Gods Bound By Rules

Emily Kaldwin, Empress of the Isles, sole sovereign of Gristol, looked out on a world that was not her kingdom, and held her chin high.

The space was familiar; the air was still as if there was no air at all for a breeze to stir, and the land that stretched out before her existed only in islands set apart by empty space. What little water there was flowed upwards from terrace to terrace. There was no horizon to fix her eyes on, and unless she picked a point to focus on, she felt at risk of falling into the vast Void.

Her gaze danced over the floating leviathan and the perfect replica of the new Chamber of Commerce building completed only six months before. She looked past the awe-inspiring view of her palace's ballroom as seen from above the ceiling. Her gaze wandered from point to point until it fixed on one unmoving flare of white.

The old gazebo.

Her breath caught in her throat, and she took a step forward, heels tapping dully in the vast emptiness.

The sound made her look down, and she frowned. Instead of the long trousers she had worn for the last five years, she was wearing the knee breeches and stockings of a child. And her shoes, while they were fitted for an adult, were the same black low-heeled top-buckled shoes she had worn as a little girl.

Her jacket, too, was a mass of frills and hardly suited to an empress in her ascendency. She plucked at the ruffles pinned at the neckline of her shirt, then reached up and felt at the headband and bow atop her hair.

Her fingers curled around it and she tore it from her head, flinging it out into the nothingness beyond where she stood.

It never fell.

She turned around, slowly. In every direction there was only a sort of static chaos that plucked at every nerve in her body. What had once been the numb acceptance of a dream gave way to a deep knowing, and as she came back around to face the gazebo, she knew what she would find.

Her mother's figure was dark against the sky that wasn't sky. Emily glanced to the side and found a bridge to another floating chunk of world and edifice, and she took off at a brisk walk.

This is only the Void, she thought to herself as she moved, stepping hard to make her footsteps crack against the silence. Corvo has been here before. I have been here before.

Ten years ago, in a tower by the mouth of the Wrenhaven, she had tossed and turned in a borrowed bed and dreamed of a dark eyed man and a place of floating ruin. She had been here before.

Before, she had cried. She had screamed. She had curled into a ball and begged to wake up.

Now, she set her shoulders and walked as an empress had to, then ran as an angry woman must. There was no bridge to the next platform, but there were floating stones. She leapt, and made the first. Jumped, and made the second. If this was the Void, and the Void presented her mother to her, she would go see what it had to offer - and then she would dash it all to pieces and return to the waking world, and move on, as Corvo never had.

Her feet pounded on the patterned stone that led to the Natural Academy's main building. She ran past the frozen figures of Sokolov and Piero, ignoring how young they looked. She stumbled down an incline on a ramp of broken masonry, and flashed by Geoff Curnow, Corvo's closest companion, staring out at the ocean on the day that Corvo had left them all for two months without warning. She left the memory of Callista introducing her to her first appropriatetutor behind her, and never looked back.

The road narrowed and fell away until it was just the barest edge of a pier, and she tottered on the edge a moment. Far below and far away was the piece of ground that held the gazebo along with the shadowed form of her mother. It was too far to jump.

But she had to try.

She took a few steps back, then ran headlong to the edge and, trusting that it was all only a dream, she leapt.

The crumbling edge of the platform was just out of reach. Her fingers only grasped at empty air, and she fell, plummeted down into the swirling nothingness. Her mouth opened in a scream, and she waited for the not-impact, the waking, the jerk of her body as she startled to consciousness in her own bed.

It never came.

She fell, and fell, and fell, and when her screams ran out she looked down and found herself falling not into emptiness or towards a great black pit, but towards the gazebo. She spread her arms and tried to turn away. She was going too fast, far too fast, and-

Her shoulder hit the cupola of the gazebo, and it sent her tumbling over and over again until she landed on her side on the ground, rolling a few turns before, finally, stopping.

She felt only a dull ache of pain.

As she curled up on herself, as much out of instinct as reaction, and closed her eyes against the throbbing in her body, a part of her waited for her mother's footsteps. She was so close. Jessamine would come and scoop her up into her arms, and stroke her hair, and smile at her. She waited for the faint honey scent of her mother's perfume to envelop her.

There was only the slightest tang of salt and seaweed on the air. She sagged against the ground, then opened her eyes and rolled onto her back.

There was a single bird in the air, a swan, and she thought (not for the first time) that when they were out of the water, they were imposing things, long-necked and great-bodied with broad white wings. She watched it hang motionless above her.

And then she remembered that she was not a little girl at all, and she made herself stand. She dusted off her white clothing, and she walked with all her grace and poise to the gazebo, climbing up the few steps that had been transported with its image. The figure of Jessamine Kaldwin stood only a few feet from her, back turned to her.

Mother caught behind her teeth. She swallowed the pitiful cry down.

"Emily Kaldwin."

The voice came behind her, and wrapped around her like a living thing. Sheknew the voice, as well as she knew the floating island tableaus around her. Her first impulse was to whirl on her heel.

Instead, she turned only her head, glancing over her shoulder at the being that hovered a few inches off the ground, a few inches over the edge of the platform. It looked like a man, except for the dark pools of its eyes. It sounded like a man. It watched her like a thing, head canted in curiosity, expression not quite right.

"Oh," Emily said. "You're here."

With all the strength she had, she turned to face her mother's still form again. I have nothing to fear from you.

Except that Corvo wasn't there. The new Lady Protector she was still only testing, a young woman named Kareen who came from Tyvia and wore furs and heavy wool even during the dry, warm months, wouldn't have been able to draw her sword in time, had she been here at all.

"You remember me." There was the light tap of shoes touching down on stone. It had deigned to join her on the earth, it seemed, or at least on the semblance of it that it had created. If it had created this place at all. "I wasn't sure if you would."

"It would be hard not to. Corvo still wears your Mark, after all." She didn't turn her head.

"It's been a long time since we've spoken, you must admit," the Outsider said, just in her ear. She stiffened and lifted her chin a fraction of an inch, lips set in a hard, imperious line. Any sensation here, it had likely created in her. It tugged on the fascination with its world and power that had lurked inside of her since she was a grief-stricken little girl, longing to be closer to the only person she had left in the world, longing for revenge and power and control. It spooled it out from her and wrapped it like a net around her throat and head and heart, and squeezed there, seeking to entice her, to trap her.

She was no Abbey fanatic, but she knew better than to let the Outsider sink its hooks and claws and teeth into her.

"I assumed I'd disappointed you," Emily said. "Corvo says that's why you stop talking to people."

It chuckled in her ear. "Sometimes. Sometimes, though, time simply needs to pass. You should understand now. A bottle of Tyvian red, fresh or aged? Which is served at your table?"

"Whichever I command," she said.

She felt lips brushing the shell of her ear, curling and stretching wide. She took a single step forward, enough to break the contact.

"You used to scream and cry when I would speak to you. What's changed?" it asked, tone pure curiosity.

Slowly, she turned on her heal, arms crossed loosely in front of her. "Time."

"You would bang your hands against any surface within reach, and beg to wake up."

"I was a child, then. And dressing me in children's clothing doesn't make me age backwards."

"I didn't dress you," the Outsider said, and with a slight movement of its heel, it hovered again, lazily in the air. "You did."

That was what finally made her heart tremble and her blood run cold. She looked down again at the lace and frills and the hems of her knickers, and she willed them to be her Empress's clothing.

Nothing changed.

"I don't believe you," she said, looking up again and scowling.

"It's not a matter of belief," it said, head tilting to the other side. "Something has changed inside of you, Emily Kaldwin, and I want you to try to name it. Describe it to me. What do you see when you look into the mirror?"

"I am an Empress," she said. "I am the Empress."

It waited a moment, then shrugged. "True statements. But you of all people should understand that Empresses are not infallible, and do not live forever." It leaned forward. "Is that all?"

"I am Emily Kaldwin," she said.

The Outsider regarded her for only a moment more, and then turned away. It began to fade into nothingness.

A pang of need shot through her. She stepped forward. "Wait."

"I wait for no man. No woman. No Empress," the Outsider said. Its legs were nothing but a faint wisp now.

"I said wait!" she cried, and her voice broke.

The Outsider solidified from the waist up.

"Did you bring me here to offer me your Mark?" she asked, and her voice dropped to a bare whisper. "Like Corvo?"

"That depends. Do you think I find you interesting, Emily Kaldwin, Empress of the Isles?" it asked. "And do you want that burden? Corvo doesn't bear it well these days."

"I know," she said.

"What do you think, Emily?"

She took a deep breath. "I do want it. And I'll make myself interesting, if I have to," she said.

The Outsider looked over its shoulder, and it was hard not to think of it as a strange and twisted man, and not a being of the Void. "Do try," he said.

