The light of a thousand lanterns smothered the stars. Fire-stained smoke, gold and orange, swelled into the dark skirts of the night. The Feirmae Festival promised the coming return of the sun to the North, one of the few holidays celebrated in the Kingdom of Tyrants. Night staggered across the city streets, through town squares and courtyards with drunken curses, laughter, and songs.
A child ran a chaotic path through the solstice festival, winding past food carts, and hurtling through stone plazas packed with fur-clad dancers and pounding leather boots. Small and blonde, the boy’s dark eyes darted anxiously as he wove his way through the crowd. Finally he spotted the blue torch lighting a florists booth across from Blue Man’s Tavern. A small Mowellan woman, with auburn hair and brown skin, offered a bouquet of white chrysanthemums and foxglove to a man in an expensive red velvet robe.
“Thanksss, darlin’,” he slurred down at her.
The boy shrunk back into the shadow of the tavern as the man tottered past him, clutching white death flowers wrapped in brown paper in his left hand, a half-empty amber bottle in the other.
A pair of women passed the boy, took one look at the Mowellan vendor, and quickened their pace. No woman was dumb enough to buy bad-luck flowers, they knew better. And no milk-skinned Northerner would buy anything from a Mowellan vendor this far north.
When the street cleared the boy darted over to the cart and glanced again at the blue torch mounted on the booth’s post. He wondered what made the flame turn blue, but knew better than to ask.
“Hello, little one.” The woman had a light accent. “What can I do for you? Do you want flowers for your Umma?”
The boy took a deep breath, eyes darting up to her’s and glancing away again sharply. They were the wrong color. The Mowellan eyes he knew were usually brown or black, sometimes green or yellow, but this woman’s eyes glinted silver in the moonlight.
“Y-Yes,” he swallowed heavily, glancing up at the blue flame again. Green tinged the sharp edges of the flame. “My mother wants thirteen white carnations, four foxgloves, and sixty-six cyrsansa--sansamums.” He stuttered.
“Chrysanthemums,” the woman said, smiling coldly at his stumble. “Does your mother know it’s bad luck to have these at a wedding?”
The boy forced his eyes to meet the steel-colored eyes of the woman. They were entirely empty.
A shiver ran down his spine.
“They will be lucky at-- at her wedding,” he replied dutifully.
The woman offered the boy a silver coin and a white lily.
“Tell your mother I wish her luck.”
The boy handed her the message, tied with a white ribbon, and let out a sigh, sliding the coin into the ankle of his boot. With another wary glance at the unnaturally blue torch, he darted away, avoiding meeting the dead eyes of the Mowellan woman again.
The woman watched the boy disappear into the smoke of the festival, thrumming with the sound of fiddles and pounding drums. Unraveling the message, she read the request and pursed her lips. Normally the woman didn’t hunt prophets, but she only had to play reaper one last time. With her debt nearly paid and enough saved away, she could disappear forever, no easy task for a creature with the caliber of enemies she’d acquired over the years. Just one more job and she might wash her hands of blood for the last time. Abelard Finrerson would be the last of many sacrifices to the elusive god called freedom.
She reached over and grabbed the blue-flamed torch, tossing it into a water bucket.
She left the booth and the body behind it. Slipping a fur cloak over her shoulders she wove through the crowd, silent as the dead.
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