This continues the story of Lady Death. Find Part 1 here, although I have plans for significant rewrites. There’s also a ridiculously long Part 2 here that introduces two new characters, but you can get the gist on who they are below without reading the second part. Which…probably says more than I’d prefer about part two.
“When I called you Lady Death, I did not anticipate I would be your first victim.” The words were a harsh growl from under a coarse, woven hood. The mottled fabric blended well against the local stone. Charlotte started. She hadn’t seen the figure waiting for her in the tunnel.
The spaceport bazaar had an eclectic mix of native and foreign items, including its construction. Charlotte had found it bewildering at first, but had come to enjoy finding pieces of home over the past week as familiar points of reference in a sea of change. Kallina had sent her out to get the marketing each day, shooing her down the ramp and into the unknown with a few coins and a small bag.
“Best form of acculturation is to plunge right in,” the older woman had said with a smile. Charlotte had taken the warren’s maze of impromptu tents and fluctuating performers as a challenge. Now, she wondered whether he had done the same.
This tunnel was seldom traversed, a spot of breathing room for a young woman unused to the press of crowds, and cool in the summer heat. It was the perfect spot for someone to catch her alone, and Butler had already tried once to drag her away from the spaceport’s sanctuary and back to her family.
Her jaw tightened at the lesson to be more aware of her surroundings. Perhaps she would survive to implement it in the future. His presence could not bode well for her future.
Charlotte backed away from Butler until her shoulders met an unyielding barrier. “You left a week ago. The spaceport guards are looking for you.”
“Are they?” Butler smiled, and took a step forward. His teeth shone whitely against olive skin, barred in a predatory smile.
She swallowed and flattened a hand against the bumpy wall, her heart racing. Shaky, newfound confidence steadily flowed away, seeping into the cold stone behind her.
“Perhaps I should introduce myself to these guards, so they might have an idea of where to start looking.” His voice drawled with slow contempt. Butler took another step forward, his black leather boot kicking up a puff of pale dust.
She shrank her shoulders toward her chest but kept her back stiff against the bazaar wall. Rough stone snagged on her unfamiliar garb and scraped her back where the short top ended too soon. Charlotte was acutely aware of how much skin she had on display, and much a slattern she must appear to Butler. She held her chin high. “I won’t go with you.”
His face lost its cocky smile. He ran a hand over his face, and even in the tunnel’s dim light, she could see it was covered in bruises, cuts, and flecks of dried blood. Peering closer under the hood, Charlotte could see inky shadows under his eyes.
She wrinkled her forehead. “What in cowpoxia happened to you?” The question blurted out before she could stop herself.
His arm snapped out, carved leather gauntlets stiff against her bare forearm. His grip was iron on her wrist.
“You owe me, Lady Charlotte.”
Swallowing hard, she jutted her chin up farther and met his malted whiskey eyes. “I go by Charlie now.”
He snorted and released her arm with a push. “Whatever you want to call yourself, redheaded witch. You still owe me.”
She rubbed her wrist, frowning at the red marks he’d left behind. The busker’s steady plinking from the end of the tunnel was no longer enough to make the day feel light and carefree. Charlotte turned to head for the spaceport crowd, seeking safety. She caught her footing as she tried to stop without smashing into the looming Butler now blocking her path.
“I owe you nothing.” Her words were cold and haughty. It was the best imitation of her mother that she could muster, the one she and her sisters used to emulate in hushed whispers, before breaking into giggles with ever more dramatic imitations.
Butler snorted again. “Do you not recall the man I saved you from in the library?”
“You did your job,” Charlotte snapped. She resisted the urge to stomp her foot for emphasis, false calm already gone.
He barred his teeth at her and pulled back the hood with a snarl. Her eyes widened at the sight of a jagged rope burn around his neck, vivid crimson.
Charlotte covered her open mouth with both hands, the market bag Kallina had given her rough against her lips. Her eyes tracked a trail of dried blood from a cut above his ear that had trickled down to run under his linen shirt collar. “They tried to kill you.”
Butler clenched a hand on his sword hilt. “Your powers of observation are exceptional.”
An animated couple passed between them, the woman of the pair covered in a filmy material Charlotte had never seen before. It rustled as she passed, the swish almost hidden by their boisterous conversation. Charlotte used the moment to back away from Butler, her head swimming with confusion.
