The room is dappled with beams of crimson, scarlet, maroon, and wine- the shades of blood in all its forms speckled across the white marble floor. The color-drenched light splashes its way across the flesh of the seven men who sit at a carved, half-moon table.
Colin reaches down, offers his arm.
Aurelia grits her teeth as she pushes herself out of her wheelchair, allowing Colin to help her stand. She cannot meet the board as a cripple.
"Aurelia Cornel," Jaren Burtanis- Marcus' widow, Ileina's, second brother- intones from his seat behind the table, dressed in the traditional assassin's robes of red, black, and gold. "You are here today to be inducted into the Assassin's Guild," he begins.
Beside him, Lucanus Maevrion's cousin, Julian Maevrion, looks like he swallowed a lemon. His gaze scorches her as much as the fires that continue to burn in Glascoast.
"Are there any objections to this woman's induction?" Jaren asks. Three of the men at the table- Lucanus' cousin, a second son of the Urbanis family, and another Senatorial by birth- wear mutinous expressions, but they hold their peace.
"Does anyone claim this initiate?" Jaren asks, traditional words, and empty ones. Apprentice assassins are assigned a master long before their induction ceremony, and Aurelia will enter as a fully-fledged member, but a tradition is a tradition.
"I do," Colin says at her elbow, his tone uncharacteristically serious. And sober.
Aurelia glances at him out of the corner of her eye, and one of the board members- Salus Payne- nods.
"This board recognizes Colin Durante as the Master of Record," he acknowledges.
Aurelia remains silent, knowing that she has no right to speak in these hallowed halls until the initiation is complete.
Another board member, Ludo Pratis, steps down from the dais the table is raised on, and brings Colin a gilded ceremonial dagger, inlaid with onyx, mother of pearl, and rubies. Colin bows his head in acknowledgement, and slices his palm without hesitation.
Aurelia swallows hard as Colin takes her unbroken hand in his, and slices her palm as well. They join their hands, mingling their blood, in symbol of a bond more binding than marriage, as sacred as parenthood.
"Approach," Jaren Burtanis says, extending his hand in invitation.
Aurelia leans most of her weight on Colin and grits her teeth as she takes step after painful step to approach the board.
On the table before her, there is a long roll of paper- yellowed and cracked and aged- the Guild Charter. Name after name is written upon it- most scrawled in a childish hand- thousands of tiny, cramped words, representing thousands of lives. Her predecessors, her contemporaries.
"Sign," Jaren instructs her.
Beside her, Colin leans closer, whispers into her ear. "You can choose a new name, if you would like. One that isn't attached to... everything," he says. After a beat, he adds, "You probably should."
Aurelia picks up the pen with her left hand, stares down at the document, at the names of all of those who have come before her. She licks her lips. She wants, so desperately, to begin anew. To have no legal ties between who she was before, and who she will become.
She takes a deep breath, and closes her eyes, before signing a word- a name- Eglantine.
"Eglantine Baliem," she murmurs softly, choosing for herself the surname of her Pabu, of Kaol's father, of the two men who had loved her and raised her, rather than Cornel- the surname of the addict mother who had so carelessly tossed her aside.
Jaren blots the ink dry, and then all seven of the board members stand.
"Welcome, Initiate Eglantine Baliem," they intone.
Aurelia dips her head in thanks, and Colin guides her back to her chair. She sinks into it gratefully, every muscle in her body aching from the effort it had taken to stand before the board.
She closes her eyes as Colin pushes her chair, wheeling her away from the central chamber of the Assassin's Guild Hall, relieved that the ceremony is finally over. She hears the thud of the doors closing behind them as they exit the central chamber, and the motion of the wheelchair stops.
"Urtic," she hears Colin greet, and opens her eyes to find The Artist languidly sprawled on a bench in front of her.
"Colin," The Artist replies, respectfully. He then turns to Aurelia, tips his head to the side in question. "Is it still Aurelia?" he asks, and Aurelia- Eglantine- shakes her head.
"Eglantine," she replies softly, and The Artist chuckles.
"You've named yourself after your sweetbriars," he smirks. "I wound to heal," he translates, from the language of flowers- something that he should not know, since he is not a member of the courtesan's guild. Eglantine finds that she does not care. "A fitting name for a pretty poet," he adds, a moment later.
Eglantine manages a tight smile.
"Someone is waiting for you upstairs," he says, when it becomes clear that she will not offer a response.
"Who?" she asks, and The Artist grins.
"A dog," he replies, cryptically, and Eglantine remembers the picture he had carved into Orelius' back- the dog which had been chasing both a cat and a rat. A warning she had not understood. At least, not until she had awoken from her weeks-long recovery and read the papers.
Eglantine swallows. "Thank you, by the way," she murmurs. "For Orelius," she adds. "How did you manage it?"
At her question, the Artist's grin widens. "Didn't it seem suspicious to you that a sick patient needed assistance the very moment you were trying to escape?" he returns.
Aurelia recalls the hacking coughs of the patient doubled over at the front desk, and then winces at how oblivious she had been.
"She's on the rooftop," The Artist says, before pushing himself to his feet and striding away.
