Private Lantern Flowers [M]

[Garrod Arlette]

How they stood in their proudest blooms. Woven like so many coins of molten gold, into round wreaths, braids, and crowns. Bright and orange and bold as any dashed ribbon across the sky. Hues of the sun’s burning glow caught against the errant curl of light traced scut.

Cempaxochitl. Artorias had called them once.

Lantern flowers. They had grown up calling them. With as many petals as a flame had tongues.

Suldazan Marigolds, some tower weaver had named them. But they were not from Suldaza. Nor even Ilica, if Sinns was to be believed.

They are from someplace else. Artorias had always told him. Someplace beyond the touch of stars, and moons. Drunk as piss, or sober as stone. The words always came clear to him there in the breaths of that utterance. Where only the butterfly’s wings can reach them, and nary a ghost whispers where their fields are found.

And still, they found their way. Through the cracks in the stone. Across the crags of the Mheara, and the bricks of Cloud’s Keep. The lantern flowers bloomed in the late summer. Stayed all proud, tall, and strong, until the first bite of winter’s frost tore at them. Brought them low. One by one. All their lurid dream, pungent pollen musk, turned haze of warm weathered grey.

So, the seasons changed.

The last gasps of late summer and the warm breath that left the fall, turned to cold crisp winds. The lantern flowers gathered by every hand. As the leaves in the trees fluttered and shook in all the colors of bright flame. Bleeding against the gathering dark. The bright golden orange, like the last roar of the sun's light just above the windswept horizon.

Strung across doors, laid before altars, all the flowers with soft lush petals, papery and many fold, laid their full bloom heads down wherever they were placed. By candles. From strings. Round necks. Betwixt plaits of neatly wound hair. By plates of old food. Beside the likeness of an ancestor. Like little lanterns, calling the spirits home. Even the hive shanties seemed to glow in the marigolds humble glory.

Everywhere save the lonely ramshackle house at the end of Terminus road. Grey stone weather eaten. Roof sagged. Walls leaned unto their own weight, like a drunk, too used to their own lean to fall over just yet.

How fitting, Garrod could not help but think, as he stared at that Sepulcher he had left so desecrated. The place he had once called home.

Spoiler: El Premio

North Ilica, Cloud’s Keep, Posted in the Wasp Ring Dens

Hunting Ground: An old shit shackle house, at the end of Terminus Road. Beyond the walls of the Panier Borough, in the North Eastern shanties.

Presa: The wailing ghost of a piss angry drunk, and former Cazadore. More details will be provided upon discussion of terms.

Gana: Two gold pieces.

 

[Daniyah]

In her eyes, the marigolds all glowed golden, like little suns burning. The air shimmered with gold. Flowers spilled from every window, every rooftop. Their petals strewn in careful paths that led to doorsteps and to little home altars. Between them, children ran laughing, faces painted with skulls and stars. Offerings gleamed on every table. Bread, salt, wine, and trinkets meant for those who came home only in spirit. Strings of papel picado fluttered overhead in hues of crimson, cobalt, and saffron, swaying like the wings of souls. It all was beautiful. And a little sad.

Incense burned slow and sweet. The air was thick with roasted maize, sugared bread, smoke, and the sound of whispered names. Around her, laughter, song, remembrance, the living and the dead mingling in the same breath. Daniyah walked among them, a stranger and a shadow in her road-stained cloak. But for once, she didn’t mind. Children darted past the cazadore, giggling as they scattered petals from wicker baskets. The marigold petals crushed under her boots, releasing their perfume.

Marigold had a certain smell.
Strong. Herbical. And a slight tone of caramel.
Not the kind of smell you would expect from such a vibrant flower.

But as she walked north, the glow began to fade. The music thinned, and laughter fell away. The petals no longer carpeted the street... only dust and broken glass.

And there it stood.

The house at the end of Terminus Road.
Not even a single orange petal on the doorstep.

The door hung crooked, its hinges spotted green with rust. Daniyah lifted her hand and knocked.

