I wish I could write about the information we’ve gathered, and what we learned at the Ioun temple, but so much of that needs to be kept under wraps for now. Suffice to say: A plan has been formed. We will need to be very delicate with our timing in the next few days, but I believe we can carry off this caper with minimal bloodshed. I’m thinking about my brother tonight, instead.
Rob was murdered in the wee hours of the morning, and by dawn, he had died.
I woke a few hours after the midnight bell to the sound of someone entering the antechamber of my bedroom. Fariga, my weapons master, my teacher, my friend… brought me the rapier she had worn for over a decade, and told me to get my clothes on and run. I didn’t know what she meant– I didn’t really understand what was going on at the time. All the politics had been academic exercises up until then. I knew in my head that one house or another house had backed this faction or that one a hundred years ago… but not what that might mean today.
I didn’t have time for any more lessons, though. When I lit the candle, I saw his blood on Fariga’s tunic.
I knew in my heart that she hadn’t been the one to do it. Mercenary she might have been once, but she had long since accepted the gifts of my family, the sword my father bestowed her when she swore her oaths. I knew better, but when the stories came out of the capitol, I wanted to believe the Regent’s lies. I wanted to make some sense out of the senseless.
Rob was my brother, but he was also father and mother to me. He was my world. I worshipped him, and in the past few years, he had challenged me to work harder, to study what was happening to our world, to understand the people who look up to House Jader. To understand my role in it, as the unwed daughter of a noble house, a possible link in a chain that could form a political union that might make two houses stronger together than apart.
On my sixteenth birthday, my parents had been dead for a decade, killed in an unfortunate fire while they were visiting one of the family’s outer holdings. Rob gave me a beautiful necklace that year for my birthday, with amethyst clustered around a large moonstone. He told me it was a promise– that he would protect me and guide me, always, and that that moonstone would someday be set into my wedding ring– but only when I so chose.
Six months later, I sold it to buy my armor, a bow, and a saddle.
Three days ago, I would have sold it for a horse. This morning, I would have sold it for a wagon of iron.
Apparently, I am something of a mercenary. Rob would not be proud of me for that, but Fariga would understand.
Note: This is a fictional work, a journal entry for an RPG character. More of these entries can be found in this blog’s #movingforward tag.