When Hisa had stumbled towards her, breaths coming out in shallow gasps and irrevocably and completely alone, General Gaia Gwendolyn had known that something was very, very wrong.
But she hadn’t expected this. She could have never expected this.
Even through the blindfold she wore to keep the light from damaging her near-blind eyes even further, General Gwendolyn could see the scene before her as if it was painted in vivid strokes. A few paces from the cliff’s edge, a woman in her mid-forties was sprawled unceremoniously across the ground, a knife curving up from her throat in a terrible smile. Her eyes were wide and open, lips pulled over teeth in a soundless scream. Scratch marks littered the black armour she wore, an ugly slash dividing the emblazoned scarlet lotus on the chest-plate into two. Her prized bejewelled sword was tossed a ways from her body in several pieces, the shard with blade’s tip entrenched deeply in the trunk of an oak tree nearby.
“No…” General Gwendolyn choked out around the sudden lump in her windpipe as her legs gave out and she plummeted to her knees.
The General trembled as she crawled to the woman and gingerly shifted her head onto her lap. Her poor vision did not preclude her from noticing that the woman’s ordinarily vibrant red locks were now clumped into crescents of grime and mud. The woman had constantly preened over her hair in her youth, boasting endlessly that the colour was a sign of the favour the Goddess Padmadevi had cast upon her.
“I’m just lavished in her brilliance,” she would say dramatically. “Such is the fate of one such as I.”
Back then, General Gwedolyn would respond to the woman’s spurts of self-aggrandisement with a swift whack to the back of her head and a stern reminder that genetics existed. But now…
But now…
Footsteps, uncharacteristically blundering and uneven, alerted General Gwendolyn to Hisa’s arrival. Tears streamed down the lieutenant's face as she clung to the oak housing the tip of the red-haired woman’s sword like it was a lifeline preventing her from keeling over completely.
“This...this is all my-”
That was all Hisa managed to say before she turned to the side and the contents of her stomach came streaming out between her teeth.
The General swallowed back the sob swelling in her throat, but her protégé’s open sorrow was enough to dislodge a few tears needling at the corners of her eyes. How could she have let this happen?! As the woman’s right-hand and the leader of the Lotus Guard, it was General Gwendolyn’s job to keep her safe, to protect her. But her loyalty went far beyond frivolous, arbitrary notions such as status and duty.
Funny. When she was alive, General Gwendolyn would be loath to admit that the woman she was cradling in her arms was her closest, most dearest friend. Now, she wanted to scream it from the rooftops. She wanted to cry and beg and hurl curses at the Goddess until her tongue was tattered and bloody. As if a symptom of the woman’s death was the dissolution of her pride, her inhibition, her reticence.
“This was a simple reconnaissance mission,” General Gwendolyn murmured, blinking rapidly as she tried to make sense of it all. “How could this have…”
“I’m so sorry,” she heard Hisa whisper behind her. “I’m so sorry…”
General Gwendolyn reached out a shaking hand to brush away the strands of hair that had fallen onto the woman’s face. The general’s pale, milky eyes fell onto her friend’s scarlett ones. They were unseeing but they burned, the frozen flames a clear snapshot of what she’d felt when the dagger had torn into her neck and stolen her life. A preservation of that moment in ruby resin. General Gwendoyln suddenly knew exactly what the woman would say if she could see her now.
“Get up, you big oaf! Are you going to shut down every time something mildly inconvenient happens? And you call yourself a soldier of Palaedia!”
She was right. Even in death, she was right. Now, more than ever, wasn’t the time to fall apart.
“Get to the palace,” General Gwendoyn said to Hisa, tone carefully even as she bundled the woman against her chest. “Alert Princess-General Sharn and tell her to convene a meeting of the Lords of the Five States.”
Hisa jolted as if the command had taken physical form and slapped her across the face. She looked at the General dumbly, mouth opening and shutting like she wanted to say something at least halfway coherent, but her words came out in nothing but blubbers and whimpers.
General Gwendolyn was having none of it.
“Hisa,” she barked sharply as she rose to her feet. “Go.”
A shudder slipped down Hisa’s back like a slab of ice. The vermillion streaks of the setting sun framed General Gwendolyn’s form like she was a blazing angel of death, ready to cast the woman hanging limply over her arms to the depths of despair with just a small step backwards over the cliffside.
