Chapter Text
Shrike Branwen woke with a start. She was sitting upright, blade in hand before she was even consciously aware of the hammering at her apartment door. Glancing at her scroll, she swiped a quick finger across its screen. It lit up, displaying a not insubstantial number of messages from a contact saved as ‘Ice Cream’.
Neo. Leaping nimbly from her bed, Shrike grabbed a jacket from her chair and threw it around herself, slipping the knife into the sheath sewn into the inner lining. She then collected her scroll, joining the knife in her jacket. Finally, she grabbed Portent, carrying it by its scabbard as she moved swiftly to her front door. She peered out through the peephole and grunted before unchaining, unlocking, and finally opening the door.
Outside, soaked by the pounding rain, were Rowan and Neo, the former being supported by the latter. Two of Rowan’s men lurked further back, looking away from the apartment as they kept watch. “Ah, Good Doctor,” Rowan said, managing a cocky smirk and a doff of her hat despite her pale face and trembling hand before she grimaced. The rain had washed much of it away, but there was a large red stain in her coat. “I appear to be leaking.”
“So I see,” Shrike said dryly, slipping on some shoes and collecting her umbrella before stepping outside, opening it as she did so. “Let’s get you patched up, then,” she said with a long-suffering sigh, walking the short distance to her garage. From the opposite rooftop, a pair of crows perched despite the harsh weather.
“So you’ll plug my holes then, Doctor?” Rowan snarked with a light-headed giggle. Neo, for her part, gave Shrike the stink eye, miming answering a phone with her free hand.
“I was sleeping,” Shrike shot back, opting to ignore Rowan’s joke. Retrieving a key from one of her pockets, she unlocked and then opened the garage. The space had been split in two; one portion held her motorbike, the various tools Shrike used to maintain and repair it, as well as various other bits of clutter she didn’t keep in the apartment proper.
The second, larger portion, separated off by waterproofed partitions and a door, was her surgery. A constant work-in-progress, in the months she’d been in Vale she’d made it sterile enough for her purposes, and equipped it with a decent amount of equipment. Perhaps most precious to her work were the securely-locked medicine cabinet, and the cooler of blood in the back. The former was ‘donated’ by Vale’s gangs as part of the cost of her services, the latter drawn from her own body on a careful, months-long schedule, as well as some actual donations from said gangs.
Thank the gods for universal compatibility, Shrike mused, leaving Portent and her jacket hanging from pegs outside her surgery. Neo foisted Rowan off to her before turning and closing the garage, whilst Shrike led the taller woman to the table.
“Coat off and then lie down,” After Shrike had helped her sit, she turned to the sink to wash her hands and put on gloves and a facemask. “Injuries.” It wasn’t a question, it was an instruction; ‘tell me what the injuries are and what caused them’.
“Gunshot to the chest,” Rowan replied, dropping her coat on the floor and lying down with a pained grunt. Without the torrential rain outside to wash it away, sweat was reappearing across her face. “Fire dust round, small-calibre. Didn’t ignite, but broke my aura going in. Think it hit a rib.”
Shrike quickly thanked whatever god watched over Rowan that whoever fired that bullet didn’t pump aura into it before shooting. “Your luck’s going to run out one day,” she said, throwing a plastic apron on before returning to the table with her tools. Neo hovered anxiously outside, clearly worried for Rowan but sensible enough to know that stepping into the surgery was a terrible idea.
“Not before I’ve had my fun,” Rowan said, grinning. Or, rather, trying to grin, but it quickly turned into a grimace.
“Morphine?”
“Gods please.” Shrike nodded, retrieving a vial and a syringe from the medicine cabinet, injecting Rowan with an appropriate dose. As Rowan began to relax, the painkillers quickly entering her system, Shrike peeled back her shirt, left open from when someone had slapped the now-soaked dressing over the wound.
After one last check her tools were all in arm’s reach, she removed the soiled bandage, moving it to a steel tray. “Hold still.” Carefully, she began examining the injury. True to Rowan’s guess and continued good fortune, the bullet had indeed hit a rib. Squinting as she delicately explored the wound with her tools, she let out a quiet breath as she found the round; a dull orange within the pink and red hole.