 

[Garrod Arlette]

"And who in the eight mirrored hells is that come knock on my door?!" Came a shout all gravel dragged and road crunched. The hack of a phlegmy cough there after that set the bricks to to shudder. Loose gravel plinked down bricks like the Grit of teeth. The windows creaked. Angles almost seemed to set into a scowl. "Come to try and take what's left of Old Sinns eh? Well it's too damn late for that!" The old house trembled. It's single chimney stack bent, just so. "The rats already beat you to it,"

The door came open with a pained groan of its hinges. A sleepless green eye there behind the moss eaten planks of blue wood.

The cut of the one eye's glare was aimed up at some corner of the ceiling. Lip down turned to a crook. Sliced it's stare back to the one who had knocked at the door. Went wide and breath hollowed as If carved out of his lungs.

"And there's the man who served them up the feast!" The house grumbled and rumbled. "Glorious meal I made though, lad, I'm sure the rats built a shrine in your honor after it,"

"Daniyah..." Garrod said, dumbstruck.

 

[Daniyah]

Old Sinns.

No.
No, no, no.

Of all the haunted gutters, piss-soaked ruins and filthy corners in Cloud’s Keep, it had to be this one.
Of course he’d be here.

This was supposed to be a quiet, easy job. She had not expected to walk headfirst into one of Garrod’s ghosts. She exhaled slow through her nose. “Didn’t know this was your haunt, Sinns” she muttered. Her hand stayed on the hilt at her hip, thumb tapping once against the pommel. “Should’ve charged them extra.”

Then that green light blinked through the cracks. The old ghost’s eye glared out and behind it.

Garrod.

Her jaw clenched so hard it hurt.
She didn’t move at first.
Her heart thudded once, hard, and then sank like a stone.

“Oh, hell no,” she breathed. Daniyah turned her head slightly.

Of all her rotten luck...

She hadn’t seen him since their bloody aftermath with the buzzards. Her fingers twitched toward the dagger's hilt at her belt before she stopped herself. Daniyah kept her distance from him. Three paces back, but close enough to see his hands. Trust was a thing he’d bleed out of her, and she wasn’t fool enough to show him her throat again.

“Didn’t realize this was your mess...” she said flatly.

 

[Garrod Arlette]

A laugh from the bricks that shook the dust out of the rafters. A spill of debris and silt let out all hiss and rattle from the overhead crossbeams and onto Garrod's white mane with a thump turned swirling puffs that coated him.

A blink and the eye went shut. Garrod shook his head, and fanned the dust away.

"You hired the Silver Hook's runt to come after me boy?" The house seemed to swell with warm and glittering pride. "Well, if it didn't mean my eternal slumber, I'd say I was flattered," a bit of song to the flutter and stir of the old Hunter's voice. "Piss to that I say," whatever spark had struck failed to catch. Smothered by all the old ruin. "And piss to your machinations, boy!"

Garrod grumbled behind his teeth. Jaw set. Face coated in a layer of old dust.

The wind stirred. The crisp howl rattled the old window panes, moaned through the haunted old home. And for a moment, the petals of marigolds Daniyah's boots had carried in her wake danced along the current of the breeze. Each fold and vein that moved by the unseen current, seemed to burn in the daylight.

Garrod wiped his face. Coughed some through the dust. Opened the door wider. Stood there in the frame. Plain clothed, black booted, and only a knife at his hip. Hands settled crossed about his chest as he leaned against the door frame.

"I," his eye was at her boots a moment. Head swirling to the sound of a dying fire crackling against the draft its old hearth hardly guarded it against. "I am glad you are alright," he said. Felt the word may have been wrong. Eye came up quick to her again. "Alive, I mean," he knew she was. Den rumors came a plenty.

"What in the fiery sack of Ahyiid is this?" the house rattled. "All that scribbling you did, and that's it?" A slam of all the window sills. "Pah! I went and told you didn't I boy? You weren't made for words. Congratulations on breathing, Lantern Runt! You got me beat on that front!" the sour old house laughed. Coughed. Crumbled at the corner stones.

 

[Daniyah]

"You hired the Silver Hook's runt to come after me boy?"

The words hit her out of order at first, it took a moment to settle, to line up. Scribbling, plans, and machinations. And when they did, the heat that came up through her chest was fury. Her eyes snapped to Garrod. “You..?!” He set this up. She stepped back. One boot scuffed against the floorboards.

