Oath of Steel

16 |A Tattered Swan|

A rough sigh of exasperation escaped from Rosalynde emotionless gaze as she looked out of the window in her office, the light drizzle anticipating what seemed to be heavy snow - the wind blowing down the northern mountains traveling beside the river Seadris had made the capital shut down from the first true colds. Merchants were slowly starting to stop exposing their goods on the streets, the few nobles that had century-old properties in the countryside had already departed until the advent of the gentle spring, leaving behind their long list of sins that their high statue that'd made go unpunished in front of the law.

She'd carried out the orders coming from the higher up by searching the warehouses under the name of the Clark family herself, forcing the bolts sealing the iron door to crumble with a hammer made out of the finest steel she had in her possession.

There wasn't a single speck of dust on the ground when she barged in from the front door, making two simple soldiers clear the path with the title of sacrificial pawns to make sure that no type of incendiary device would have detonated as they stepped deeper into that humid piece of tin apparently void of anything.

No bomb detonated as they reached the center of the warehouse, the humidity growing over their initial expectations with each locked door they brought down by shooting at every single locked door.

By the time they reached the center of the storeroom Rosalynde had figured out what'd been bothering her since stepping inside the storehouse.

The absence of dust, while searching the place she hadn't encountered a single speck of dust, not even a grain roaming in the air.

They'd been alerted beforehand, someone had rattled their plans, and Verity had been able to move whatever they'd been hiding here for who knew long how long ago.

Rosalynde said nothing when she opened the last door, ordering with a tone of impatience the few that'd stayed to stay behind to guard her back, silently creeping inside the room.

Unlike the other rooms in the storehouse this one wasn't empty, on ho, this one contained a thin veil of mockery - towards her no doubts.

A blooming windflower sat in the middle of the room, its still vibrant green stem resting on top off a white counter. The mockery stood at the feet of the counter, where someone had been daring enough to commit murder and then leave the carcass rotting there, in that humid storehouse on the shores of the Middle Searis. A white swan, or what now was left of it, sat right under the windflower, its blood forming a dark pool that in the light of the warehouse seemed to morph to the passage to the afterlife.

A warning, or to be precise, a well-crafted threat - for the white imperial swan was the crest of the Des Reslows.

She knew nothing in terms of plans, she didn't have their moves in mind, but she did know that Verity was going after her masters.

They were going after Pharah.

That incursion was now an event lost in the memoirs of the past, she'd reported about the empty storehouse, but not of what she'd seen inside it.

And it was not as if they could have gone back and dare doubt her words, as she'd burned the storehouse to the ground, not before making sure the few that'd witnessed the scene had been silenced.

Dead men tell no tales after all, and this philosophy of life came forward even stronger when their dead bodies were lowered into the damp ground. Exactly how it'd happened with Haywire, when she'd drugged his wine and threw his unconscious body and mind into the deep waters of the Higher Seadris, knowing that the currents in that specific point would have not let him out alive.

She'd already killed his family, then hired three actors hailing from a traveling caravan before having them perform the part of the devastated family to trick people into believing that the Haywire's family would have retired to the countryside for an undefined amount of years, forcefully pushing them out of the equation with any means necessary.