[Fan fiction] Shadows and Sunlight Part VI

As a reminder, I'm not on the lore team, and in no way, shape, or polymorph is this canonical at all, in fact, I often go off-canon at points. If you haven't caught up on the story so far, start here: Shadows and Sunlight Parts I-V

Dawn leered in to Sarah Fortune's quarters like a vagrant voyeur; sickly yellow light leaking through the tattered curtains. She rested one leg on the arm of her chair, one hand perched on her knee. In the other she held a goblet, filled with amber Ionian bloomwine.

Jericho's gaze across the apartment at the Whispers of Dreamsilk Inn was skeptical. One of his Nightraven guards muttered about the place looking different in the daylight.

"Again, I offer my apologies for my abrupt departure yesterday. I did not intend for you to sprint off on an errand and return to an empty room."

"I was still here," Sarah chirped. Barret ignored her to nod towards Swain. She went on, "Really, it's ok. He didn't mind."

"So may I see it?" the elder Noxian general held one hand palm up towards her.

Barret shook his head, "I brought it back to the ship. It isn't safe in a tavern."

Sarah said, "Barret, the Whispers is more than just a tavern."

"Yes, Barret," Swain interrupted. "It's clearly also a gambling den and whorehouse."

"Be that as it may," Barret continued.

"We couldn't keep it here," Sarah finished for him.

Jericho scoffed and fetched a crumb to feed Beatrice, who scrambled about his shoulders. The Innmaster was none-too-keen on the raven fluttering about her establishment, having very nearly attempted to say something to the general when he walked in.

"Well, go on and get it then. I've brought the remainder of your payment," he explained as a small chest was deposited on the table in front of Sarah Fortune. "Between your business and this business with my great-nephew," he smirked, "I fear for the peasants come tax season."

"It's a 'tovian lock, General, with all intended respect, I can rely on you being here when I get back?"

Sarah tried to explain for her executive officer, "What he means is--"

"I know what he means, daughter. And he's right, I assure you. And officer, I have every intention of taking your," he coughed, "how did you call it, your recovered treasure with me."

Barret shrugged and exhaled. "It shouldn't take too long." He stood up and headed for the door.

"You just said it might?" Swain asked.

"I was tempering your expectations," he explained.

"Will you just bring the bleeding thing here?" Sarah demanded, impatient.

Barret gave a curt bow and left the suite.

"You know, girl, you should probably avoid drinking so early in the morning," Swain admonished the pirate hunter.

"I haven't slept, it's still last night for me," Sarah confessed. The door to the room popped open to admit a Nightraven runner. He sprinted to stand at rigid attention before his commander.

"General, Marcus du Couteau has called the tribunal. The session's doors close within the hour."

Jericho snarled, "That earthbound cur."

Sarah finished her goblet, swallowing the rest of her wine in a smooth gulp. "You have to be bloody kidding me," she muttered to the empty cup.

"Wait here," Jericho ordered. "Sell the trinket to no one else."

"I wouldn't dream of it," Sarah deadpanned.

"You," he singled out one of the Nightravens. "Take me to the du Couteau mansion. I will return, captain." He swept out of the suite without another word, leaving her alone with a Nightraven guard.

She tilted the empty goblet, fighting the urge to lick the droplet of wine she saw tearing up on the rim.

"Of course, General Swain," her voiced bathed in sarcasm. The guard raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. Sarah poured another.

The first thing Katarina did after bolting the sewer grate was brush off the mattress. She hadn't slept well since the night of Anton's masquerade. Hanging her mother's necklace on the worm-eaten wardrobe, she peeled off her leathers and drew a bath. She fired up the coals beneath the tub, adding tinder to stoke the flames.

"Uh, Kat?" Evanie stood slackjawed at her naked friend. Talon managed to turn away, sneaking only the tiniest glance over his shoulder.

"Oh, right." She wrapped herself in a silk dressing gown, cinching the belt around her waist. "It's fine now Talon, you can stop pretending not to look." She dipped her hand in the water and fed another log to the heating stove below the bath.

"We came here so you could take a bath?" Talon asked.

"I came here to take a bath, and because my father seems sobbing driven to prosecute courts martial. And I'm one of the courts," she twisted the spigot, cutting off the flow of water into the iron basin. "I deserve some down time."

"What are we supposed to do?" Evanie inquired, strumming the waterline as if it were a harp.

"Try really hard not to kill each other," Katarina offered by way of reply. "Now shoo. There's three other rooms, I'm sure you can find something to distract yourselves."

Talon and Evanie left the main room to explore the pantry, guestroom and training corridor. Katarina sighed and slipped off the robe before climbing into the bath.

Buoyed by the water she let her thoughts drift away. She needed more information. She lathered soap on a rough Bilgewater reef sponge and ran the warm foam across her arms. Dirt, sweat and dried blood sluiced off her shoulders, turning the water brackish.

She longed for a second tub, one like the lounging bath they'd installed at her father's summer home near the coast. She sniffed her foul hair and coughed before dowsing her face. While she was wishing for extra tubs she might as well wish for fresh linens on the bed, she thought, eyeing the rickety old Ionian cloud frame.

The frame was a relic from a previous war like most of the things in her hovel beneath the streets bordering an old hextech refinery. She'd found the place by accident during one of her tests as a first year at the Sinister Blade. Over the seven years she studied with her sisters, she'd liberated all sorts of treasures while adventuring in the night.

