A Magic of Nightfall

The White Stone

She watched the assassination attempt from within the crowd, unnoticed and safe. How terribly clumsy, she thought, as people gaped and shouted and screamed around her. Clumsy and stupid people gaped and shouted and screamed around her. Clumsy and stupid to boot.

A knife was a much better weapon than magic. Stealth was much better than a brute attack. You should be there to see your victim’s eyes when you strike. You should see yourself reflected in his pupils. You should feel the heat of the blood washing over your hands.

She’d been taught her blade skills at an early age, in the warrens of An Uaimth. Her body still had the scars of those lessons, and she’d thought more than once that she herself would die of them. Her teachers were the dregs of society, the dark and twisted folk who were too violent and too twisted and too damaged to be tolerated by polite society. They were dangerous, and she had found herself abused and used and injured by them more than once. But they had physical skills she wanted, gained with blood and pain and fury. She had learned those lessons well, taking from each what she could.

She was never again going to let someone take advantage of her. She was never going to be weak. She was never going to let herself be vulnerable.

She had to kill a few of her “teachers,” when they became too dangerous or when they tried to become too close, when they began to pry or to guess her secrets. She had left her calling card with each of them, a white pebble over the left eye. The White Stone… She’d begun to hear the name, whispered in the streets. He always leaves a stone on the left eye…

They always assumed it was “he”; that was protection, too. She could walk anywhere and never be suspected.

And they never knew there were always two stones; that she took one from victim’s right eye to keep with her. To keep them with her.

That stone was in the small leather pouch tied around her neck, nestled between her breasts under her clothing. That was with her always.

She touched the pouch now as the crowds surged toward the dais, as the A’Hirzg stood up covered in the blood of the assassin and the new Hirzg raised his hands to the crowds and called out for them to be calm.

The White Stone smiled at that.

Death… Death was always calm.