Her next words might as well have.
“Queen Piyumi of Palaedia is dead.”
“I demand a refund!”
Piyumi Perera, age twenty-two, stopped counting the bills in her hand to look at the bag of Collins’ Original Crinkle Cut chips being shoved under her nose. Being an employee of a milk bar, she was no stranger to nightmare customers, but this had to be a new low. The fact she was just about to close up for the day made the whole thing even worse. She had been this close to a bullshit free shift.
“I unfortunately can’t do that, sir,” she said in the sugary-sweet voice she saved exclusively for situations like these. “I apologise.”
“I want my money back!” the customer yelled with so much of his chest, the buttons of his shirt threatened to pop off. Piyumi wondered idly if one would hit her in the eye. Being blinded would probably be less painful than dealing with this crap. “The chips were bloody stale!”
Piyumi scoffed. “I guess that’s why the bag is completely empty. Just had to try every single chip to make sure they were ‘stale’.”
The man looked like he was going to combust. Piyumi was almost impressed — his face was almost as red as her hair. “Now, listen here, you little-”
“I’m sorry for the inconvenience, sir! Here’s your money!”
Piyumi baulked as Hunter Watson-Jones, her best friend and technically boss, tumbled out of the storeroom behind her and slapped a bill onto the counter. “In fact,” he grabbed a couple bags of chips from a nearby shelf and thrusted them into the customer’s hands, “have these as a token of our remorse. Please forgive us and have a wonderful night!”
The customer looked a little spooked at the sudden over-the-top hospitality but the angry flush in his cheeks subsided as he snatched up the money and stalked out of the milkbar.
Piyumi, however, had some choice words. “Dude, what the fuck,” she said in disbelief. “You may be the one running a business here, but even I know that that is no way to turn a profit.”
Hunter sighed, slumping onto the counter as he held his head in his hands. “That man was about to throttle you senseless. It’s not worth it.”
“You gave him fifty bucks! That’s like 10 times what the chips were worth!” Piyumi exclaimed, tugging her friend’s chestnut brown hair in an attempt to rouse him. “Hell, if you’re just giving away money, why not shoot some my way? I could use a raise!”
“No. You’re fired,” came a tired and muffled reply from the tangle of limbs beside her.
The red-haired woman rolled her eyes, leaning her back against the counter as she stared up at the small television set mounted in the corner. Having known Hunter for almost a decade, Piyumi was painfully aware that there was no remedying his aversion to confrontation. For such a passive person, he sure could be stubborn when he put his mind to it. That shred of determination was probably the only thing keeping the Jones Family Milk Bar afloat the past couple of years. Hunter’s mother had charged him with the store when she left town to care for her elderly father.
“Wow! It sure is morbid in here. Who died?”
Piyumi glanced over her shoulder to see a woman about her age. Her dark hijab fluttered slightly in the wind before she let the door to the milk bar shut behind her.
“Me. God, I hope it’s me,” Hunter lamented, face still plastered to the counter.
“Piyumi’s company is that bad, huh?” Waliyha Nadir smirked, high-heels clacking against the tile as she strode to the pair. “I figured her mere presence would have a body count someday. You’re notorious, you know that?”
“Well, count yourself my second victim then, because I’m about to beat you over the head with Mr. Vuitton over there,” Piyumi shot back, gesturing to the handbag swung over Waliyha’s shoulder. “Though who fucking knows if it’ll actually do anything, seeing as you don’t have a brain and all.”
“Hah, that’s rich, coming from you. I suppose it is fitting for a monkey to only perceive others as belonging to the same species.”
“Yeah? Well, you’re-”
“And this is why we’re banned from nearly every restaurant in town,” Hunter whined. “Please...please just stop.”
Piyumi and Waliyha exchanged a glance and before they broke into laughter. “Okay, okay, we’ll give it a rest since you asked so nicely,” Waliyha teased in a singsong voice, patting Hunter’s head before turning her attention back to the redhead. “It’s been a while, Piyumi. Mum says that you haven’t shown your face around the shop in some time. Morrell doing okay?”