She shot awake, gasping for breath in her bed high in Dunwall Tower.

Her hand was bare.

When she was still a child on her mother's throne, Emily had only known how to play at games of state. Her legs had dangled above the floor and she had kicked them when she was bored, had huffed and fallen back in her seat, and called sessions to a close because she was struck by sudden urges to climb or run or simply to be left alone. And she had brought an empire back from the brink of ruin. Corvo had helped, yes, as had Geoff Curnow and Miss Callista, and several other rich men and men of good breeding, their faces and names and backgrounds vetted carefully by her protectors. But it had been her. The force of her. The icon of her.

Now she rarely moved while she sat on her throne. Her feet touched the floor. She sat through hours after hours of audiences and meetings, and she understood the geography of Morley and the political nuances of every rumbling of rebellion.

She ruled by the power of herself, and the image of herself. The others fell away into the background. She called for executions, when they were necessary. She brokered the slow but inexorable reclaiming of all the Empire's influence that had been lost with the plague. Serkonos sent her olive oil and sparkling wine and precious corals and pearls. Tyvia sent coal, discovered in its frigid mountains, to supplement the fluctuating supply of whale oil. And even Morley sent more than its apples and its dignitaries and its freedom fighters. It sent good lumber and good stone, and tricks at fishing and whaling that increased Gristol's caches with every season.

She was a good empress.

That Corvo and Kareen had thwarted in ten years more than double the attempts made on her mother in her entire life meant little. It meant only that she had come to power in a troubled age.

What she wouldn't give to be able to go directly to the office of the High Overseer and slam the fool's head into his great marble pillars, if only it would make him understand that his place was not to stand in her way. What she wouldn't give to be able to fly to Morley in a night and land in the center of a room where rebels planned their next acts. What she wouldn't give to be able to do all these things herself instead of relying on the aid of others.

Her thoughts turned to her dream. She turned her pale, unblemished hand over, flexed her fingers.

"There's word of some of the nobles forming a voting bloc," Kareen said as she slipped into the small resting chamber, closing the door behind her. She was an imposing woman - tall, with dirty blonde hair scraped back from her temples, coiled tightly at the crown of her head and weaving in braids to the nape. Her accent was more obvious than Corvo's Serkonan lilt had ever been. She was older than Emily by several years, and had clung more fiercely to her sense of self than any Protector Emily had ever heard of or read about.

Emily liked that. It meant she was easy to read.

"Let them," Emily said, settling her hands on the arms of her chair. "They're fools. They'll eat each other before they pull off whatever they're attempting."

"They seek to limit the power of your throne."

"And where did you hear this from?" Emily asked, levering herself out of her chair. Her hair, bobbed sharply at her jawline, tickled at her cheek. She pushed it back, frustrated. "An anonymous source?"

"A worried citizen," Kareen said, leaning against the door with her arms crossed over her chest.

Emily scowled. "They still won't manage it. Especially if their servants are overhearing it and bringing it to my attention. What can we do?"

"Nothing, yet," Kareen said. "Except keep tabs on what's going on. Perhaps once we know all the players, we can funnel money to the right places to make them fight amongst themselves, like starving dogs."

As she began to pace, Emily crossed her arms over her chest. She liked the sound of her heels clicking against the marble floor. It sounded authoritative. Itwas authoritative. "And shore up their opponents who are loyal," she added to Kareen's suggestion. "But what I wouldn't give- Kareen."

"… Yes, your majesty?" She was wary. She would likely argue, or maybe just give her a stern look, then contemplate going to Corvo. She wouldn't, though. She'd obey.

Emily turned smoothly on her heel, clasping her hands behind her. "Kareen, I would like you to send a message to this suspected voting bloc."

Kareen stared back at her levelly. "Is this message to be left up to my discretion, your majesty?"

Your majesty never came out unless she disapproved. Emily straightened up a fraction of an inch.

"No," Emily said. "Though the manner in which you deliver it may be informed by your understanding of the situation - as long as it is delivered." A strong message would have been to kill the leader of the bloc, and take him apart, piece by piece. But Kareen was not a killer except by necessity. She wasn't Corvo. And Corvo- wouldn't have done the deed even five years ago, when he was still fully lucid, unless he felt he had come up with the idea himself.

So they needed a symbolic version.

"The message," she said, with an upward tilt of her chin, "is that an alliancewill be broken. Let it be subtle, but unmistakable."

"Should I associate it with the crown in any way?"

"Are you asking if you should paint on their bedroom door a picture of a swan tearing a hagfish to pieces?" Emily asked, smiling.

"I should think a ship at sea would be more appropriate," the Lady Protector said, tersely. "An association of people with a common goal."

"With their ship broken on an island or torn apart by a leviathan," Emily said. "Let it be done, then."

For a moment, the Tyvian's expression darkened, and then she sighed, shaking her head. "Of course. Within the fortnight, at the best opportunity. Are you ready to return to court, Emily?"

Emily inclined her head in acceptance. Kareen stepped to the side and pushed open the door, and Emily went to sit before her adoring public.

"Your mother would have never done something so foolish," Corvo growled, throwing the report down on the large meeting table that was far too big for the both of them. He covered his face with his trembling hands. They were large, calloused, and one bore the blazing mark of the Outsider. In private, he took off his gloves; there were no secrets between them.

She fixed on the lines of it.

Kareen had been more discreet than Emily would have chosen, but apparently it hadn't been discreet enough. That day in parliament several nobles - some of whom hadn't been named as part of the conspiracy, but clearly had to be - had stood up and called for an end to the intimidation tactics of the Empress. They had held up a simple pamphlet, a column of which contained a finely engraved image of a whaling ship cracked open by one of the tentacled creatures that were so far removed from the usual leviathans that Sokolov had not yet invented a way to drain precious oil from them.

She had asked what, exactly, they were talking about.

And then it had come out: that they knew she had her spies, and that they had explicitly fed those spies rumors of a voting bloc. That the group had never existed, except as an alliance of like-minded nobles disturbed by her intelligence practices.

She had called them paranoid, and had dismissed them all. Then the shouting had started. Somebody - Brisby, she thought - had had the audacity to demand the doors be barred until a satisfactory conclusion could be reached.

Kareen and the guard had escorted every member of Parliament out of the meeting house, using barely-constrained force.

Now Corvo looked drawn and harried, and Emily could only feel two things: rage that he would chastise her with memories of her mother, and a deep want for the mark on his hand. If she had such a mark, she could settle these matters herself. She could be strong. Silent. Untouchable.

"No," she said, slowly. "No, my mother trusted Hiram Burrows to do this sort of work for her, and nine times out of ten he simply acted, never clearing it with her. Isn't that right?"

Corvo flinched, sinking further into his chair. His eyes were sunken, the skin around them paper-thin and deeply shadowed. His hair was lank. His lips were thin and dry and stained faintly blue from regular drinks of Piero's remedies. He was not the man who had served her mother, or had put her on the throne.

But he was still Corvo. She sighed, anger ebbing.

"You're right," he said, softly.

"It was foolish," she conceded, sitting on the edge of the table. A few years ago, she would have swung her legs and kicked her feet. Now, she sat elegantly, crossing one leg over the other. It came naturally. "I shouldn't have sent Kareen out with so little information."

Corvo was silent.

She watched him. Geoff Curnow often visited him, when he had a break from running the entire City Watch. Sometimes she wondered if Corvo's attachment to Curnow and his fondness for and dedication to her were the only things keeping him from going back out to sea and never returning. Once, early on, he'd been gone for three nights. There had been rumors of flashes ofsomething on the rooftops, and then there had come a terrible storm. Corvo had stumbled in after the rains had slowed, bleeding and disoriented. He'd only been able to stroke at the mark on his hand, and mumble something about adrenaline, about weightlessness, about speed. He spent long hours alone, now, and was often asleep. He drank remedies like water. He only remembered to hide his mark half the time.

"Corvo?" she asked, leaning forward.

He looked up, his eyes hooded and heavy.

"Corvo, do you know why… it happened?"

"Because they fear you," he said, quietly.

She shook her head. "No, not that- your hand. Back then. Do you know why you were chosen?"

His hand flexed, clenched. He looked instinctively at his mark, and for a moment Emily thought she saw it pulse. "Because I needed it."

"Did you- ask for it?"

He hesitated, then shook his head. "No. Without it, I had nothing. With it, I have- everything. I had no choices, and he gave me some."

The Outsider. Her thoughts drifted back to the frozen gazebo.

"I never asked for it, but I needed it. He came to me and… but that's- a long time ago, now."

"Do you still see him?" she asked, standing up and moving over to his seat. She settled her hands carefully on his shoulders, and he seemed to sag more under her touch. She kneaded at his tense muscles all the same, leaning down to peer at him.