He slumped against the wall, his free hand rubbing his jaw where a purpled bruise hid under dark stubble. “The Families say I deserve it. They already convened and passed judgment. Everyone was already there for the trial, except me.”
“But you did your job. You protected me.” Charlotte shook her head several times, still unable to comprehend how Butler had earned punishment.
“And you’re the witness I couldn’t retrieve,” Butler said. “The biased witness.”
She straightened her spine and lifted her chin again at his words. She could feel her face flush with embarrassment. “I was not dishonored.”
“It does not matter. I headed back afoot to admit my failure. Your own father pronounced my sentence from horseback and rode off while I yet fought for my life.”
“A road ambush? As if you were some landless bandit?” She winced as her voice ended on a high squeak.
Butler shrugged, the fabric of his cloak rippling as he moved. “I was better off fighting my way out of an ambush than in the great hall with the whole court surrounding me. Besides, I’d won my position easily.”
She started to reach out, and clenched her fist around her empty marketing bag before her hand could do more than twitch. Her fingers spasmed as she crushed the cloth. This man had saved her, yes, but had also tried to kidnap her. He did not deserve her sympathy for how her family had treated him.
“I said you’d be the death of some poor man, and you nearly were.”
Charlotte felt trapped. Butler had been outcast because she’d wandered alone into a place she shouldn’t, and had run away rather than returning. By the rules of the society she knew, his desperate situation was indeed entirely her fault.
She firmed her jaw again, tension shooting down her neck. “I am no longer the Lady Charlotte Merikh. I cannot help your situation even if I come back with you. And I will not return, to be shunned, shackled, or murdered as an example of what not to do.”
“Good girl, Charlie,” a voice said from behind her. “Well said. So, Butler. What, exactly, do you want with my ward?” Kallina held her white and black blaster in a steady hand as she moved, and beckoned Charlotte to move back up the tunnel toward her with the other. Kallina stopped several yards away from Butler.
“Corporal Bleuvins is on her way,” she told Charlotte without looking at her. “The couple that passed you let me know you might be in trouble.”
Relief ran through Charlotte’s chest in a wave. She hurried toward Kallina, careful to keep to the side of the tunnel.
“He’s desperate,” she told her guardian.
The Wyvern’s pilot pressed her lips together in a thin, crimson line. “Desperate men are unpredictable. Remember that, Charlie.”
“It’s my fault,” she said in a whisper as she crept to a stop beside the woman. She got the sense that Kallina would have rolled her eyes at the words, had she been less disciplined.
“That’s this planet talking, Lady Charlotte, not the Charlie I’m starting to see peeking out. Charlie has a personality.”
Charlotte bit her lip and breathed in, unsure how to respond but feeling as if she’d not breathed deeply in days. The scent of orange blossoms from Kallina’s perfume imbued a false sense of calm, she knew.
Butler still stood, quiet and open-palmed, at the end of the tunnel. “I didn’t have to let her go. I could have taken her as I saw you approach.”
The pilot flushed and raised her voice. “I asked you what you want, Butler.”
“I want the sanctuary of legend,” the man said. Leather creaked as he took a step forward.
Kallina stood frozen, her blaster still aimed at him. Long seconds passed, the clangs and shouts of the bazaar a jovial background that contrasted with the tension Charlotte could feel in her stomach.
“Sanctuary is sacred here, Butler,” Kallina said in a shaky voice. Her grip tightened on the blaster until her knuckles were white. “It comes with obligations on both sides. Do you understand?”
“No,” he said. “No one’s told me what it entails. I found nothing in forbidden books, other than it exists. Will swearing no harm to you and your ward until I learn the obligations suffice?”
She lowered the blaster and pressed a button. A faint buzzing Charlotte hadn’t consciously heard ceased, and with the stillness came tension escaping both her gut and the tunnel.
Kallina holstered her weapon in the sheath attached to her thigh. “I accept your claim to sanctuary.”
Butler nodded a single time at her, his dark hair askew, and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Thank you, Lady Pilot.”
She blew out a breath and gave him a look Charlotte was coming to know well. Every time Kallina warned her from her own personally hard-earned lessons, in fact. “Yeah, well. Come with me, kid. You look like you haven’t fed in days.”