And piss to your machinations, boy!

The dust still swirled between them, soft and gold in the slanting light. It was almost pretty. “You knew I’d take the contract, knew I’d come..” she hissed. Her heart hammered really hard once, twice. Every muscle in her body remembered the last time she saw him: her own blood soaking the dirt, Garrod walking right past her to reach that cursed gauntlet. The sound of the haunted house laughing grated at her. The anger came slow, not like a storm but like a blade heating in a forge. Soon all she could hear was the thudding of blood in her ears.

“Last I recall, you didn’t seem too concerned about whether I was breathing or not,” she went on “You just… stepped over me.” A small, humorless smile curved her lip. “To get your shiny little prize... Hell of a bedside manner. So take your ‘glad’ and choke on it.” He had some gall to stand there and watch her come running. Why? To gloat? To see if she would crawl out alive this time? To prove what, that he pulled the strings? The silence after was brittle, but the house quickly filled it, with its rattling and creaking. Timbers shuddering as though it enjoyed the show.

Her pale gaze locked on the man in the frame, the one she’d once thought worth trusting. “Say what you came to say, Garrod,” she said at last. “And make it quick. Because if you think for one second I’m staying here, you’re madder than the thing that’s riding your soul.”

 

[Garrod Arlette]

"You knew I'd take the contract, knew I'd come..."

"What?" he choked on it. Words stung all the way down to his gut. Brow furrowed, arms fell to his side as he shook his head. Half a step toward her before he remembered. Stopped. Not that he could ever forget.

That look in her eyes. The way she had set her jaw and uttered her warning. Half dead on the pale mule as she had been. Stink of burning flesh in the air the only thing he could smell through all the blood.

"Stepped over me, to get your shiny little prize... Hell of a bedside manner. So take your 'glad' and choke on it."

The house laughed, and he could hear his fiend laugh with it.

A distant whisper from the back of his eye. Ah, I would be lying, Oh Bearer Mine, if I said I didn't miss part of this.

Garrod's eye fell to the floor. Hands balled to fists at his side as his teeth ground against each other. "I deserve that," didn't matter what the reasons were then. Amidst all the swirl of that madness. Nor the chaos that swirled here. Hazed with the witching scent of all the lantern flowers.

"Say what you came to say, Garrod...because if you think for one second I'm staying here..."

To that, Garrod grinned. Set his eye on her. Smiled wider. Sharp and impish, for the spur that stoked him. "You came here," Shameless in it. "And I never invited you into this place," a hot huff. At the memories welling up. Hands through his hair, on scars, and the calm quiet before all the blood mirrored hell.

She didn't say anything about who he was then. Didn't look at him like he was some thing she'd rather leave dead and buried. Worse. Something that hurt her.

Took a breath. To let some of the swirl of cold heat settle. Looked into the house. Set his back to the frame, and crossed his arms anew. Like a little wall. To keep himself together.

"I posted a job, in the dens," he said easy, no hint to a lie. Miserable bravado bleeding out of him with every word that passed his lips. "If the best witch in the bloody business showed up on my doorstep, well," shrugged, "More's the luck,"

"MY doorstep, you cheeky little bastard," the old house of Sinns rumbled and groaned. "And you can both kindly fuck off, with all this, thinking you'll stay here nonsense! I didn't invite either of you!"

Garrod glanced back to her. Tired. Frayed. Sincere. "You did say, I should hire you, didn't you?" shook his head. "Board and materials covered," shoved off the frame. "Can write up a contract if you want," smirked.

"Oh piss off!" came the voice through the shattered windows."Left an old man alone to die, and now you can't even let me haunt my own damn house, boy!" the beams and columns that held the place up bent and whined. Crackled and splintered as the whole house shook in fits.

 

[Daniyah]

“Right,” she said, the word flat as a blade’s spine. “You posted a job...”

"If the best witch in the bloody business showed up on my doorstep, well, more's the luck."

A twitch at the corner of her mouth, the kind that looked more like pain than amusement. Then came the exhale, sharp and disbelieving. “Oh, spare me...” she muttered. Luck did not drag her to this doorstep. He did.