Nothing anyone had missed.

Although she wasn't entirely sure about the ebony vase sculpted with a strangely intriguing sword and shadow of a man. That was a piece she'd lifted from Talon's own collection when he'd dared presume to be more skillful than her bladesisters.

She climbed out of the iron basin. With nothing to dry herself off, she stood dripping on the cold stone floor. Her fiery red hair languished a burnished shade of autumn, lying against her back in a tight line. She brushed off droplets that pooled in awkward places, careful to avoid any of the bruises she'd earned with all her physical exertions of the last two evenings. She stood brushing her hair with an exotic ivory comb she'd borrowed from a caravan heading north away from Shurima.

She grumbled. Swain must have had his second cousin under observation. It seemed Anton's depredations were less secret than Katarina had thought. After ninety more brushstrokes, she set the comb on an unforfunate Ionian ambassador's former vanity and poked around in the wardrobe for something other than bloodsoaked leathers to wear.

Settling on a thin weave of shadowsilk, she managed to slip only a small gasp as it glided over her recently scrubbed skin. Lying down on the mattress, she stared at the early morning sun overhead, imagining the owner of each footfall or squeaky wagon wheel outside. Satisfied that none of the Crimson Elite were nearby, she let her eyes blink, weary. But with her eyes closed all she could think about was the children she'd saved, the blood on her hands and, as she fell into sleep, the sneaking suspicion that she was forgetting something.

Evanie and Talon stared at the cold stone floor, littered with borrowed furniture and assorted tapestries. The cupboards and shelves of the pantry had been bare, so they'd moved on to the guestroom, stacked high with random knickknacks and clearly pilfered heirlooms from a kleptomaniacal phase Kat had never told Evanie about.

"We should go outside," Evanie complained, resting against the stiff back of a carved Demacian rocking chair. "We've been stuck here for hours." "Entire hours? Blackwings; can it have been so long?"

"See? You're starting to go crazy."

"You're starting to drive me crazy," he corrected.

A latch drew back on the blocked door that led from the guestroom to the alley outside. A shaft of light leaked in, splaying a glowing orange line across the Viscount of Aredel's neck. The door moaned and grumbled, stuck against the stack of furniture piled in front of it. Talon and Evanie could hear half-finished curses as someone struggled to get inside.

"Should we do something?" Talon whispered to Evanie.

"Nah," she crossed her feet atop the chair and slipped a dagger from her belt. "Let's see who it is."

Finally, the door groaned open, and Cassiopeia du Couteau squeezed through the narrow passage she'd carved into the guestroom.

"You know, girl," Cassiopeia addressed Evanie, "A secret hiding place isn't very useful if everyone knows where it is. Wait. Is that my old nightstand?" she asked, interrupting herself to examine a rickity, gnarled oak plank with four narrow legs. "I thought that was stolen," she trailed off.

"I have no doubt you stole it," Evanie muttered into her collar.

"Cass," Talon offered her a hand to guide her through the piles of junk. "It's wonderful seeing you again."

"She's not even wearing a dress," Evanie pouted.

The other door to the storeroom slammed. "What are you doing here, sister?" Katarina demanded. She was still wearing the dressing gown, and for once Talon seemed torn on which of the sisters deserved his attention.

"Thanks to the show you put on at Anton's the other night, every other ball and masquerade has been canceled this week. I've been getting up earlier and earlier to watch as Noxus awaits the courts martial."

"It wasn't a show," Katarina grimaced.

"And you've never explained why you were there, either," Evanie accused Cass.

"And I never will, ignorant girl. And it was a show, Kata. A tantrum thrown by a child. You don't even play at politics, and yet you're literally crashing ceilings as you stick yourself right in the middle of them."

Talon blanched. "You really smashed through his skylight?"

"Maybe," Katarina started to say. "Sort've."

"Yes. She did," Cassiopeia said.

"He murdered a student in that house. That night." Katarina circled around closer to her sister. "Maybe dozens of other nights."

"Maybe in front of me, even," Cassiopeia whispered, leaning in close to Katarina's neck. She stepped back. "Noxus is not a playground, Katarina. She is no sheep. You fight on your battlefields, Kat, and I fight on mine. And at Anton Swain's house you stepped into a war you aren't ready to wage. Why didn't you tell me?"

Katarina scoffed. "Anton Swain is a sadistic pig. You didn't need me to tell you."

Evanie chimed in, "He's not even really noble."

"No," Cassiopeia folded her walking skirt under her and sat on a lump of what might have once been a bag of bowling balls. "But he managed to put together power all his own. A circle of perverted freaks who listen to every shit-dripping story that falls from his drooping lips. And they would have been mine," she hissed.

"She was my sister," Evanie whispered.

"And mine," Katarina added.

"I feel like I'm not involved in this at all," Talon quipped from one corner.

"You aren't," Cass snapped. "And I am your sister, Katarina. Not some peasant slut entranced by promises of money and some noble fish to swim with."

"You've never been part of anything bigger than Cassiopeia du Couteau."

"Are you talking about your little school, Kata?" Cassiopeia stood up, brushing off her skirt. "No matter. You fall to realize that before this little incident, you'd have been talking about yourself." She swept out of the room in a cloud of perfume and dust, slipping back through the slit she'd managed to open in the door to the alley.

Talon just stared after her. Katarina sighed and crossed her arms.

"Come on, Talon. Admit it. We should all just agree that getting out of this place right now is the best possible option."