"… Rarely," Corvo said. "Almost never. I stopped wanting to a long time ago."

Emily's gaze went to his mark again, the lines stark and slightly raised. He delighted in the powers it gave him. But he had stopped wanting it? It didn't make any sense to her. He revelled in the strength he still had, but wanted it to go away?

No. He was confused. Corvo was confused so often. She gave his shoulders a squeeze.

"Do you want me to see if Geoff's around?" she asked.

"He's not," Corvo said. "He's with Callista. She just got back yesterday, so they're having dinner."

Callista had been in Serkonos for the last two months, on business she hadn't explained but likely had to do with the three-year stint she'd had at the Academy early on. She'd needed a better education to teach an empress, and Emily had gleefully provided it. The Academy had better stories than her history books, she had been sure. But Callista had come back changed, and ever since Emily had graduated from needing or wanting tutors, and was old enough to send them away, the somber woman had been disappearing for various lengths of time, always to other islands, always away from Dunwall.

"Didn't Geoff invite you?" Emily asked, frowning.

"Yes," Corvo said. And that was all he said. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the back of the chair, and from the look of utter silence on his face, Emily knew he was finished for the night.

Emily worried at her lower lip.

When she was younger, it had been easier to know how to interact with Corvo. He was attentive, and he needed her love, and she had given it freely. Any demand she had made, he had met. They had been inseparable. But slowly, so slowly, she had pulled away from him and he - lonely or tired or afraid - had pulled away in turn, mirroring her.

So many things had changed since the days of the Loyalist Conspiracy. Being an empress was one thing. Being on the throne was another.

Carefully, she settled her hands on his upper arms and leaned in, pressing a kiss to the crown of his head and pressing her cheek to the spot she had marked. "I'm sorry, Corvo," she said, and tried not to feel like a small child once more. "I know it was foolish. I'll do better in the future. I know you just want me to be safe."

Beneath her hands, Corvo shuddered.

"But I want you to be safe, too. I want all of us to be safe. So I need to stay in power. You understand, right?"

Corvo said nothing.

She squeezed his arms in her little half-hug, and then she pressed another kiss to his scalp and straightened. She left him hunched and slumped at the table, and walked to the open window where Corvo had been standing when she arrived, looking out to the harbor.

Something pale glinted in the moonlight out on the ledge. She leaned forward, then hesitated. What if it was a trap? Something to lure her out so that some shadowed assassin could take a shot? She glanced over her shoulder to Corvo.

He was motionless.

Kareen was outside, waiting for her. She considered calling for her, and having her retrieve whatever was on the windowsill.

A surge of petulant courage flooded her, and she leaned out herself, quickly snatching up a few of the pale objects. They were jagged in her hand as she leaned back into the room, and her fingers could feel pores in the surface, tiny ones.

She drew them into the light. No assassin's arrow struck the window or the frame. She uncurled her fingers.

There, in her palm, were fragments of some large bone, with traces of black ink upon them. Her fingertips were coated in a fine pale dust. Carefully, she thumbed a few of the larger pieces over.

She knew the color, and one of the jagged angles of the lines painted on the piece.

It was a rune.

She carried the rune fragments back to her room, clenched in her delicate fist. They seemed to throb in time with her pulse - or, perhaps, to set a rhythm that her heart began to match. Once she had sent away her maids and shut the door, she pulled a small velvet bag from a jewelry box, and carefully, very carefully, shuffled the bits of bone into it.

Her skin felt chilled as she brushed the last of the dust from her palm. She ignored it in favor of cinching the pouch tight, and tucking it beneath her pillow.

That night, no dreams came.

She confiscated her first unbroken rune from a maid Kareen suspected was worshipping the Outsider. She gave the young woman (not much younger than she is) a choice: hand over her heretical belongings quietly and be allowed to disappear, or resist and have the full force of the Abbey brought to bear.

But the maid had only laughed and said she knew about the old Lord Protector, that she had been told by the Outsider, and that to bring the Abbey to Dunwall Tower would be the death of the regime.

Emily had looked at the open window behind the maid, and her arms and hands had itched to push her through it. Kareen drew a knife across the maid's throat before Emily could move. She looked like she was going for a knife, Kareen later said.

She'd been reaching for a rune in her pocket, old and polished with great wear.

That night, Emily removed the bundled up bits of broken rune from under her pillow and replaced it with the new one. It would be stronger, she was sure. It had whispered songs into her ear as she settled into bed.

But that night, no dreams came.

In the weeks that followed, it became an obsession. She had Kareen work with a cadre of carefully picked Overseers (not too zealous, receptive to promises of governmental favor, able to be misdirected by their own greed - all faint echoes of Teague Martin that she was happy to use and use and use) to comb the tower. The Overseers left with five runes and two bone charms. She kept three of each that they never saw.

She waited for the day when Corvo would appear in her room, and demand an explanation. She made sure they stayed well away from him and away from Geoff and away from Sokolov and all those she knew might faintly radiate the particular reverberation of the Outsider's interest, but it still should have frightened him.

Instead, Corvo didn't seem to notice. He came and went from the tower, and he sat in his room, and he looked out at the sea and at the gazebo. He did not flee or snap like a cornered dog. He simply waited, tired.

The situation in Parliament deteriorated. Alliances were made in full view of her, and she could do nothing but sit and watch. They'd disgraced her, and she was left with two options: Allow them to play out their little revolt, or crack down and risk a full-on coup. It was safer to watch. But it was agonizing.

They decried her in the streets. Her allies were put to the test and some, the ones who had bought with only money, left her side. The rest closed ranks. The Abbey began to murmur and shift, and she sat through many meetings in the High Overseer's office, discussing matters of stability and of the fractious, indulgent nature of the nobles, all the while carrying a bone charm in her pocket.

At night, she looked at her pale face in the mirror.

"This is a test," she told herself. "I didn't make such a great mistake. No, I am being tested." Her fingers curled tight around the prongs of a charm. "But I'mstrong. I'm the Empress."

She hoped the Outsider could hear her.

Finally, the storm began to ebb. She made no further missteps. In a month, two, they all began to forget once more. She smiled at court through gritted teeth, and she was cautious. Her ambitions were focused on hidden avenues, and so to all the world, she seemed like a child who had been chastised - and who had learned.

She built a small altar in the low cabinet tucked back beneath her bed, that had once held her child's things until she had thrown them all into the sea, and that the maids knew to never touch. She kept her runes and her charms there, along with the skulls of rats and bits of finely embroidered purple fabric. She put bits of gravel from near her mother's memorial there, too, and she laid on her stomach underneath her bedframe, and she stared at it all, and at the mirror she had placed in the back of the cabinet.

Her own face stared back at her.

And when three months had passed and the Fugue Feast came and went with nothing more than a few cases of arson in the smaller districts of her city, when the Outsider never once came to her or whispered in her dreams, when the thrum of the song of runes became only an irritating hum that reminded her of what she could not have-

She threw the cabinet into the sea, too.

The only thing she kept was the pouch of rune dust, and that she left for all to see on her bedside table.

She could always think of an excuse when the contents no longer mattered.

She woke up on the floor of a darkened room, facing a looming glass-panelled door. It stretched at least twenty feet to a high, unreachable ceiling, and as she watched, one of Curnow's guardsmen walked by, his jaw chiseled and his shoulders unbreakable. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

Soon, the man turned a corner, and was gone.

The hallway beyond the door looked familiar. It was close in form and decoration to her palace, and she squinted, trying to place the particular style of portico. She got her hands beneath her and stood up.

Her child's black shoes scraped on the polished floor. In front of her, the air shimmered and warped, and in the space that had just been empty there was a figure. The Outsider looked down at her and smiled its curious, faint smile.

She didn't have time to think finally before its lips parted and it said,

"Let's play a game of hide and seek."

She found herself backing up, slowly. The Void she was familiar with was static, never-changing, open-aired to a sky that had no air at all. Here she could make out the far-off sounds of footsteps and muffled conversations. The guard had walked by her door.

There was a ceiling above her, and all the colors were too rich, as opposed to being water-stained and washed out.

"That's a child's game," she breathed, eyes darting behind him to the glass door. Was there another guard, waiting? Would they defer to her? Or would it be like the days of the Conspiracy, where she had to stay hidden and very small, hemmed in on all sides?

"Those who have borne my Mark and who have not hidden have not lasted long," the Outsider said with a small chuckle. Its face was different from what she remembered, with softer, more feminine features. She saw echoes of her mother's face in the lines of its cheeks and jaw, and the faint trace of blue about its eyes. "Besides - you once made Corvo play this very game, again and again. Adults can play too."

It gestured to the hall behind it. "Come find me, Emily Kaldwin. I wonder if you can. Perhaps first we can level the playing field."