The bastard had the same look as before. The flash of the fiend’s eyes in his. Trying for that same half-charmed ease he used before everything went to hell. Here he was again. Same green eye, same damned tone, standing in front of her like the world hadn’t ended between them. She let out a sharp breath through her nose, half a laugh, half disbelief.

She’d heard the rumors, of course. Everyone had. Garrod Arlette and the one-armed girl. The thief. She had heard he’d taken the girl under his wing. A fine bit of irony, that. Daniyah’s eyes slipped past him, to where the light faltered and the dark began. Had Garrod brought the girl here, too? Her jaw clenched until her teeth ached.

She let out a short, and a humorless: “No.”

“Whatever you’re offering, I’m not interested.” No to all of it. Her jaw ticked once as she nodded to herself, the motion clipped. The ghost snickered somewhere in the rafters. She stepped back. She would not allow him to turn the knife and call it work. “You want a witch for hire? There’s plenty in the Dens who’ll take your gold. I’m not one of them.”

Daniyah flinched as the whole house groaned with the voice of Sinns, dust raining down like snow. “Fine by me,” she snarled. "I’ll take the road before I stay another minute in this shitpit.”

 

[Garrod Arlette]

The house rumbled with a laugh, all clatter of bricks and straining wood.

"Shit pit!" Sinns shout. Almost joyful. "And this old shit pit has the Silver Hooks welp on the run," too happy in the evil roll of his multitudinal voice.

Garrod scowled. Dust covered. Debris laden. Stepped out and slammed the door shut behind him. All whoosh of dust. "You took up the contract, " he said, flat as the world's axis. Closed ground. "You read it, you knew where you were going," each word bit out. Until there was just a stride between them. Looked down at her, fingers all splayed at his side. "You toss a fucking bottle into the ocean, you actually think it'll come back?" Tendon pulled flesh and bones to curl "Of course I wanted you-" the words all jumbled up in his throat. Shook his head. Snapped his eye away. Hissed through his teeth. "I fucking tracked you down for days, Dani," he laughed, low and breath heavy. "Days, and you were just gone in the wind. A bloody trail in the dirt for me to follow, days old." A growl. Hands balled to fists at his side. "I had to find out from a fucking trapper in Blutson House, that you were still alive. And you want to talk fucking bedside manner." Looked her down again, hands loose as the wind blew. "You knew what I was... And I let you in. And you just left."

 

[Daniyah]

“Don’t flatter yourself. I had no fucking idea this was Sinn’s house,” she bit out. “You think I’d walk straight into that bastard’s nest on purpose?” voice low, sharp enough to split bone. The wind picked up, tugged at her hair, and carried the scent of mold and rust from the house.

“You tracked me... " She clicked her tongue. He said he’d tracked her down, like that was some kind of kindness. Like she should be grateful. Like it had any meaning in a world where he had already shown what he would do. “You mean after I told you to stay away from me?" She stepped back, letting the few broken petals of marigolds settle between them. When he took another step forward, she took a step back, keeping the distance between them.

Daniyah’s breath hitched sharply through her nose. Her eyes found his, and for a heartbeat, the fury in them almost trembled into something else, maybe memory. “Yeah,” she said, breath shaking out of her. “I knew what you were. And still, I gave you the chance. Gods know why. And you chose yourself." Daniyah felt the phantom ache of where her bones had split under the blade and fiend’s force. Garrod tried to guilt her into remorse she did not feel. "I gave my blood, my magic, everything I could spare just to keep you from dying on me..."

She could not stand beside a man who let a fiend wear his skin, someone who runs to his own salvation while your blood turns the earth black. He’d cared for the thief. The girl who’d stolen and worn his gauntlet, and nearly carved Daniyah's legs to stumps. The one who deserved it least. Maybe that was how mercy was meant to work, hand it to the undeserving, generous to the guilty. But it felt like a knife twisting. Being played, measured, and found not even secondary, but last. That was a lesson she didn’t need repeating.

"I was idiotic enough to think that you were still a man underneath it. And it cost me. Nearly cost me my fucking life."

