When Heroes Die

“Misunderstandings caused by a break in the chain of command are one of the leading causes of defeat of otherwise successful armies. Therefore, an army where all soldiers have equal access to information is one that is unable to lose.”

— Isabella the Mad, Proceran general

My eyes moved between Songbird and the parlour door. She nodded, pulled her knives out of her target, then danced her way out the room.

“Hey,” I tried again, whispering to Yvette much as I would offer comfort to a wounded animal.

She remained unresponsive.

Time for more drastic measures.

“Make some space for me.”

I sat down beside her on the leather couch. It was uncomfortable. There wasn’t really enough room for both of us, it was designed to seat only one person. I hugged her with my right arm. She clung to me like a leech and buried her head against me.

“Whatever it was she told you, don’t believe it. I knew the last person who held that Role. She would often say a lot of awful things when she had a goal and someone was in the way. That doesn’t make any of them true.”

I paused while Yvette kept sniffing. She was starting to listen. Her eyes were no longer lost in a place dark and far away. I started to speak once more, being sure to keep my tone as soothing as possible.

“This girl ran away from home and has nobody in the world who cares for her. She’s not the kind of person you should be taking advice from. Promise. This is just the start of her story as well. She’s had her Name for less time than you. Don’t listen to anything she said.”

“She-she told me that I’d burn down another city. I make mistakes. I know that I always make a mess. Right now, I can’t even say that she’s wrong.” Yvette stuttered her way through her reply.

“You didn’t burn down anything,” I replied. It was hard to keep my anger out of my voice.

I knew that this wouldn’t be Lisa. It would be someone else playing the same Role. While I had been friends with Lisa, that didn’t mean I would be able to be friends with whoever this was. It would be a mistake for me to treat this new person the same way as I had treated my friend.

… And I admitted to myself grudgingly that while Lisa may have been good for me, there were many people that she was a nightmare for. An uncomfortable knot anchored itself to the base of my stomach. I didn’t like that I cared about this stranger that I’d never met, even though she’d hurt my family.

“But how can I be sure? I thought I made an illusion of an inferno, but maybe I was wrong, perhaps the flames were real.”

“You didn’t do anything,” I repeated. My voice was more firm the second time.

“And how do I know that I won’t do it again?” she was lost in her own thoughts once more, not listening to what I said. “Even if the fires weren’t me, the other people who died were. All it takes is one big mistake, and then lots of people die.”

Yvette’s hair was a mess. I ran the fingers of my left hand through it with care, doing my best to straighten it while I thought.

“Yvie, trust me. That won’t happen.”

“Stop saying that!” she said, her voice filled with heat. “It doesn’t help.”

“I…” I trailed off.

What would Max do?

He would have sat and listened, then not interrupted. He wouldn’t have tried to give me solutions, only been there as a shoulder to cry on. So I’d do the same. I didn’t know if it was the right call, but my first attempt to help my daughter hadn’t worked out.

I thought about using my memories of Jessica Yamada as a reference, but dismissed the idea. She might have been professionally trained as a therapist, but she also failed to get through to me. Perhaps it was just the circumstances, the constant tension about the end of the world but… I’d go with what helped me through my own problems.

“Tell me what else worries you,” I tried.

“I always mess up my magic, even when I try my hardest. How can I even hope to do something like stop problems in the Chain of Hunger if I risk making a mistake?”

It was a fair concern, but one that I thought with time she would grow out of. The issue of the Ratlings wasn’t one easily solved. She would be much more capable by the time any attempt would be made there.

“I’ve made big mistakes in the past, like in Aisne or even up north. How can I risk being around people when there is always a chance that I hurt them?”

Now that she had started talking, she was building up momentum. It wasn’t nice seeing her lambaste herself, but at least she wasn’t withdrawing entirely.

“Did I kill my parents as well? They told me not to go outside at night, or to play down by the stream. I didn’t listen to them, and they died the same day. It was probably my fault. I’m sure of it. The Ratlings followed me home. That must be it.”

