Lady Nestra repays her debt to the noble house that has her in its thrall.

CW: Gore, violence, death, blood, body horror.

The obsequious attendant bowed low and greeted her, listing her titles and ranks in perfect order and meter, with the soft-edged arrogance of a man who knows his own master’s titles are superior in both length and breadth. 

“-Librarian of Cuisarn, Pentiarch of Rhodes, The Flower Undying, Lady Nestra.” he finished solemnly, his voice smooth and artificially mellifluous through the glowing implants in his throat. He straightened to his full height, his crystalline legs shivering with the sound of rubyglass and amber. He gave the Lady Nestra a serious look, and raised a single, filigreed finger in warning.

“I must regretfully convey that you must elucidate my master as to any weaponry kept on or about your person. Of course you are above suspicion-” She was no such thing and they both knew it, “-but alas the rules are the rules, and a lowly functionary such as I cannot break them.”

She raised one hand, cutting off the last of his sentence more thoroughly than a backhand. Her pale ivory fingers were light on rings now, but still exquisite. Her silvered mirror-dress ruffled as she pinched its folds and curtseyed in acceptance of the restriction. She then gestured, hands flowing gently to either side of her figure as if revealing an absence of something. 

“I am mostly unarmed,” she said easily, shaking her head and making the emerald teardrops in her ears sway heavily, “...I do have a knife.” She whispered it, as she leaned in, revealing a grand secret. The doorman nodded briskly, shivering his golden-wire fingertips in a negligent gesture.

“Very good, milady. I shall convey you to the master immediately.”

They stepped lightly through ancient corridors twice as old as most of the Honored Hundred Families, pacing past treasures unknown to mortal ken and great works of art- some ostensibly missing, some whose painters had mysteriously perished, and some which had been acquired through blood, gold, or guile. Nestra was used to such things, even if the value here would have beggared her house a thousand times over. She was not a tourist. The halls of House Nestra, or at least what halls remained, were older still, though not nearly as extravagant. Their twisting and pacing led them to a small study; a comfortable little room with a large fire crackling in the fireplace, and books upon the walls in heavy ranks and stacks. There was a window, mostly hidden by heavy velvet curtains, that looked out onto a deep forest at twilight, rain gently pattering against the glass. 

By Nestra’s judgement, they were several miles either above or below ground, and not within a thousand miles of a forest. But such things were meant to astound and amaze her, and as such she refused to take note of it. More importantly, the man she had come to see was sitting at an old, worn looking desk whose green baize was in need of replacing. This must be a particular favorite room, she thought, if something less than perfect was permitted to remain here. The man she had come to see looked up at her after a few moments, keeping her waiting. The motion irked her, despite knowing that it was designed to irk her. Then he spoke.

“Ah, Lady Nestra. So kind of you to accept my invitation.” said Magnus Visagn, Lord of the Eternal Earth Empire, He Of Many Titles, He who could have had her dragged here by her hair, kicking and screaming if he so chose. He who held House Nestra, that most esteemed and ancient of families, in the palm of his heavy, beringed hand. Nestra forced herself to curtsy.

“My lord, your merciful summons are ever a pleasure to obey.” she said, with as much energy as she could muster. Still, it made him laugh, deep in his throat.

“Indeed, such pleasure it must give you, to bow and scrape to what Nestra sees as an upstart house!” he chortled, his austere, heroic visage breaking into something more vulgar and hungry.

She ignored that. It, like his waiting, was designed to annoy her. 

“I am here as you commanded, Lord. For what did you summon me?”

“So quick to rush to business? Would you not like a drink? Some wine? An aperitif? I have some mandragore and tonic that would put some spring in your dreary step.” A teasing smile.

“Thank you, no,” Nestra insisted, “I have come to settle the debt between us, my Lord.”

He raised one thick black eyebrow, flecked gently with grey (for effect, she thought, for not even a minor lord would allow a sign of aging unless he or she wished it).

“Indeed? And this though you described the debt as- what was it?” He paused, tapping a finger against the side of his chin thoughtfully. “Ah yes- ‘a maliciously inflicted pecuniary betrayal designed by a parcel of fiends for the sole purpose of seizing my estate’ ?”