Being the daughter of a woman who ran an auto-repair shop, Waliyha had been tinkering with cars and motorbikes before she could even talk. While other children lugged stuffed animals around, little Waliyha had been inseparable from a six-piece screwdriver set she had pinched from her mother and refused to go anywhere without it. While this made her decision to study law come as a shock to some, it didn't surprise Piyumi at all. In their high-school days, Waliyha, as brilliant as she was, had been school captain, valedictorian and an absolute menace on the debate team. It was a wonder how she had become acquainted with Piyumi, who had opted to just drift through high-school and only put in the effort needed for a passing grade. In any case, Piyumi was grateful. Having a mechanic for a friend meant free round-the-clock maintenance for her beloved motorbike.
“Now that you mention it, she is due for a checkup,” she said. “Think you could swing by my place tomorrow morning?”
Waliyha grinned. “Sure thing. I would offer you the friends and family discount but…”
“Ew. I’d sooner gouge my eyes out than be your friend. Then, at least, I wouldn’t have to see your ugly mug.”
Hunter groaned loudly. “Didn’t I just tell you two to drop it?”
Piyumi looked down at Hunter curiously. While he was vocal about his disdain for the attention Waliyha and Piyumi’s good-natured bickering brought, he normally wasn’t this sullen about it. Not to the extent he would bury his head into the counter for an entire conversation’s worth, anyway.
Waliyha, however, gave him a knowing look. “Uni’s been kicking your ass, huh?”
Hunter finally lifted his head. It was then Piyumi noticed the dark bags hanging from his green eyes in two splotchy crescents. “Now that’s the understatement of the year,” he grumbled. “Between the store, assignments, lectures and tutes, I’m purely running on caffeine at this point. Who knew a business degree could be so demanding?”
“You’re telling me,” Waliyha sighed. “Don’t get me wrong, interning at the Office of Public Prosecutions is great but it’s completely upended my work-life balance. It’s like I’m drowning and everytime I think I’ve finally swum to the surface, someone in a boat comes by to dump even more water on me and I’m sinking again. Just the other day, I got chewed out by the boss for losing my pass to the police centre. And I was on such a roll too!”
Waliyha then turned to Piyumi.
Uh oh.
“But…” she said pointedly. “I’m happy to go through all this, because it’s what I have to do to get where I want to be — to make my dreams come true. You understand what I’m saying, right Piyumi?”
God damn it.
“Sure thing!” Piyumi said cheerily, pushing down the urge to bodily vault over the counter and run out the door, She pointed up towards the television set instead. “Hey, isn’t that Valentine Vortex doing an interview? Did you hear about the new phone Vortex Corp’s gonna be putting out next month? Everyone is going crazy for it online.”
Waliyha narrowed her eyes. “Don’t change the subject. It’s been a year and Hunter was kind enough to give you a job here until you got back on your feet, but I think it’s time. Hunter and I, we…we...”
She faltered, but Hunter gave her a reassuring look before reaching over and clasped one of Piyumi’s hands with his own. He gave it a squeeze. “We love you, but we’re worried.”
“Woah, a coordinated attack,” Piyumi joked to alleviate the heavy mood that had suddenly set in. “Where was this energy when that idiot customer was in here, Hunter?”
“Piyumi-”
“Look, I...I just need a little more time, okay,” Piyumi sighed, shrugging off Hunter’s hand. “Give me another six months, tops. I promise.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw her two friends give each other a glance, a silent conversation passing between their eyes. Damn, maybe this ambush really had been premeditated.
“Okay. Six months,” Waliyha acquiesced after a long moment. She crossed her arms. “But mark my words, I’m going to hold you to this verbal contract you’ve entered into, Piyumi-”
A sudden ping interrupted Waliyha’s words. Piyumi snatched up her phone from the counter and took a quick glance at the notification that had popped up on the screen.
Finally.
“Hey guys, I have to go,” she said, already in the process of retrieving her purse and motorbike helmet from underneath the counter. “Hunter, you’re good to lock up, yeah?”
“Uh, sure?”
“Hey, I stopped by to ask if you two wanted to have a late dinner together!” Waliyha cried. “Where on Earth do you possibly need to be at this hour?!”
Piyumi made no move to stop. She fished her keys out of her coat pocket and gave her friend a placating smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Waliyha? For Morrell’s checkup?”
“I guess, but-“
But Piyumi was already out the door.
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