Muttering a sotto voce prayer, she grabbed a special set of tweezers for bullet extraction, and with extreme care began prising the round out. It was painstaking; with a metal round, the only pressure that mattered was ‘enough to keep a grip on it’, beyond that point anything extra didn’t matter. Dust rounds were different, and though it hadn’t shattered against Rowan’s rib, she had no idea how much extra force it could take.
In the end, the round came out in two pieces, split cleanly down the middle. Placing the fragments in a special box for later recycling, she then washed the wound out, first with saline in an effort to remove any remaining dust fragments, and then with antiseptics. Finally, after satisfying herself that the damage to the rib didn’t require any additional attention, she stitched the wound closed.
Rowan drifted into a drug-induced haze, muttering to herself and letting out an occasional giggle. Rolling her eyes, Shrike finished disinfecting the site before stepping away to clean up. By the time she was done, Rowan had fallen asleep, Shrike checked her blood pressure and oxygen levels.
Satisfied she wasn’t going to die on her operating table, she stepped outside, letting out a heavy sigh. “She’s fine,” she said to Neo, who relaxed visibly. Shrike pulled her jacket back on and opened the garage door a crack, enough to get some better ventilation before withdrawing a lighter and a pack of cigarettes.
Wordlessly, she proffered the pack to Neo, who shook her head. Shrike shrugged, slipping one into her mouth before lighting it, taking a long, slow drag. A terrible habit, she knew, but one she’d not tried to kick. Maybe at Beacon, she mused. With the added pressures of concealing it from a no-doubt disapproving staff and teammates, maybe that’d give her the motivation to quit.
She glanced back at Neo, who was still standing and staring at the door to Shrike’s surgery. As always, part of her wanted to ask what happened, curiosity gnawing at her. But she didn’t. It was a layer of protection in case the authorities ever started sniffing around. She wasn’t aware of any of her patients’ plans, or involved in any of their schemes. All she did was patch people up.
It helped her stay neutral, as well, an important consideration for any self-respecting back alley doctor. With another sigh, she took one last drag on her cigarette before extinguishing it in an ashtray. “I’m assuming you’re going to want to keep watch?” Shrike asked Neo. Neo looked at her and nodded once. “Alright. I’m going back to bed.” Without another word, she fetched her umbrella and stalked back to her front door, pretending not to see the extra henchmen trying to look inconspicuous up and down the street.
The dripping umbrella was left just inside the door beside her kicked-off shoes, and she retrieved her knife from her jacket before dumping the garment on her bedroom floor, dodging the string of talismans strung across her bedroom. Her knife and scroll were placed back on her bedside table, before she finally let herself collapse back into bed.
All the while she studiously ignored the bone-masked raven perched on her desk, staring at her with four glowing blue eyes, smoke curling from its feathers.
Sixteen years ago…
“What the fuck do you mean ‘he’s not paying’?”
Raven Branwen was not having a good day. First, she’d stubbed her toe on her side table immediately upon waking, which was a foul start to anyone’s day. Then, before she’d managed to get breakfast, she’d had to hear how two sentries had the poor sense to fall asleep whilst on-watch. Though nothing bad came of it, examples still need to be made. Arranging a flogging wasn’t her idea of a good time, especially not on an empty stomach.
And then, after she’d finally found a moment to eat, came the news that her ‘sure-fire’ payout had evaporated like the morning’s mist. Just days ago, one of her lieutenants had come to her with a grand, daring plan. He, somehow, had gotten a hold of the travel itinerary of none other than Willow Schnee and her two children. Even better, they had been travelling within striking distance, by train instead of via one of their fancy airships.
The bold scheme had been drawn up; a kidnapping and subsequent ransom. Jacques Schnee was the richest man on Remnant. How much would he pay for the return of his wife and both daughters? Enough to pay for the tribe’s outgoings for decades. They’d live like kings! Petty, bandit kings, but kings of a sort!
The kidnapping hadn’t gone quite according to plan. More security than indicated by the itinerary. Apparently one of Mrs. Schnee’s hangers-on had cottoned onto the fact that bandits existed, and had pressed for the hiring of a hunter bodyguard, who had complicated the operation significantly. It hadn’t been for nothing, however, and the tribe still managed to make off with the youngest daughter. It wouldn’t be the full pay-day, but the ransom of even a single daughter would be a fortune, surely.
“The Schnee refused to pay our ransom, Chieftain,” Raven’s subordinate repeated, glowering at a point just past her shoulder. “‘I still have my heir, and my wife is pregnant with another spare. I don’t need Weiss, so paying you would be a bad investment’,” he quoted.