I had known she was haunted by demons, I just didn’t understand how many of them there were.

“Will I do the same to you? Will you die trying to take care of me? Maybe I should leave so that nobody else gets hurt.”

“You don’t need to worry about that, Yvie. You know how hard it is to hurt me.”

“I’ll do it by accident anyhow,” she mumbled into my side.

Was I this melodramatic when I was thirteen? I wasn’t going to delve through my memories to find out.

“Nothing I’ve done so far matters. I always get lost in memories. Drift off, then make a mistake. I’ve been useless in every fight,” she continued her rant.

“I thought you didn’t want to fight. That you wanted to end the Ratling curse and develop a system of magic around transmutation.”

“I can’t even talk properly. Think about it. I always get lost in thought, or talk too fast, or lose focus entirely!”

“I like the way you talk,” I admitted.

“Why?”

At last. She hadn’t broken out of her downward spiral yet, but she was interested in what I said.

“It makes me happy to see you happy.”

“Do you like seeing me mess up? Is that it? Is that the reason you take care of me, because you like to laugh at my mistakes?” Yvette bristled.

How do I fix this?

“No,” I voiced my denial with a bit more force than I intended. “I like it because it reminds me of myself.”

Yvette paused and turned my way. Her eyes narrowed like those of a cat.

“You don’t talk like me at all.”

“These days I don’t. I used to, long ago.”

I finished straightening out her hair, then put my hand back in my lap. Yvette was starting to relax, although she was slow to do so.

“So you like that I do something that you grew out of?” She replied, her tone of voice was accusatory.

“I didn’t grow out of it. A friend betrayed me. She hurt me until I stopped. Until I didn’t even want to go on living.”

“Oh. What did she do?”

“You’ve suffered worse than I did and still not lost that part of you. It makes me proud of you, even if I’m sad about what you have had to endure. Nobody should have to. I couldn’t have done the same.”

Yvette swallowed, gathered her courage, then spoke. “I don’t want to keep talking like I do. I don’t want to keep making mistakes. Even if you like me because of it.”

“Okay.”

I heard the door to our suite opening and closing once more. Footsteps echoed as somebody entered the rooms we were renting. I’d bet it was Roland.

“That’s it?” she sounded incredulous.

“That’s it,” I reassured her. “Why would I have a problem with that?”

“But you just said…”

“That the way you speak reminds me of when I was younger. That’s true, but you aren’t me, and you don’t need to be me. The fact is that I care about you regardless. I’ll still care about you as you change and grow older. I’ll care about you when you find your first boyfriend or girlfriend, or even decide you don’t want to be in a relationship at all.” I paused, “No sex until you’re older, though.”

She glared at me like an angry chipmunk, her cheeks reddening.

“I that’s what I’m not-”

I snorted, then started to laugh. She’d started to vibrate with energy again, the way she always did. It wasn’t a fix — I knew that — but it was a start. What was far more important to me was that her dream had started to stabilize again.

“You just said that to make me embarrassed and distract me from my worries,” she accused me.

“Definitely,” I agreed. “Did it work?”

“I… we have a problem,” she whispered.

“What?”

“She stole my pouch. Most of my reagents can be replaced, but a few can’t be, and neither can my notes on the runes from the Titan city.”

I heard voices from outside the room. Songbird and Roland.

“That is a concern,” I agreed.

I was more than a little concerned about it, but I couldn’t allow it to show. Yvette needed to be reassured. If I mentioned the possibility of her notes being auctioned off to a wayward member of the Eyes of the Empire, her worries would run away once more.

“You sound far less upset about that than I expected.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“But-”

“Yvie, it’s not your fault.” I kept my voice gentle, but firm. “You didn’t give her the pouch, she stole it. I’m not angry with you, I’m angry with her.”

“It still means that we’ll need to chase after her.”