Eglantine glances over to Colin, who has watched the entire exchange with a furrow between his brows. "Take me there?" she phrases it as a question, but Colin understands it for the command that it is.
He snorts. "Gonna have to tack on an extra fee to your bill for that, Rat," he mutters gruffly in response, and Eglantine smiles and waves it away with the hand that is not wrapped in a plaster cast.
They take the lift to the top deck, and Eglantine's eyes tear and her throat immediately begins to ache from the smoke that fills the air.
Glascoast burns.
From the top deck of the AS guild building, the deep amber, crimson, and flashes of orange of the licking flames could almost be mistaken for a sunset.
"She won't come out if you're here," Eglantine tells Colin, whose frown deepens. "No one can touch me now. Come back for me in fifteen minutes," she instructs him.
"Wish they'd let non-members in here. Then you could boss around your stupid boyfriend instead of me," Colin grunts. Eglantine rolls her eyes and turns away from him, listening as the lift dings and pulls Colin back down into the depths of AS Guild Building.
"Speaking of... I'm surprised that Outlier guard dog of yours was willing to let you out of his sight," Lana says, materializing out of the shadows, and Eglantine turns to her, slowly, careful not to move too quickly and jostle her broken ribs.
"He didn't have much of a choice. It's a relief to get away from his hovering," Eglantine replies, dryly, before glancing back out to inferno that is their Polis.
Her heart aches.
"He wouldn't let any of the physicians touch you, you know. The moment they had you stabilized at the hospital, he signed you out against medical advice and the only person he let near you was a witch doctor," Lana replies, amusement coloring her tone.
"A Medekaoa," Eglantine corrects, softly. "I heard. Do you blame him? The last Guilded Physician who touched me tried to cut out my vocal cords, and the one before that sterilized me," she adds, without heat, her voice toneless, expressionless.
Lana shrugs, an elegant lift of one shoulder. They are silent, for a time, looking over the rooftops of the smoldering city that is their home.
"I've been reading things, since I've been awake," Eglantine says, finally. "I read that a mob went to the Stelaris estate."
"Did you?" Lana replies, neutrally.
"I didn't think 'equal representation,' involved cutting an unborn child out of a woman's womb and leaving them both to die," Eglantine says, and Lana has the good grace to wince.
"I don't believe it typically involves the brutal murder of your allies either," Eglantine adds. "Benjimus Ruellon helped us, you know. If it wasn't for him instructing his servant to steal the master key, I couldn't have done it."
Lana sighs. "It wasn't what we wanted. The mob was... more than we predicted. When your friend, the writer, published what the Belvadosi had done to their servants... What Helborus and Castus did to you... There was no controlling them."
"You goaded them into it," Eglantine retorts, and winces at the way the sharp breath she inhales tugs at her still-sore muscles.
"We encouraged them to revolt, not to commit such atrocities. It is not fair to hold us accountable for what they did," Lana replies, evenly.
"Agree to disagree, then," Eglantine says, after a moment, glancing away from Lana and back to the smoldering embers of her home.
"I wonder if it burned, like this, when we removed Argryus," Eglantine says, softly. She sighs. "Nothing changed though, did it?"
"This time, things will," Lana says, and Eglantine feels her lips curl involuntarily.
"Will they?" she asks, sardonically. "It seems this is all our polis does. We rise, we rebel, we fall. And yet... If it's not Argryus, its Senators. What's the point?"
"Freedom, equality, representation," Lana returns, easily. "They're things worth fighting for."
"Is that what this is? Is that what we've done?" Eglantine murmurs.
She thinks of Joe's glassy stare as he surveyed the destruction of his livelihood, and wonders how many more like him there are, tonight. Cringes when she thinks of Benjimus Ruellon, stabbed to death over a hundred times by a mob who accosted him in a tea shop close to his home.
This is a hollow victory.
"What comes next?" she finds herself asking, and Lana's smile widens a fraction as she surveys the destruction that will birth her kingdom.
"We rebuild. We mold the ashes into anything we want."
"Anything Aron wants," Eglantine murmurs, before she thinks, and Lana's eyes cut towards her- sharp, calculating.
"There's a place for you, too. The Sweetbriar Slayer. You could make a difference."
"Now that I'm inducted, I have enough alums to buy a little villa on the outskirts, to live quietly, for the rest of my life. That's all I want to do," Eglantine replies. "I want no part of..." she trails off, gestures to the fires that continue to burn, weeks after The Summit, "This."
Lana eyes her, smirks, and shakes her head.
"That's what you think now. Give it time. That sort of life will suffocate you. You will be desperate for the excitement again. Come to us, when you are ready. We will welcome you, however long it takes."
Eglantine says nothing. Lana touches her gently on the shoulder before slipping away.
After she leaves, Eglantine continues to stare out at the glowing embers of Glascoast.
It's over, she had thought with grim satisfaction, as she had lain dying in the silent, green-eyed servant's arms. It's over, Kaol had whispered into her hair when she had woken, his voice cracking on his relief.
Now, as she looks out over the rooftops of her burning polis, she realizes that it is not over.
It has only just begun.