iris.

“Salli, what is this?” he asked.

“I washed out the dyes for my fur and turned off the camouflage that came installed with my eye. Did you know I can actually make it change color?” She blinked, and her eye went from black to normal again, except that the iris cycled through a range of colors, from dark brown to bright yellow and all the shades between, until it changed back to complete black.

“But why, Salli?”

“This is what I am, Little Brother. This is what I was changed into, thanks to my husband, Kev and I will not hide it anymore. I will walk out into the open with this face, and if anyone asks the story behind it, I will tell them. The truth, not the lies created by the Council to protect one of their own. The Holy Den Mother’s wise gaze sees all truth. I will not insult her by living a lie any longer.”

Rolas bowed to his sister, then dropped down to one knee in front of her, eyes lowered. “Then may I someday have your forgiveness, dear sister, for helping to perpetuate that lie for so long.”

She took hold of his arm, pulling him back to his feet, wrapping her arms around him and holding him tightly, with a strength that he had not felt in her for a very long time. “Forgiven, brother. Now let us cower no longer, and fight our enemy together.”

TBC