“That’s fine. She’s a villain, and I was intending to do something about her even before she hurt you,” I answered. “We’ll get your possessions back. I promise.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I know her story better than anyone else in Calernia. We’ll just arrange the next few steps. I promise we’ll catch her.”

I might not be able to step into any of the Roles of my old stories, but that didn’t prevent me from setting up others in them. Songbird was capable of playing the Role of Coil just fine if I wanted to catch myself a fox.

It wasn’t a heroic Role, but I didn’t intend for Songbird to stay in it for long. She didn’t fit the Role of a traditional hero anyhow.

“Why is it that when you say that, it scares me?” Yvette muttered.

Yvette concentrated with every sentence that she spoke. The fact that she wasn’t talking like she was before made my heart ache a little, but… if changing this part of herself was so important to her… I’d support her even if I thought it was sad.

“You feeling better?”

She gave me a timid nod.

“Can I call in the others?”

“You can call them in.”

I climbed to my feet. Yvette sprawled herself out on the chair once more, like a cat pouring itself into a mould.

I grabbed the rusted iron handle and pulled, then stuck my head around the corner. I peeked into the narrow corridor serving as an interstice between our various rooms. The back of Songbird’s ragged jacket blocked my view of Roland. The two of them were engrossed in a discussion.

“Y’know Roland, I think you made our priestess angry. Y’should get on your knees and confess to her. Maybe ask her to wear a ragged robe that you can look up. A good fuck would do both of you wonders.”

“I no longer have any intent to court her,” he replied. “She trusted me to care for Yvette, and I failed at that duty.”

How do those two relate? Forget it, Taylor. It must be some kind of Alamans thing that he didn’t bother to explain to me in the past.

“No more designs upon her virtue?” Songbird chortled. “Then why’d you buy that bottle? Thought you were gonna try to convince her to drink. It would be a miracle of a different kind if you succeeded.”

“The bottle is for me.”

“D’you mind if I share it with you?”

“If you wish to drink with me, then who am I to refuse?”

“You two can come into the parlour,” I stated.

There was a shuffle of feet as both of them started to approach. Songbird’s lips were turned down, her eyes narrowed in thought. She trailed her fingers against the dark wooden panelling with one hand and tapped her leg with the other.

My eyes fell on Roland.

Well, at least he’s no longer planning to sleep with me.

He was telling the truth. His dream was dead. It didn’t concern me. I was angry with him. Far angrier than I had been before. I’d trusted Yvette’s safety to him, and he’d let me down. I would need to hear the full story later, but I didn’t think he’d be escaping my judgement as easily this time around.

The three of us ambled back into the room. Songbird shut the ugly purple door and I took a seat on the chair to Yvette’s right, with the coffee table between us. The others sat down on the chair opposite to me.

I started to fill them in on my meeting with the Holies. They filled me in on everything they had seen and done in return. It took a while, but eventually we moved on to planning.

“So this is what I believe we should do. The Holies are corrupt. There is no doubt about that in my mind. Corruption as extensive as I believe there to be requires documentation. Even if most of their record keeping is spread between the various cathedrals, the most important parts will be stored at either the Starlit Cloister, or somewhere else in Salia.”

“So you intend for us to spirit away the evidence of their misdeeds,” Roland surmised.

“S’pose that’s one way to prove they’re corrupt. How do you plan to get the documents?”

Songbird took another deep pull of wine out of a bottle, then passed it across to Roland on her right. Both of them were savages.

“There is an unspoken invite for me to live in the Starlit Cloister. I’ll ask for a tour of the place. Songbird can follow behind me, invisible. Once we find out where the accounts are, she can get a hold of them.”

“I don’t see how this gets you what you want. You want to be in charge of the House of Light, this doesn’t help with that.” Yvette enunciated her words with care. It was heart-wrenching to see.