A sudden burning pain flared between the small bones of her hand, and her eyes went wide as she choked down the startled, pained scream rising in her throat. Her eyes watered as she stared at the Outsider.

The Outsider quirked a brow, and nodded to her hand.

"A gift."

She never looked away from the Outsider as she lifted her twitching, aching hand. The lines of her fingers remained blurred as her focus fixed on its quirked lips, but she could see half-started lines of black, aborted curves, unfinished figures.

"And if I find you?" she asked, panting for breath.

"Then maybe we'll talk again."

And with that, it disappeared, fracturing and fading into the empty space around it. Emily was alone.

She stared at her hand.

She could feel power throbbing and flaring in the incomplete Mark, and her throat felt thick and close. When she woke, she'd have half of what she needed. What had done it? The constant pleading? The threats? Her final petulant abandonment of her shrine? Had her failure made her interesting?

She curled her marked hand into a fist. Failure was only interesting when it was surprising. Constant failure would impress no creature, not even one born of chaos and fear and darkness.

Emily crept to the door, holding herself low by the fine carpet. As she neared the frame and glass, another guard, this time in the army's red, passed by. He didn't look at her. When he had passed a safe distance, she carefully edged open the door and stepped into the hallway.

She was on a corner, with halls stretching several hundred feet on either side of her. She could see doors on both sides of the hall, and roiling mist and fog halfway down the hall to her left. She could see, too, chandeliers and access doors up by the ceiling, too high for her to climb to.

Through one door, she could see a maid dressed in blue sorting silverware. She wanted to go to her, and ask if, perhaps, she'd seen anybody with pitch-black eyes. But as she took her first few steps, she heard footsteps behind her. She panicked. Like one of the Pandyssian gazelles whose heads adorned the walls of every nobleman's study, she bolted, turning right and sprinting down the hall.

She was no Empress. She was afraid and running, and it took every ounce of self-control to duck into a window alcove and draw the curtains over herself instead of simply running and running until she ran out of floor.

Her back hit the smooth, cold glass, and she sank down, body shaking. It was as if she could see Havelock coming towards her again, ready to grab her and take her from Corvo and all the others. It was the same old deadly fear. It was the fear of men appearing in flashes of shadow in the gazebo, of her mother's screams, of how she'd been grabbed and taken-

She looked to her marked hand.

I have power now, she reminded herself. Slowly, carefully curling her fingers over her thumb and squeezing, she focused until the brand began to flare in all the myriad colors she remembered. Strange sounds roared and whispered in her ears, and all around her, the world went grey. Her eyes flicked over what she could see. The curtain, the cracks in the floor, the worn edge of the carpet. The faintly glowing outline of a rat. The bright flare of a man's hulking body as whatever guard that had been behind her passed, unaware.

She uncurled her fingers. The glow faded

I have power now. She clenched her hand. The glow returned, and she thought about Corvo and the way he could disappear in a flash and reappear on the roof of a building. She slunk to the curtains and peered out from between them. Focusing on the chandelier above, she tried to will herself towards it, to pull the space around her until it was under her.

Something in her and around her shuddered and jittered, and for a moment she thought she could hear a rushing whir in her ears.

But then she only stumbled out into the hall, still on the ground, still at normal speed. She tripped and fell, and as she reached out her hands to catch herself, the world went back to its oversaturated hues. She coughed and retched, fingers digging into the pile of the carpet. It felt wrong, slightly off, and she quickly pushed herself up.

A shadow moved in the corner of her vision, and she turned, fast, to find one of the guards staring at her. His meaty face twisted and contorted, moving from placid human to raging beast and back again before she could truly see it, and then his gun was out, pointed at her.

She shrieked and ducked as a bullet flew over her head. And then she turned and ran, fast, towards the distant end of the hall. She wove back and forth, and clapped her hands over her ears against the shouts that went up as she passed, the alarms that began to blare. Her pulse thudded and hammered in her ears and her veins, and her feet beat against the ground.

She reached the end of the hall. It bent sharply to the right, and she followed it around, colliding hard with a woman wearing a mask and scraps of scarlet fabric over bruised, scratched limbs and tattooed flesh. Emily barely had time to mark her as one of the women from the Cat. She kept running.

I have to find somewhere to hide, she thought, frantically, but she could hear footsteps behind her still. They'd see her if she ducked away. She reached the next corner and took it, her breath burning in her lungs and clawing at her throat. Her feet ached, and as she ran her shoes seemed to constrict, curling her toes together and pinching her heels.

A passageway opened to her right, and she took it, ducking into a small bedroom. She closed the door behind her and turned quickly, looking for some way to climb up. Finding a bookshelf laden with tomes and trinkets, she scrabbled up the shelves until she could crouch just below the ceiling. A few quick, hunched steps took her over to a ledge, and climbing onto it, she reached for the small access door. She'd seen them before, mostly in the greater rooms of great homes, always near the ceiling and always against a wide ledge. She'd never asked what they were for. Cleaning, maybe? How else could they dust chandeliers?

Now, they were her only way out. The door below banged open, and she jerked the access door agape. It was a tight fit, but it let out into another room. Quickly, she peered over the edge of the ledge she crouched on. There was no normal door leading to where she'd come from. There was a stack of crates of fine Serkonan wine. She dropped down onto them and climbed down to the floor. Only then did she realize how hard she was breathing, and how much her head spun.

She didn't have time to think about it, or to rest. She frantically checked the room. She found a few vials of elixir, and several tartlets, along with dust and books that, when she opened them, were blank. No weapons. No sign of the Outsider. Maybe there was a shrine to the creature in one of these rooms. Maybe that was what she had to find.

Emily was climbing back up the crates to see if there was another access door she could reach when a door she hadn't seen - built into the wall so carefully as to be almost invisible - slid open, and a guardsman walked in, coughing and mumbling to himself. The words he spoke didn't make sense; they slid over her mind and then dripped off as if they weren't language at all. Emily twisted. Their eyes met. He lunged for her, and Emily dropped off the crates, landing in a crouch and launching herself forward to pass him.

They collided. He grabbed her around her narrow shoulders, and she screamed and kicked at his knees. She couldn't get leverage. His thick hand found her thin neck, and she thrashed, panicked at the sudden crush of pressure. Another second and she'd be dead. Another second and-

Her hand closed around the hilt of his duty sword, and in another second she had it unsheathed and buried in his side. His hand spasmed once, then released. She stumbled back, jerking the blade up and up into his barreled chest until it caught on bone. Blood sprayed onto her face, stained her clothing.

The guard's eyes went hollow. His body turned to ash at her feet.

Emily backed up until her calves hit the crates. Then, slowly, numbly, she clambered up them until she reached the top. She tucked herself into the shadows, arms around her knees. The sword she left at her side.

Her heart stammered in her chest, but soon its rhythm began to slow. She ignored the stench of blood on her. Ten years ago, she'd been a master at hiding; she could sit and slow her thoughts until she could wait, hidden, for upwards of an hour. Only Corvo ever found her. Only Corvo.

She blinked, languidly, as she clenched her hand and made the outside world slow to a crawl. It's only a dream, here, she told herself. I don't need to hide. And I'm supposed to be seeking. The Outsider was waiting for her - somewhere. Her Mark was incomplete. If the Outsider had given it to her wholly, she could have flitted along the chandeliers, searching for the creature's hiding place. She could have rooted it out without so much bloodshed.

But that only meant this was a test. An audition. Hide and seek. It had to be stationary, somewhere, if it was playing by the rules. If, then, she killed every guard, she could explore at leisure and find it. It would be a matter of thoroughness.

Or she could think.

She went over what she had seen. Guards and ladies in red and blue. Rats. A rolling fog entering into the hallway. Movement.

She needed a better look at things.

Slowly, she uncurled herself and climbed down to the ground once more. She stepped over the puddle of blood that was thickened in places by dark mounds of ash. The door opened easily at her touch, letting her out into the hall.

She needed the full pattern of black and power upon her hand; it was that simple. And she was no child to run and hide. She would take what was hers with cautious precision.

Keeping to the edges of the hall, she made her way towards doors unknown. Whenever she heard footsteps, she ducked into curtained alcoves or beneath tables, and she curled her hand into a fist and watched the yellow glows in the shapes of men until they had turned away from her. Her heart beat a rapid tattoo in her chest, but she found that once she knew the rhythm, she could use it to power her legs and breath. She peeked into open doorways and saw courtesans and servants, nobility and guardsmen. It was a tableau of her court, and she slipped through it all in clothes soaked with meaningless blood.

The man she had killed hadn't been a man; he'd been a construct of the Outsider.

There- roiling fog, like the mist she'd seen down the hallway she hadn't taken. Walking out of it she could see a woman who looked exactly like Thalia Timsh, down to the fiddly curls pinned on top of her head. Her face was blank, featureless. Suddenly, a construct of the Outsider didn't matter so much as an excuse. A scream built up in Emily's throat, but she swallowed it down and lifted her chin.