 

[Garrod Arlette]

Eye wide and bleary.

"You mean after I told you to stay away from me."

Eye narrowed. He ground his teeth. Jaw clenched tight as a vice amidst the smell of ruined iron and rot. Stepped after each step.

"I thought you were going to fucking die Daniyah." Voice growing colder as she retreat. "What was i supposed to do? Just let it happen?" He gave back. Watched how her hair whipped by the wind, with all the dashes of lantern petals swirled there behind her. Like the motes of her blood that had swirled around them. "I saw all that blood. All your blood."

His eye went elsewhere. To that moment. Where she laid in twisted ruin. How it mixed with older memories. The Thorns lay dead around him. Blood pooled to those same hellish mirrors. Their faces gone to it. His hand tight about Garrod's hair as he smiled and pulled back on black strands just as he set the knife across Garrod's neck.

Garrod shook his head. Right hand trembling like the crooked claws it was so used to wearing. "I didn't want to lose you. I didn't think, I just moved and..." Into the faint haze of herb and burnt sugars. Closed his right into a fist. "I'm sorry," squeezed the shakes out of the ruined fibers of the crooked mess that still remained about his bones. "I hurt you," his eye didn't waver, "I never meant to hurt you,"

 

[Daniyah]

It was savage in a sort of way, how quickly it had all gone from something close to something deadly. A few days. Hours. That was all it took for them to tangle in the dark, to let something slip between them that wasn’t meant for cazadores. And then, that morning after, everything had shattered.

Pleasure turned to pain so fast it still burned in her chest. The warmth of his hands, the stupid, fleeting companionship. Gone. Trust she had barely let herself feel, ripped away in a heartbeat. Daniyah’s eyes lingered on him. She could feel the old pulse of it, when things had been different. Lighter, sharper, alive.

“Right,” she snapped, sharp as a whip. “You done? That’s it? Got everything off your chest?"

She was done with all this, done with the words, done with the guilt, done with him, done with his fucking fiend. Done.

“Because I’ve got better things to do than stand here listening to you moan about that fucking day anymore.”

She shifted her weight, the motion impatient, ready to leave.

 

[Garrod Arlette]

A snatch with the left, all quick and easy with the gust of wind. "Wait," came with the clap of fingers that squeezed sure over the heel of her palm. "Fuck that day," he hissed into the breeze. "I'm done with it," his eye wouldn't let go. And he wouldn't let it be that easy. Not again. "Say whatever you need to, but don't lie to me," he said something between anger and hurt. "Not after you showed up knocking on my fucking door," he stared a long and painful moment. Swirling as much as he was and cursing himself every second of it.

 

[Daniyah]

"Wait"

His hand, rough, calloused, insistent. A hunter’s hand. His fingers closed on her palm, and something skittered under her ribs. Not pain, exactly, but every damned memory she’d been trying to keep tamped down flashed up. The river and the fiend in the girl's eyes and the blade pressing down at his chest and the sound of his steps walking past her. Her stomach clenched.

She looked down at his hand.

"Say whatever you need to, but don't lie to me,"

Daniyah stared at him like he’d asked a stupid question. He’d emptied himself, spilled whatever ragged confession he had, and stood there looking for an echo. There was none in her. She had nothing to say. None of it meant a thing. She leaned in until their foreheads touched, the air between them sour with regret.

“Let go.”

She twisted her wrist to tear herself free, bone and tendon ground under her grip. Maybe he thought there was still something to drag out of her. An apology. A spark. Anything.

“I don’t have anything left to say to you.”

 

[Garrod Arlette]

Wriggle and writhe between his grip. He didn't let go. Didn't wrench. Didn't drive. Let her twist. Let her thump against him. Heads knocked. Clumsy. But they settled. Smelled it on her. Sour and bitter and full of sickly sweet numbing poison.

"I don't have anything left to say to you."

"Daniyah" he said the name like the spell it was. Eye still full of her as her breath swirled about the scar at his neck. Right arm wrapped around her. Just moved closer and closer until he felt her breath on his lips. Heart pounding against his chest. Mule kicked. Demon stabbed. Lantern bound. "Stay with me,"