“I can sorta see what Taylor is planning,” Songbird replied to Yvette. “She’s gonna pretend to agree with the Holies, show them the plans she has that they would agree with. The ones that give them more power, then convince the Holies to put her in charge. M’not sure what comes next. Prob’ly taking the evidence of their guilt to Cordelia Hasenbach once she’s been elected First Prince. Offer to remove the Holies if she supports your position.”

“Yeah.” Songbird had more or less summed up my plan. It shouldn’t have surprised me how much she had been able to guess with so few breadcrumbs to follow.

“It’s a shit plan.” Songbird replied.

“Why?” Her answer came as a surprise.

“Cordelia has no reason to follow along with this plan, even if the Church does appoint you their leader.”

“It gives her a hold over the church.”

“Once she has evidence of their fuckups, she doesn’t need you. She’ll prob’ly take the evidence, set up an inquisition of her own and remove as much power from the House of Light as she can. S’what I’d do. It’s in her best interest.”

“I’m in agreement with Songbird.”

“What about my notes?” Yvette interjected. “You said you would do something about this villain, but you haven’t talked about that at all.”

“Taylor, d’you mind if I suggest a plan?” Songbird asked, taking the bottle from Roland again.

“Sure.”

Let’s see if she learned anything from last time, Taylor.

“So, the way I see it is that y’shouldn’t do any sneaking around here at all. No plans to backstab, nothing like that.”

“Why?” Her refusal to scheme at all took me by surprise.

“Remember what the Bard said about you scheming?”

“Yes, but that was before I went to the Chain of Hunger. Before I allowed everyone to step into my stories.”

“Stories that you can’t be a part of,” Songbird pointed out.

“That’s true,” I conceded.

“Now see, m’not named, so I might be wrong. I deal in schemes, not stories, but there is some overlap. Stories are a kind of lie. The way I see it, you fit best into one Role. Guess which one?”

“Priestess?” It seemed obvious to me.

“I think you’re wrong, ma.” Yvette said from beside me. She sounded pleased about that.

“What Role am I then?”

“I think you fit the Role of an Angel,” Yvette replied.

“I’m not that good. I know what Angels are like,” I disagreed.

“Y’see, I agree with Yvette. S’not about how good you are, it’s about which Role you fit into. You’re an immortal servant of the Gods Above that’s formed out of the Light and has dedicated their entire existence towards trying to guide people to be better. You’re obviously not as good as an Angel, or as powerful as one, but it’s the Role you fit into.”

I wanted to argue with that assessment, but found that I couldn’t. Even if there was almost nothing about my personality that made me angelic, the superficial Role I had slotted myself into was that of an Angel.

I was uneasy despite that.

“What does that change?”

“Well, Angels don’t scheme. They’re pure. The Bard told you to fit your Role. The more you fit it, the stronger your story’ll be.”

“Then what should I do?”

“Y’should do what an Angel does,” Songbird sounded satisfied.

“It’s rare for an Angel to intercede. You want me to do nothing?”

Was I willing to go along with this? I didn’t think I was. None of them would have been this flippant about the Angelic Choirs before they met me. I was the one who had changed that. I knew that the Angels didn’t mind, but I did. It was ironic that now I was the one offended by it. Was this the reason everyone was so reverent about Angels? Not because it was required, but because their chosen servants were devoted to them.

“Your conclusion is incorrect,” Roland disagreed. “Angels are called upon when the night is darkest and hope is all but extinguished.”

“Y’know,” I could hear the mischief in Songbird’s voice, “y’should swear an oath of chastity. Angels are s’posed to be pure.”

“She could swear an oath of pacifism as well,” Yvette added, sharing in the mirth.

“M’not sure about that one. The Choir of Judgement smites plenty.”

“Angels are sequestered from the rest of us. It stands to reason that she should reside in the Starlit Cloister, spending the rest of her days in prayer.”

“I’m sorry but… I’m not willing to do this,” I admitted. It felt like I was letting them all down.

“Why not?”