The blank face turned toward her before she could hide. The woman bowed, low, and Emily froze, staring back.

For as long as Emily watched, Thalia Timsh's likeness remained bowed at the waist. Carefully, Emily stepped forward. She longed for the sword that she had abandoned, and she imagined cleaving the woman's head from her shoulders. Corvo would not have hesitated. But bile rose in her throat and she abandoned the idea as foolish.

It could only bring the guards.

So instead, she approached the figure and edged around her. Thalia did not move. Emily stepped into the creeping tendrils of fog, and they froze her skin, dotting small crystals of ice along her shoes and stockings. She swallowed and peered into the white billowing clouds, and through them she could see shadowy figures moving. She could also hear sweet strains of music.

With one last glance at Thalia - who had moved somewhat, but bowed once more as Emily rested her gaze on the blank face - Emily stepped into the hidden party.

As she walked into the obliterating whiteness, it grew to a feverishly opaque blanket, then dropped away entirely. The remaining world was soft-edged and dreamlike, and dancers swirled around her. She moved through them, and they parted as waves for her. Their faces were all blank or covered with uneven masks, except for one.

Kareen waited at the other end of the small hall, an apricot pastry in one hand, her sword in the other. She was motionless, a statue, an edifice in honor of Emily's reign's vigilance.

Emily came close to her, and when Kareen did not move, she gave the Tyvian a small bow and a smaller quirk of her lips.

Kareen bowed in response, too-smoothly, like an over-oiled automaton.

Emily drew closer, sheltering by the familiar bulk of her Lady Protector, and she rose onto her toes - when had she grown so short? - and murmured, "Kareen, have you seen any sign of the Outsider?"

The music cut out sharply at the sound of her voice, and the dancers stopped. They turned their heads towards her as one.

Kareen held out her hands: the blade and the gift. She did not respond with words. Emily looked between her and the unmoving revellers.

Death she could wield; she had before, albeit always at a distance. And she had given gifts and feasts and parties, too. Those never seemed to accomplish a single thing. But a well-timed death-

But who could she kill, here? There were too many of them. She couldn't simply slash five throats and leave the rest as if nothing had happened; they would know.

She was frozen, staring at Kareen's offerings.

Perhaps, if she ate the tart, it would look as if she belonged. She reached for it, even as her stomach curdled the way it had in the weeks after her mother's death, refusing to admit sustenance or comfort. Her fingers curled around the flaky crust. She took it from Kareen's hand, and, watching the crowd, she put it to her lips. Her teeth bit into the syrupy sweetness of the apricot filling.

It tasted of nothing at the same time as it overwhelmed.

As she chewed, the revellers went back to their dances. The music picked up once more. Emily turned to Kareen again, to find the woman watching her, closely.

The mist behind her cleared. She stood in front of a door half-hidden by heavy purple fabric. Both her hands remained outstretched, and Emily felt her heart sink, crumbs clinging to her lips.

She had left Kareen with a sword with which to defend a hidden doorway.

Carefully, she returned the half-eaten pastry to Kareen's other hand, watching warily. Kareen canted her head, so like the Outsider's birdlike regard that Emily's head began to throb. She stepped away. A dancer bumped into her. Hand reached for her. The party sought to draw her in, into the pointless revels and the endless distractions and diversions.

Her hand clenched. But if I could kill half of them, and have them never know that it was me-

She launched herself forward, and snatched the blade from Kareen's hand. Without thinking, she drove it into the woman's stomach, and used the sword to lever her to the side. She grabbed at the knob. Behind her, there was shrieking, the music turning deafening and discordant. The door was unlocked; the latch turned, and she fell inward, dropping heavily against the wood as booted footsteps pounded towards her.

She fell into blackness. The door shut behind her.

"Emily Kaldwin," the Outsider said. She looked up, and saw nothing. "Would you really slaughter innocents to get to me? That is an old path to these places. It hardly impresses anymore. You are grasping and needy and spoiled. Is that interesting, or simply commonplace?"

She shook her head, covering her ears and clambering to her feet. She turned in place. There was no light, no way to make out where the voice was coming from.

"You are a girl who has lost her mother too young, and who has grasped at control ever since. You were taught to rule. You were taught to command. And when you were young, you were powerless. Men older and greater than you took away that power. But now that you have it again, you wield it like a spoiled child."

"I am the Empress," she cried.

"A child," the voice said, "that has been given the power to act on its desires.That is an Empress. That is your legacy."

"Let me change it, then!" she cried out. "You've already given me half! Please!"

"Do you think that begging will catch my interest, Emily?" it asked, softly in her ear. She jumped and spun, reaching out. There was nothing.

"Why did you give me half?" she asked, a desperate, breathy sob.

She received no answer.

She woke up to rain pounding on the windows of her tower.

They found Corvo half-dead at the end of a long alley after a day of searching. He was huddled between a stack of hagfish crates and one of the older city walls, blood leaking from a puncture that went clear through his belly. He was soaked through from the endless squalls plaguing Dunwall, and he barely stirred as the Watch dragged him into a waiting carriage.

Emily sat still and silent in his sickroom the rest of the night, waiting for him to wake.

She wore fine white kidskin gloves, the leather the only thing that was thick enough to hide the dark marks tracing over the sinews of her hands. When she'd woken that morning, the half-finished Mark had followed her. It flexed and distorted as she spread her fingers and clenched them into a fist, but no rush of power came from it. It was simply a damning tattoo.

What would happen when a maid helped her bathe? When her nails needed to be trimmed and filed? Her stomach twisted and curdled and she bowed her head against the pounding of the rain on the windows.

Geoff Curnow appeared shortly before dawn. He knocked lightly on the door, and nodded his head in deferential greeting to her.

"You should sleep," Geoff said, his own voice as hoarse as she imagined hers would be. "You can't halt court for this."

Emily said nothing, focused entirely on resisting the urge to draw her knees up to her chest.

"I'm sorry we didn't find him earlier," he added, and in those words was a sopping mass of self-hatred, of desperate frustration. Geoff had been the one to realize he'd been gone too long, and that the ships were all stuck in harbor, unable to leave for destinations unknown. Then the reports had begun - flashes of shadow across the rooftops, falling shingles that had nothing to do with the howling winds that would pick up seemingly at random, or the pelting rain, or the cracks of lightning.

Then the reports had stopped. Corvo had not come back. Geoff had gone from concerned to frantic, and Emily had only been able to cover her left hand and remind herself that the Outsider didn't interfere like this.

"I'm staying," Emily said. "Court will be halted if I say it will be halted." Her voice - surprising even her - was clear and soft and controlled. "Leave us."

Geoff scowled, but hid it after a brief moment, looking at Corvo's prone, grey-skinned form. "I want to see him. When he wakes up. I should have-"

He bit down a swear, and Emily turned away as he retreated into the hallway once more.

The doctors had come and gone three times now. They'd washed out his wound, they'd patched him where they could, they'd theorized as to what had made the disastrous puncture. It wasn't a blade, they'd determined. It had been perhaps pointed at the top, but not cleanly. The first bite had been jagged and excruciating, and then some kind of metal rod must have slid in the rest of the way, skewering him until he was able to remove it and stumble to where they'd found him.

The risk of infection was high. Organs had been punctured. There was a chance he'd never regain consciousness.

Emily put her head in her hands and fought the burning behind her eyes.

In the Cat, she had dreamed that her mother had lingered on. That doctors had been able to come and nurse her back to health. That somewhere, somehow, she was alive, or trying to be alive. But now, facing Corvo's uncertain future, she could taste those old dreams turning to acrid ash.

No, let it be quick, like removing bandages from scraped knees. But unlike in her dreams, she couldn't take a blade and end his life.

She remembered, very clearly, the bite of Kareen's sword into her stomach. Her left hand twitched and clawed at her face, and she shifted, giving in to impulse and drawing her legs up to her chest. She wrapped her arms around them and rested her chin on her knees.

Dawn came. She could hear the Tower stirring. Nurses came and checked on Corvo's bandages again, and rubbed honey into his gums; with the damage to his abdomen, food had to be withheld for as long as possible.

The nurses left. Emily remained, unmoving. She drifted, but every time she drew close to sleep, she jerked awake again, hand burning. The closest she ever came was when she curled up with her knees against the arm of the chair. Her eyelids sagged. Her thoughts grew fuzzy.

In his bed, Corvo groaned.

She was up again, and out of her chair, hovering close to the bed but afraid to draw nearer. She looked at the length of him, covered by a thin sheet from the waist down. He was shaking. Had he been shaking before? She watched as his hands curled on the sheets. They'd stripped him when they cleaned his wound, including his gloves, and she had been too numb and frightened to protest.