Raven slammed her fist on the desk, letting out a heavy, frustrated sigh. “Great. So instead of stacks and stacks of lien and dust and whatever else we were planning on getting out of the Schnees, we’re left with their abandoned infant.” Raven let out a low growl.
“What do we do with her?” another of her lieutenants asked, glancing at the flap to Raven’s tent as if expecting the infant to appear. It wasn’t out of the question; the child had been quite active, and had earnt some faint fondness for biting the finger of one tribe member. “Bring her in, or..?”
“It’s a risk to keep her,” the first opined. “What if someone recognises her when she gets older?”
“You think someone would recognise you from your baby photos?” a third countered.
“How many white-haired, blue-eyed babies are there on Remnant?”
“So, what, we actually kill her? I know we’re bandits, but kidnapping an infant and then killing her because her shithead dad refuses to pay is…”
It would be crossing some sort of line, in the eyes of many in the tribe. Kids died during and after their raids, sure, but that was incidental. That was never the point. Killing an infant they’d kidnapped from an apparently-pregnant mother in cold blood would be beyond the pale. Raven’s rule wasn’t even two years old; could it survive a moral crisis like that?
A row began, and Raven felt her frustration mount. A shit morning, marked by incompetent tribe members, the loss of any hopes of a return on their raid on the train, and now an argument between her lieutenants in her own tent, all before lunch.
Before Raven could lose her temper, however, a voice cut above the noise. “Shut the fuck up! Chieftain, you need to see this.” It was the voice of Indigo Salix, the tribe’s de facto head doctor. She was a tall, wiry woman, dark-skinned with golden eyes and purple hair, the latter fitting her name. In her arms, swaddled in linen from her so-called hospital, was the child in question, glaring at the adults daring to be so noisy in her presence.
Standing beside them was Cassava Centauri, priestess of the tribe. She stood a little shorter, darker skinned than Indigo. Her hair was split between colours down the middle, the right midnight blue with silver highlights, the left white with gold highlights. Her eyes, similarly, were heterochromatic, her right eye gold, her left the same blue as her hair. A large set of antlers crowned her head, adding to the strangely commanding presence the woman held.
Without waiting for a response, they crossed the space from the tent entrance to Raven’s desk, the gathered officers parting ahead of them. “The girl’s father refused to pay up, correct?” Cassava asked as she approached, her voice raspy and whispering.
“Yeah,” Raven drawled out slowly, glancing at the lieutenant who had brought the news.
“I told no one before you, Chieftain,” he said, shaking his head.
“Right. So, why are you here?” Raven asked, glancing between Cassava and Indigo. “What do I need to see?” Rather than answering verbally, Cassava turned to the bundled up child in Indigo’s arms and gently began extracting the infant’s left arm. The child burbled indifferently as this happened, blithely unaware that some of the adults around her had been discussing her murder.
As the child’s hand and arm came into view, those officers who could see it clearly gasped as one. The others started clamouring for a view, a wave of muttering filling the tent. Raven for her part just stared silently. There was a mark on the back of the infant’s hand, the black image of a stylised eye, the pupil replaced by a knotted rope. The mark had not been there when Raven saw her yesterday.
“The Dealmaker…” someone in the crowd breathed.
“Indeed. Indigo tells me this mark appeared no more than half an hour or so ago,” Cassava said. “Tell me; when did the girl’s father decide to abandon her?”
“We got the refusal about… Forty minutes ago,” the lieutenant who had brought the bad news answered after checking his watch.
“The child, upon being abandoned by the father, receives the Dealmaker’s mark. Someone bargained for this one’s protection,” Cassava intoned. “She has been acknowledged by our gods, Chieftain. You know what must happen now.”
“... Yeah.” Raven stood from her desk, her expression impassive. She walked around her desk and approached Indigo and the child, looking down at her. The infant, ‘Weiss’, gurgled, staring back up before trying and failing to grab at one of her necklaces. She’s about how old… Raven shoved the thought of the child she, herself, had abandoned out of her mind. This is different.
“Very well,” she said, keeping her voice level. “If the gods want her to be here so badly, then fine. She’ll need a new name…” She thought for a moment, before inspiration struck. “Welcome to the tribe… Shrike Branwen.”