“I know it’s not pragmatic, or logical, or even reasonable, but… even if I love them and consider them my family, they’re only one step removed from the Gods that we worship. I’m not willing to pretend to be one of them, or even try to fill the same Role.”

“S’fine Taylor. We can do this with you as a priestess, but making me work harder hurts. Betrayal!” Songbird mimed the act of being stabbed through the heart. “Roland,” she pointed towards him, “will infiltrate the Starlit Cloister and find evidence of their wrongdoing. We’ll have copies made, then distribute it among the merchants and the nobility. Seed rumours at brothels and the like.”

Right, he’s the rogue.

“Won’t that cause chaos?”

“It’ll cause outcry. Demands for the removal of the Holies. They’ll deny the accusations, of course.”

“What do I do then?”

“Wait until the right moment, and then denounce them all in public.” Songbird’s eyes narrowed. “Making that work’ll be a bit of a pain.”

Right. I’m a hero with a clean reputation. I’ll always win in a war of popular opinion, so I should always choose to fight one.

“Are you sure it won’t end with a riot and deaths on the street?”

“S’pose it could if there’s fracturing up top, but I have some plans to head that off.”

“What about you?”

“M’gonna deal with the villain who made trouble with Yvette. Y’told me it’s a story that you know? How does it go?”

“The fox runs away from home and is caught by the snake. It convinces a spider to help kill the snake in order to earn its freedom.”

“Prob’ly means that I’ll be the snake.”

She caught on quickly.

“If this villain works anything at all like the person I knew, then you shouldn’t engage them yourself.”

“What do you recommend?”

“I should inspect her from somewhere she can’t see me. Learn what I can about her. Then we bait a trap. You need to hire intermediaries and provide them with only partial information. The less they know, the easier it should be to trick her.”

“M’not sure all of that is necessary, but I’ll see what I can do. I need to find her first. Gutting her comes afterwards.”

“No killing. I want to try to redeem her.”

All three of them looked at me as if I’d gone mad.

“You’re not going to punish her at all?” Yvette shrieked.

“Redemption doesn’t mean that she escapes justice,” I kept my voice hard, “nor does compassion. Compassion is about caring regardless of what happens. It hurts me even when I kill people that deserve it, but I still do it despite the nightmares I’ll have afterwards.”

I cared — far more than I should — about this person who had stepped into Lisa’s Role, even though she’d hurt Yvette. It was unlikely that she could be redeemed. I’d still try my best. Even if I was furious at this person and didn’t believe my best would be good enough.

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“S’pose this is a matter of faith to you?” Songbird sighed.

“… Yes.”

“While your faith is commendable, it is doubtful that this villain is one who can be reformed.” Roland took the bottle from Songbird, finished it off and set it down on the desk beside him.

“I know.”

“S’pose I can prob’ly still work with this.” Songbird muttered to herself.

By now, her cheeks had turned red from the wine.

“What about the lay brother?” I interjected.

“He’ll show up if he’s needed.”

“That seems like poor planning.”

“It’s a story we’re telling. I know y’don’t like relying on them, but trust me. We can do this.”

“You promise this won’t cause riots and bloodshed?”

“Promise.”

I examined Songbird’s face. She seemed sincere, but I wasn’t so sure.

“How does this get me what I want?”

“There are a few more details to the plan. Here, listen.”

And Songbird continued to talk.

We all listened and added our own thoughts. By the time she was done laying out her plan, I had been persuaded to follow along with it. It wasn’t the kind of scheme I would have concocted on my own. It relied far more on the narrative than I was used to, but… I’d told myself I’d give Songbird a second chance. It was time she earned that trust.

I knew that Good won more often than not when it came to the narrative. Perhaps it was time that I stopped avoiding stories, and instead used them as my first weapon of choice? It wasn’t like I was still able to break them.

So I’d play the Role that I’d already accepted, and see if Songbird’s scheme paid off.