So the nurses knew he was marked. Steps would have to be taken to ensure Corvo's safety - if he lived.

He groaned again, and Emily came around the side of the bed. His eyes were open but only half-focused. His hands pressed flat to the mattress, and she saw his shoulders tense.

She reached out and planted a hand on his chest, keeping him down with the slightest pressure.

"You can't sit up," she said. "You'll rip the wound again."

He grimaced, looking between her and the length of his body. She watched as he lifted a hand and gingerly brushed at the bandages wrapped around his belly. Then his head fell back and he stared up at the ceiling, stubble darkening his jaw and throat, hair messy and unkempt clinging to his forehead.

"Went too fast," he mumbled.

She frowned, uncomprehending. "Too fast?"

"I was out… in the storm. Running. Climbing. The- the rush of it." His lips twisted into another grimace. "Went too fast… I slipped. Crashed into a weathervane. Broke the top off of it. The rest of it…"

He motioned with his hand over the bandages, and turned his head away.

Slowly, Emily took her hand away. "Why?" she asked, softly. That was what had brought him so close to death? Wanting to run? Play?

He shrugged, then hissed at the pain. "I just… wanted to," he mumbled. "I missed it. I always miss it." He turned his head back towards her with painful, aching slowness, his gaze dropping to her hands.

"You're wearing gloves," he said, looking back at her face.

She bit her lip before she smiled and laughed it off. "They're very fashionable," she said, lifting her hands and wiggling her fingers. "And it's been cold in the Tower these last few days."

His frown didn't shift.

"… Yours are off, you know," she said, more quietly. "Kareen and Geoff and I will figure out something, though."

"I don't care," he said. "Everybody knows already. Or suspects. They always have."

"Still," Emily said, frowning and kneeling at the bedside. "I don't want the Overseers to drag you off."

"Let them try," he said with a bitter smile. "… Maybe it would be better, though. Maybe they know a way to take away the… curse."

"Oh, I'm sure. And it'll involve electrical shocks and hot pokers and probably your body dead in a ditch somewhere, without even the courtesy of a proper cremation," she said, scowling. "Don't think like this."

"Why are you wearing gloves, Emily?" he asked, and he reached out and caught her wrist. His grip was weak, but she couldn't pull away. He stared at her. "Take them off."

"My hands were cold," she said.

"It's not cold in here," he said. His fingers slipped up, catching hold of the soft leather. "Please."

"No," she said, and stood up, pulling away from him.

He closed his eyes, brow contorted with pain and exhaustion. "So did he come to you, then?"

Emily said nothing.

"You should have said no, Emily."

She looked to the door. It was shut. She looked back to Corvo, seeing the old protective impulses flash across his face - but he could do nothing. She took a deep breath.

"I asked for it," she said. "Begged. I need it."

His fear and frustration and pain turned to clear agony. Emily turned away. She'd hoped that maybe, if he knew she'd sought it out, he wouldn't feel as if he'd failed. She'd been wrong. The knowledge clawed at her.

"But it's only half," she added. "It doesn't do anything."

Corvo was silent. She looked over her shoulder, expecting to see him drifting again, fearing to see him going cold and silent. Instead, he was staring at her, trying to prop up just his head and shoulders, struggling with the effort.

"Do you think you're stronger than I am?" he asked, and his voice was harsh and pained.

Emily's brow furrowed in confusion. "Stronger?"

"Look at what it's done to me," he hissed, lowering himself with agonizingly slow, jerking movements back to his pillow. He stared up at the ceiling. "Look what it did to Daud."

She flinched at the name. "You never told me what it did to him," she said, quietly, "only that leaving him alive was a better punishment."

And she hated him for it, still. Alive. He deserved to be slaughtered. No- tortured, taken apart piece by piece.

A sharp pang went through her. If she'd been older, stronger, more powerful then- she could have had the blockade catch him. She might have lost a hundred men in the attempt, but one at least would have gotten lucky.

"What do you see when you look at me?" Corvo rasped.

A dying man. A weak man. A man who was and was not her father. A man who had failed at saving her mother, had almost failed at protecting her, who had clawed his way to victory but…

She shook her head. "Please, Corvo."

"Tell me."

She looked at his waxy skin and felt her stomach churn and tighten. Ten years ago, she had loved and trusted him unconditionally. That hadn't changed. But it had been compartmentalized, shut away by the tempered, powerful part of her that needed results. She took a shaking breath.

"A shell of a man," she said.

"That's right," Corvo said, gaze fixed above him.

"I know what I'm doing," she whispered.

He shook his head.

Her shoulders hunched forward, and she found herself spitting, "I am anempress! Your needs were narrow. Revenge." Her body trembled. Her heart quailed. "Of course you can't bear the weight of it! I have an empire to cultivate, to rebuild. I need it more than you, for longer. I can handle it."

Corvo never flinched. He simply remained unmoving, and slowly she found herself focusing not on the labored rise and fall of his chest, but on all the scars she had learned to ignore, remnants of his time in Coldridge. They had always scared her.

He'd been through so much; it was only natural that one day he'd simply fall to pieces.

"I can handle it," she repeated, as much to herself as to him. She looked down at herself. "… You don't have to worry about me."

"I promised your mother…" he mumbled, then trailed off.

"You promised her a lot of things," Emily said, and her lips twisted in a desperate, weak, pained smile. She came close enough to touch his hand again. "And you've kept me safe for ten years now."

He grimaced.

"Kareen has kept you safe."

"That's why we picked her. Remember?" Her voice fell to a soft child's whisper, and she crouched at his bedside, taking his hand in both of hers. "Because we both knew - even though I didn't want to think about it - that one day you wouldn't be able to protect me anymore. And that's alright. That's… the way of things."

Her mother had died. One day, Corvo would die - maybe tomorrow. And one day, she would die.

But she had time yet.

Her hands tightened on Corvo's. "Let me protect you," she said, quietly. "You, Kareen, the Curnows, the Empire. I'll protect all of you. It's my turn now. I cando this now. I'm not a little girl anymore." Her smile was fierce but fragile. It fell as Corvo closed his eyes and grimaced in pain again. Her hands squeezed at the bones and tendons of his fingers.

"You made me strong. I learned, watching you."

That made his face contort again, as if the idea pained him. She bowed her head a moment, then stood up, letting go.

"I'll go get the nurses," she said.

A sickroom was no place for her.

That night, she had dinner with Callista. Geoff visited Corvo. Kareen kept her distance, always uncertain how to behave around the thin, angular woman who had once been Emily's foremost tutor, but who hadn't returned after receiving an education that would have made her the Empress's best tutor. Emily toyed with her food.

They spoke in awkward bursts. Callista stumbled over her attempts to avoid mentioning Corvo's health and to engage with Emily the same way she had ten years before. Emily, for her part, didn't know how to sit at a table with her as an adult. They had never been equals; Callista had always been the teacher, and Emily had always been her Empress. Emily had demanded tea and cakes at a run-down pub, and Callista had brought them. Callista had called for class, and Emily had hidden.

Now, the sickroom pall hung over both of them. Emily pushed her grilled eel about on the fine porcelain, and Callista mentioned that the weather in Serkonos was lovely this time of year.

Neither talked about anything of substance.

Eventually, Callista rose and left, and Emily relaxed with a great sigh of relief; Callista and Corvo were the two people who could make her feel like a child again.

It was better if she didn't see either.

Emily finished her meal. As she pushed her plate away, she heard Kareen clear her throat and approach.

"Yes?" Emily asked, glancing up with a polite smile.

"We received a request from the Abbey while you were eating," Kareen said. She looked almost as frozen and statuesque as she had in the Void, and Emily half expected her to reach out with her hands holding two offerings. Instead, she fished the typewritten page from her coat pocket and held it out for Emily to take.

She did, unfolding it and scanning it quickly.

Then she set it down and stood up, moving to the sideboard to pour herself a glass of wine. "The answer is no."

"You can't say no," Kareen said, motionless. "Not without bringing suspicion on yourself. You've helped them too much in the last month rooting out matters of heresy, you can't stop now."

"I can, and I will. I command the Empire, they do not," she said, watching the flow of Tyvian red into the cut crystal.

"If they withdraw their support in the current climate, I don't think-"

Emily slammed the wine bottle down on the table. "I am not giving them Corvo. That is final. How we spin it is a different topic, and one we can talk about once I've had a drink."

Kareen was silent.

Emily swallowed down half her glass, a droplet of red wine slipping from the seam of her lips and dripping onto her fine white clothing. She glanced down at it as she turned. It didn't look a thing like blood, but the stain was enough to remind her of her dream, of having a sword in her hand.