“I will not eat crow,” Nestra said firmly, willing her cheeks not to burn scarlet with the anger building in her stomach. It was her own fault, she knew. Her family had borrowed, her brother had borrowed, she had borrowed. Did she think that the debts would never fall due? Did she think that the great maw of House Visagn any less hungry for knowledge than it was for coin?

No. That was equivocation. She knew. She had just hoped for a little more time. 

“Indeed.” That was all he said into the long, dragging silence. The fire crackled. The not-rain pattered against the not-window. “But how will you pay your debts? I see no tomes with you, nor coin. My servants report that you are unarmed and brought no baggage with you, despite your claims.”

“Not quite true,” she shrugged one shoulder casually, “I brought a knife.”

“Did you?” Lord Visagn seemed almost charmed by the idea, “Are you going to kill me, Lady Nestra?”

Men and women appeared from nowhere, all around the room. Two from the heavy red curtains. Three from bookshelves. Two she would swear, from the fireplace. Seven shadows dressed in drifting black gauze that fluttered in a non-existent breeze. They carried simple weapons- knives and axes- of a bronze metal that was older still than the ancient houses of Nestra or Visagn.

“Impressive,” Lady Nestra said, flicking her fingers and dipping her head like a fencer acknowledging a touch. Then she pressed two ivory fingertips together hard enough that her nails turned white and clicked .

“Knife,” she intoned, “ Kill them all. ”

And the knife did.

Men and women screamed. Blood splattered across the desk. Someone fell into the fire and burst into flames, crackling and shrieking. A woman fell across Lady Nestra, the ruin of her throat pulsing and gushing with lewd crimson. Nestra pushed her aside dismissively. 

And there was a knife in the room.

The knife had always been there- or at least had been there a long time. Only when it began to kill did people take note of it; the way that you notice, after a long moment of stupor, that something in a room only you use is out of place. It was not a person, not any more- if it had ever been one. It did not move like a person, it moved like a weapon. It slid and pierced and slashed and cut and parried and crushed and thrust and killed. It drove something that might once, in a human being, have been called an arm (at least before someone hacked it off at the wrist, flensed the skin and muscle, and then took a whetstone to the bone with all the passion of a master bladesmith) through the chest of the last shadow, crushing its heart. 

The knife finished its work just as Lord Visagn broke from his stupor. He pushed his chair back, scrabbling to tug open a desk drawer. The knife cut the table in two, then backhanded him across the face. He screeched like a dying bat, his eyes bloody ruins. The weapon he had been going for fell uselessly to the thick carpet, unfired. The Lady Nestra kicked it genteely aside with the tip of her mirrored shoe. She was stepping towards the heavy desk, trying daintily to avoid the blood now soaking into the plush rugs and failing miserably. Step. Squish. Step. Squish.

Something blurred towards her, and her heart caught in her throat. She flung her hand out, finger pointing, and roared; “Knife, Sheathe! ” The knife stopped as if poleaxed, standing in the center of the room with its one horrific armblade extended, ghastly sharpened bone inscribed with paens of emptiness and praise for the all-devouring Red. Lady Nestra let out a slow, whistling sigh. The knife usually stopped no more than two times in three. 

“Stay, knife,” she instructed, stepping lightly passed the blade, patting its androgynous cheek as she did so. The knife stayed. It was a tool. It existed to be picked up, called upon, used again and again and again, and then put down. It shivered in the warm room- with what? Bloodlust? Chills? Nestra banished the thought from her mind and squatted next to Lord Visagn, lifting her skirts to prevent them from sinking into the blood. 

“Our debt is settled,” Lady Nestra said simply to the sobbing man. He was stoic, mostly, but despairing as all the resources that he relied upon failed him one by one. 

“No- No…” he grunted, shaking his head weakly. His eyes were just gone, three or four inches into his whole head as if a red hot saw had carved across his face. Nestra smiled, slightly.

“Yes~” she said, and her hands fastened around her debtor’s neck and began to tighten. 

She would do what her parents could not. What her brother dared not. She would make an enemy of one of the greatest houses ever to grace the honor rolls of the Third Dynasty. But she was going to need help. She considered this, while Visagn’s bloodstained boots drummed and hammered against the carpet. She drew lists of informants, experts, and mercenaries in her mind as she worked her thumbs into his windpipe. She considered what scoundrels would run this glorious jewel with her.

Behind her, the knife stood. Waiting to be picked up again. 

It would be her weapon, in the war to come.