They sat in silence in that crammed, damned room that had been their home for the past few years. Yvir huddled by herself, arms wrapped around her knees, boring a hole into the wall with her stare. Her mother turned her back to her, hands to her face, shuddering with her soundless crying.

She wouldn’t leave her mother; she couldn’t. It wasn’t because Yvir couldn’t live without her: it was because she couldn’t live with herself knowing there was a chance to save them both. Hope. What a cruel word, she mused. Something that made people try and try again, in the hopeless goal of something better than this life.

Someone knocked on the door, soft and gentle. Yvir rose and lifted the wooden bar. Anyone with enough determination and strength could eventually kick it down. The only reason no one did was because the Headswoman lived here; and she would take the head off anyone who dared. Yvir slid her sword from its sheathe as she opened the door.

The Inquisitor stood with her black hat and blacker eyes, her usual smirk now set into a curt scowl.

“You shouldn’t be here, Yvir,” she sighed.

“You should have taken my mother,” Yvir said, hand still holding her sword. “Are you going to kill us?”

“No. Will you let me in before the People’s Army sees me at your doorstep?”

Yvir backed away, the woman sweeping past with her dark cloak as she closed the door.

Her mother said, “What now?”

“Now,” the Cadrian said, “we’re going to have to trust each other. If the Taorin find out who came here, we die. If the People’s Army find out, we die. Anyone not in this room who hears of this, we die sooner than you think.”

“You make all this seem like a joke,” Yvir said. “Is this a joke to you?”

The woman scoffed. “I’ve faced death more times than you’ve lived, girl. Death is my occupation, and I am its messenger. I’m telling you that we can still live through this if you follow every word I say.” She waved off her mother. “You will do whatever you normally do. And as for you, Yvir, you will report back to the Taorin, as if this whole nation hasn’t already been fucked. You should understand this. I could kill you both, right here.” Yvir moved towards her, but the Inquisitor had already drawn her dagger, pointing it beneath the crevice of her breastplate. The woman raised her other hand to her mother. “Stay down. Or I’ll decide otherwise. The reason I haven’t killed you, is because we need each other. I’m no friend to the Taorin. You and I both seek the same thing, and that’s escape from this city.”

“Why should we trust you?” Yvir questioned.

“Do you have any other choice?”

They didn’t. They were hanging by a thread, wrapped around a knife’s two-faced edge against the Taorin, the other against the rebels that had conquered this city – each side ready to cut them down and be forgotten with the countless others they’d killed.

“Blood,” Yvir whispered.

The woman scowled. “What?”

“Blood,” Yvir repeated. “It’s all you eyeless care about in the end. You don’t care about us. You only want to use us for your plans. I’m tired of plans. You need me, if not even more than I need you. The Taorin trust me. What do you want from them?”

The Inquisitor withdrew her dagger. “Cadria wishes for peace with Qeita. An uprising with uncertain claims isn’t what my King wishes. The People’s Army is merely the stem of this deepening trouble. To clear all this cleanly—so there isn’t open war, we must face the root of the problem: the Taorin, and the man who leads them. Their entire organization must be expunged. And you will help me do just that.”