She didn't feel fear. She felt power. Security. She looked to Kareen.

Kareen shook her head, turning away and picking up the summons from the Abbey. "There's too much evidence. They could ignore it while Corvo covered his hands in public, but now that word has gotten out… it's too much, Emily. They will take him either way. If you cooperate and pretend that you had no knowledge of what he is, then maybe this will only scratch your reign. But if the Abbey has reason to turn against you- against us-"

"Then I'll- I'll break the Abbey's power," Emily said.

"Like you're trying to break the power of the aristocracy?"

"Exactly. None of them should have as much power as they do. The Abbey- the Abbey is corrupt and always has been. And in times of peace, it grows and twists and starts to turn my people against one another. Do you remember, during the plague-" She caught herself. No, Kareen wouldn't remember. "They had neighbors turning one another in. They used charges of heresy to clear their paths to power and riches. That doesn't just go away."

Kareen turned and leaned against the table, expression dark. "That may all be true. But now is not the time. It will make you look guilty by association. And even the Empress can't run from the Abbey, not if they come in truth. And not when she has runes tucked under her pillow."

"They won't find anything," Emily said, suddenly wishing she hadn't involved Kareen in her brief, manic hunt for items of power. "They're all gone."

"And your hands?" Kareen asked, more quietly. "I've never seen you wear gloves, except on special occasions. And you've always preferred lace."

Emily regretted, deeply, that she and Corvo had judged it wisest to choose a perceptive foreign woman for her Protector, one who would not be so loyal to the Abbey, one who they could confide Corvo's secret in. It had made sense at the time; it gave Emily a true confidante, and made their house a little safer.

Now, though- now she knew too much.

Emily thought again of killing her in the dream, then tore the impulse from her mind. Killing Kareen would accomplish nothing, except to enter her into the endless list of heretics who had gone mad and murderous because of the Outsider. She was stronger than that. She breathed deeply, evenly, counting until she was sure she was in control once more.

She took another sip of wine.

"I'll be wearing gloves for a long time to come," she said.

Kareen looked down and closed her eyes in defeat.

"We'll need to play this carefully," Emily said, drawing close enough to take one of Kareen's broad hands in hers. "Find a way to get Corvo out of the city, away from the Abbey, once he's hale enough to stand the sea. Then find a way to remove me from idle scrutiny. But this is doable."

"You would give him up to the wilds, but not to the Abbey?"

Emily nodded. "If there's no other way, yes."

"Captain Curnow will protest."

"Captain Curnow will help. He'll understand. He and his niece know necessity very well." Emily squeezed her hand, then crouched down a little to smile up at her. "We can do this. We always do."

Kareen was silent as she reached out and touched the back of Emily's left hand. "You didn't need this," she said.

Emily didn't respond except to wiggle her hands free and leave to refill her glass.

Two nights later, Emily left the Tower. Corvo was still in critical condition, and the Abbey jackals were circling. Kareen and Geoff were still working on plans to get Corvo out safely. Emily had tried to help at first, but soon her hand had ached and her head had throbbed, and she'd pulled back.

She did not know practicalities, only necessities. What had to be done, not how to do it. It grated on her, and she found herself staring at the incomplete Mark marring her skin. If she could get the Outsider to grant the whole of its power to her…

Or if she could get it removed and go back to being just an Empress…

She stole out of the Tower and went down into the city proper. She went in a maid's costume and hired a boat to take her to Rudshore, where the walls had never been repaired and the buildings left broken to pieces. After over a decade of neglect, the sea had reclaimed nearly half the district. And if she climbed to the top of one of the tallest buildings, she was sure she would see where the Hound Pits Pub still was, and she imagined it blazing with life in a way it never had for her.

There had been talk of repairing and rebuilding. But Corvo had told her that this was where Daud had lived, where his assassins had stayed, and she had never approved the funds necessary to reclaim the district. It was hollow and empty and drowned.

And in its various apartment buildings, she suspected that there would be a shrine, or two, or three. And so she paid the boatman to wait for her on an outcropping of old, ruined road, and she walked into the district and began her search.

It was three hours after midnight by the time she found it, a room on the third floor that glowed and pulsed behind the boards nailed into the doorframe. The wood was rotten and the nails were rusted. She kicked and kicked until the wood gave, and then she clambered through, her dark clothing hiding the trails of muck the sharp-edged fragments left on her. The air was damp and chill, and she straightened up, staring at the old shrine.

There was fabric draped from the ceiling and down the walls, but in the dim light she couldn't make out what color it had once been. She could only see the pulsing watery light that seemed to emanate from everything and nothing.

As she approached the table at the far end of the room, she saw jagged pieces of rotted driftwood, stains of blood and other substances she didn't care to identify. But there was no rune, no bone charm.

She fished in her pocket and withdrew the pouch of ground-up rune dust. She reached to place it on the table, then hesitated, opened it, and upended the contents instead. The few larger chunks clattered to the shrine, but the rest drifted down, catching the strange light and glittering.

Emily waited. Nothing happened.

She wasn't sure what she had expected. She shucked her gloves and tucked them into her belt, and stared at her small, weak hands. The Mark seemed to writhe for a few seconds, and then it lay still again.

There were stories, rumors, of blood sacrifices, bile sacrifices, but she wasn't prepared to make those. She was not so desperate.

She was not so certain.

So instead, she sat down and stared up at the shrine, and soaked in its odd resonance. It slowly worked its way beneath her skin and into her bones, following the path of the cold. Her fingers went numb. Her cheeks tightened.

She closed her eyes and drifted.

—

She recognized the room immediately, even with half the walls drifting away to nothing and the ceiling covered with a gathered tent of out-of-place red velvet. She'd spent too many months in the tiny space, posting pictures on the walls before they were torn down by Madame Prudence.

Emily turned on her heel and left the room, moving to pull the gloves from her hands. Her fingers touched bare flesh.

The stairs crumbled quickly to floating chunks of marble and girder, and she hopped between them. Nothing moved around her. She reached the next platform, one of the great rooms of the Golden Cat, and she went to the railing to peer over the edge.

Below was the gazebo, and her mother stood at the edge of it, looking out into the Void.

Her fingers curled around the metal. It was biting cold and utterly smooth, unlike any metal she had ever held. Her hands were bare, and the chill cut deep.

Something moved in her peripheral vision, and she lifted her head. Across the great gap, leaning on the rail in mirror-image, was the Outsider. Its lips were painted and its hair was longer, curling softly around its ears. The collar of its jacket was undone, and the fabric looked softer even from the seemingly great distance between them. Emily thought she saw the swell of breasts where the jacket fastened, but it was impossible to tell.

"I think Corvo is dying," she said, in a sickroom's quiet whisper.

"That's unfortunate," the Outsider responded, its voice a soft, rich murmur in her ear despite the distance. It seemed higher-pitched than before. Emily did her best to ignore the change.

Her sudden flash of anger helped.

"Unfortunate? You did this to him, you know!" she snapped, voice turning cold and brittle.

"Would you rather I had never given him my Mark, Emily Kaldwin? Do you want to know what your fate would have been, had he not been able to help it along?"

Emily only glared.

"You would be an Empress," the Outsider said, and began to stroll around the great circle, hand trailing on the rail. "Burrows would have brought you out of hiding, and you would have carried your rage and anger and loneliness close to your heart. You would have been strong, and you would have obeyed until the very second you didn't have to, anymore. And then you would have sat on your throne and you would have ruled with an iron fist.

"So really, not much would have changed at all," it said with a shrug. It came to stand only a few feet away. Its lips curled.

"You're simplifying everything," Emily said, but she sounded uncertain, even to herself. "The details matter, you know."

"Oh, I know," the Outsider said. "Details, so many details… if it weren't for the details, your lives would be so boring to watch. The same patterns, writ large and small across generations-"

"I didn't come here to talk theology," she snapped, wrapping her arms around herself and peering back down at her mother.

The Outsider's hand settled on her shoulder. "You came here to see me," it said. "You still want the Mark, after everything you've seen. Corvo is a cautionary tale, you know."

"I'm different. The details matter," she said, and shrugged its hand from her.

The Outsider was silent and still. After a moment, she turned her head to see if it was still there. It was, watching her with hollow eyes, considering.

"So will you give it to me?" Emily asked.

The Outsider made no response.

She turned back to look down to her mother. Nothing had changed. And when she looked around the fractured replica of the Golden Cat, she caught glimpses of courtesans and patrons caught in tableaus, some with limbs tangled, others with mouth agape with pain or fear or anger.

"Why doesn't anything move?" she asked, half-hoping that theology would make the silent creature speak, would break the frozen loneliness of the place a little.

It worked. As she glanced over her shoulder, the Outsider smiled.

"Everything moves," the Outsider said. "But never when you can see it. If you saw the change here- you would go mad."