Charlotte followed both of them, uncertain whether she was pleased or disappointed. The already warm late morning sun made her shiver as she passed out of the tunnel. A grizzled, toothless vendor laughed at her reaction, and she scrambled to bump her way through the crowd.
Corporal Bleuvins had joined the group by the time Charlotte caught up. “I hear he’s on our side now,” the petite woman said. She adjusted her hat, held up by blonde braids. “I wonder if he’ll be able to adapt.”
Charlotte coughed and bit her tongue rather than responding. The scent of grilled meat marinated in yogurt and herbs caught her attention, and her mouth watered. The red-faced woman running the grill pit turned skewers with an expert hand, while her daughters took orders from the noontime rush. Their father lurked in the background, slapping dough against a hot oven wall and regularly grunting his displeasure when the girls flirted too long with customers.
They joined the line and sat with their food several minutes later. Butler devoured his before the rest were half finished, and Kallina shoved a large square of flaky, nut-filled pastry at him. Honey oozed out onto the square of paper it rested upon.
Charlotte nearly choked on her meat skewer at his moan of pleasure. He licked his fingers clear of the stickiness and let out a sign. “I’ve not tasted anything like that since I was a child.”
Her cheeks bulged with food, but he caught the wordless noise she made in her throat.
Butler grinned at her disbelief. “It was considered weak for the household guards to indulge.”
“You’re young for your position,” Kallina said. She frowned at him and ripped off a piece of bread. Dipping it in yogurt sauce, she continued to stare at him. “You were a full Butler? Defeated your predecessor in combat?”
“Aye,” Butler said. “And my probable successor is dead upon the road where he attacked me, hidden behind the bush like a bandit himself.”
“Huh,” she said, and shoved the bread into her mouth. A few moments later, Kallina propped her head on one hand, her elbow on the rickety wooden table provided for shop patrons. “What were you called as a child?”
His face went still. “My name is Butler now.”
Corporal Bleuvins leaned forward. “It can still be your name. Most people have two names. Mine’s Elise.”
Butler’s mouth twisted as he studied the women. Charlotte thought he looked uncomfortable under their direct gazes. Glancing down at his hands, he muttered a single word. “Max.”
“Well, then, Max Butler, I welcome you to the spaceport and accept your claim of sanctuary.” Corporal Bleuvins extended a hand over the table. He jolted backward before tentatively reaching out with his own.
Women simply did not touch strange men here. Charlotte made a note to practice later, so she wouldn’t show her own reaction when it came time for her own handshake.
The group threw away their discards in a nearby bin. Corporal Bleuvins kept up a steady inconsequential chatter with Max as Kallina and Charlotte trailed them through the spaceport.
“What is that?” Max Butler asked. He stared at an enormous spacecraft with sleek lines and odd pods. They reminded Charlotte of the blaster, and she felt an odd tingling energy, just as she had in the tunnel.
“That’s The Writing Desk,” Corporal Bleuvins answered. “Raven class Army fighting ship. They’re here to refuel and recruit. You interested? They don’t get many from this planet.”
“I know nothing but fighting,” Max said. “But I’m aware I know very little of this world.”
He gestured to the electric lights and smooth-walled buildings, foreign to eyes born on this planet. Charlotte found herself studying the landscape again and nodding. Even the acrid scent of spaceship fuel remained alien to a nose used to horses and farmland.
“Other than the books in the forbidden section of the library that I wasn’t supposed to read. And those were antiques from the colony founding.”
“Might find a bond with the ship’s captain if you want to have a chat,” the corporal said, and pushed her hat back again. “He named the ship after some ancient author.”
“Bit of an odd duck, that one,” Kallina chimed in with a laugh. “Whipsmart, of course.”
“Army’s always looking for good men,” Bleuvins said. She looked back at Charlotte for a moment, blue eyes locked onto green. “And women, come to that.”
***
Leigh Kimmel challenged me in this week’s Odd Prompts. “In Alice in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter asks “How is a raven like a writing desk?” Meanwhile, Edgar Allan Poe is writing “The Raven,” with its famous line “Quoth the raven, Nevermore.””
My prompt went to Anne and Jim. “The essence of noir: A man with a slouched fedora and hands shoved in overcoat pockets walks down a road, aware he’s being followed. Streetlights flicker into darkness as he walks by.“