"Things moved the last time I was here. In that building, when I hunted you."

The smile widened. "Is that what you were doing? I thought we were playing a game." And then it shrugged. "That was a microcosm. A limited area. But here, where there are no limits…"

"Is that what happened to Corvo?" Emily asked, turning to face the creature fully. "Was he here and you let him see things change?"

"No. That is not what happened to Corvo. Many things happened to bring him where he is today. He did ask, though, that I let him see. Will you ask the same thing, Emily Kaldwin?"

She shook her head. "I don't need to see. Things change enough when I'm awake." She turned and stared at her mother's back. It did not rise and fall with breath. There was no heartbeat in her chest.

The Outsider's hands touched her elbows, and then its arms slid around her waist. It tucked her back against its chest the way Jessamine had done, so long ago that Emily couldn't quite grasp hold of the memory anymore. But her body knew enough to go rigid and her eyes knew enough to brim with tears. Emily stared straight forward.

"You're right, that the details matter," the Outsider said, conversationally. "Do you know why the great politicians and military men of history have never worn my mark before?" Its lips were close enough that she should have felt its breath on her skin, but she couldn't. She couldn't feel a single thing except for the throbbing burn on her left hand, and the deep completion settling into her bones and heart, along with a deep unsettling. "It's because," it said, "they are rarely interesting. For all their power, they are on set paths. They are like rail carts. And I am attracted to those who look and judge and move and grasp in their own patterns, who are unpredictable, who - by their choices and actions - send ripples out into the future that meet and change and create a thousand different possibilities.

"When you were a girl, you raged against your rails. You were torn. You wanted to grieve, and you wanted to scream, and you wanted to hurt people. But you also wanted to hide, and to be strong, and to be an empress. You wanted so many things, and any direction you turned in, you soon moved towards another. But you were a child, a child with no power. And so I left you."

Emily flinched. This creature knew her as well as Kareen did, and better. As well as Corvo did- and better. It looked into the heart of her. It knew her endless pain and how she had built walls to contain it. How she had obeyed until the second she hadn't had to anymore.

If that second had even come yet.

"And then you were an Empress, and you thought to set yourself apart, but you were limited. You clung to the idea of being an Empress. You needed that power. And you have acted as an Empress acts - as a child acts." It bent its head and caught her chin in one hand to make her look at it. It had ceased smiling. It simply regarded her, and she longed to see a hint of warmth in that gaze.

There was none.

"But things are changing, aren't they?" the Outsider whispered, close to her lips. "They're changing even while you sleep, even when you think everything is standing still."

She shuddered and pulled her head free of the Outsider's grasp, and looked back down at the gazebo below.

It had begun to crumble into nothingness, her mother's body motionless on the marble floor.

"Soon," the Outsider whispered, "you won't be a child anymore. Soon, you'll hardly be an Empress."

Emily's hand began to burn.

"And did you know, that that's a very peculiar, particular thing to be?"

Emily sagged back into the chill steadiness of the Outsider's form, but it was already dissolving. She faltered, crumbled to her knees, and hugged them to her chest.

The Outsider's words echoed out of the changing changeless emptiness:

"Consider me interested."

Corvo sat alone in the gazebo where Jessamine Kaldwin had been cut down. He stared out at the sea and the failing light. He didn't stir as Emily approached, dressed not in white but in dull, dark blue.

It had been five days since he had begun to eat again. He sat up only with the greatest trouble, and he barely spoke. Before the light failed entirely, Geoff Curnow would come to fetch him, and lead him away to a ship that Callista Curnow had found that would take him far away, maybe even to Pandyssia.

Emily watched him, her left hand weighted down. He didn't know yet. Nobody knew.

She circled around, strolling without hurry, watching him from the corner of her eye. He watched her without moving his head.

"It should be a nice vacation," Emily said, the sharp breeze threatening to carry her voice away.

Corvo did not respond.

"Maybe you'll even find out what Callista has been up to all these years," she added, turning to face him.

His skin was still waxy, his breathing labored. He was in pain, constantly. And he knew that he was hunted, and that soon, even the Empress wouldn't be able to protect him.

"Show me your hand," he rasped.

"Nothing's changed," Emily said, perhaps too quickly.

"Show me your hand, so I know what I'm leaving behind," he growled, and something flashed in his eyes that frightened her. She wiggled her glove off and stuck her hand forward.

The completed Mark flashed up at them in the dim light, and Corvo looked away.

She pulled the leather over her fingers once more, then circled around behind him, hands settling on the back of his chair.

"I didn't ask for it," she murmured.

"But you needed it," he muttered, bitterly.

She lowered her eyes, and she stood quietly, trying to soak in his presence, his company. She'd never see him again after this moment, and her heart twisted at the disgust and anger she could feel rising from him.

Corvo shifted in his seat, his breath hissing through his teeth as he resettled himself, trying to turn towards her. He gave up after a brief struggle, sagging back at his seat.

"So what are you going to do?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said.

"Do you want his favor?"

"I don't know." She thought of the Outsider with its dark, intoxicating flavor of attention, its softening face, its dark eyes. She could fall into it, given half a chance. Lose herself in the constant change of the Void, forget her own identity. But it frightened her. She needed control.

And she wasn't sure she could control it.

"He won't like it," Corvo continued, "if you just- stay as you are."

"It's not a he. Don't humanize it," Emily said. "I understand. It needs change. Thrives on unpredictability. I know."

Corvo grunted. "So what will you do?"

"I suppose," she said, looking up and out at the ocean, "that I could simply ignore it. Hide it. Never use it unless I needed it, or never use it at all." She frowned at the thought. It seemed like a waste, such a waste. "Or I could go with you. Revel in it. Follow the tides. But both of those won't stay stable forever."

"No," he agreed. "They won't."

"I'm sorry about what I said," she murmured, not looking at him. "About your needs being narrow. About my being stronger."

"Maybe they were. Maybe you are. I don't know," he said, hands gripping at the arms of his chair.

She was silent. She felt strong. She felt in control.

But she thought of the Void and she couldn't be certain.

"You're going to be alone," Corvo said.

"I have Kareen. Geoff."

"Not anymore," Corvo said, shaking his head. "Not really. Are you prepared for that? By wearing that Mark…"

Emily's hands tightened on the back of his chair. "I've been alone before," she said, voice dropping to a bare whisper. She thought back to that time, locked up in the Cat, trying desperately to get to safety and failing every time.

But she'd been a frightened child, then. She hadn't possessed a single weapon. It was different now.

That didn't keep her spirit from quailing. She wanted to be a child again, and curl up next to Corvo and rest her head on his shoulder. She wanted her mother there, to clasp her to her breast and laugh and remind her that the world was a safe place for her.

But no matter what, she would be alone. It wasn't just the price of using the Mark; it was the price of being the Empress. She had seen the loneliness in her mother's eyes, even when Corvo had been beside her, even when Emily had slept with her head pillowed in her lap.

Behind them, Geoff Curnow cleared his throat.

It was time.

She came around to the front of Corvo's chair, and she knelt in front of him, taking his hands. She smiled. She'd always been strong for him. She had never let him see her cry in the whole time they were at the Hound Pits. She had kept her tears for her lonely tower and for Callista. Now, she smiled with her chin upturned, and she squeezed his limp hands.

"Trust in me," she said, softly.

Corvo couldn't keep her gaze. He looked down.

"I'm afraid."

It was the barest whisper, barely words, and it struck her through, pinned her in place as Geoff approached and took hold of Corvo's chair. Geoff smiled down at her. Her smile was still frozen in place.

"I'll take care of everything, your Highness," he said.

And then Corvo was gone.

Out beyond the gazebo, the winds whipped the Wrenhaven into a frenzy where it met the ocean. Beyond that there was only the unknown, the wild Void, the creeping Outside that had forever threatened the safety and warmth of those souls clinging to the rocks and building fires. Her hand throbbed, and she curled her hand into a fist.

Did she give herself over to the tumult of chaotic possibility? Or did she stay safe and warm, the epitome of everything her Empire had fought for?

She was not quite an Empress, and the title wrapped itself in ill-fitting, slippery cords around her, working like writhing eels against all the dark places in her.

Spotlights shone on the waves, picked out the small shadows of boats being tossed to and fro. Some of the boats would make it home before the storm grew too great.

Some would not.

Somewhere, Corvo would make a new life, alone and afraid.

And somewhere, so would she.

.

.

.

.

A/N: Written for the Fugue Feast in July gift exchange on tumblr, for Icetigris. I had a number of prompts to work from, and have referenced nearly all of them, but the main prompt was:

The Outsider takes an interest in Emily and she gets his mark. Corvo tries to give her advice and help her through it while she struggles to rule Dunwall. Maybe Emily/Outsider?