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| | Lately she is attended by [[The Gardener]], an automaton built to protect her and help her in her work. | | Lately she is attended by [[The Gardener]], an automaton built to protect her and help her in her work. |
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| − | [[The Gardener]] seemed nervous. Over and over it trimmed the same bushes, turned the same soil. All the while it’s piping voice continued to play a low work song, but there were deeper undercurrents reflecting the gravity of the situation.
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| − | The final tier of the [[Plum Blossom Retreat]] was accessible to guests and residents with awakened essence or specific leave, which was generally granted on a day to day basis. Since it was fully as large as any of the other wards in the Retreat, it was indeed a vast place. The terrace was almost entirely given over to meditation gardens: winding paths, streams, pools, teahouses, guest houses, arches, rock gardens, grottoes, caverns, and arbors.
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| − | This particular location was built into the cliff face, approachable only by a high, winding stairs that passed along a narrow, damp bridge behind a waterfall. The tiny terrace was barely six yards across, carved from the cliff face so that it was sheltered from the sky. A low screening hedge provided some safety from falling, but the chief decorative feature was a hanging screen of flowering creepers. Tiny, pure white blossoms grew in clusters along the vines, creating a lace-like curtain that filtered the light of the setting sun. The moist stone floor of the niche was covered in a fine patina of moss, but the curving wooden benches at the rear of the room were dry.
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| − | Marta stood seated opposite her brother, [[Rivers Between Us]]. Nervously she twisted the hem of her blouse, where a thread had come loose. She knew that if she continued to fidget with it, the hem would begin to unravel, but thinking about this made it easier for her to avoid looking her sibling in the eye.
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| − | “Marta, I know how you must feel about this, but I know she wants to clean break from what she was before. She has even sworn this to me.” She could tell that he was trying to convince her, but she was afraid of even looking at him and seeing the force of his fervor. “I swear to you...”
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| − | “Nathan, when you left, I told you I knew what you were going to do. You can’t help but try to save her. It’s who you are...” There, the hem was ruined now. She shouldn’t waste material like this. “...which is what scares me. I mean, what if this has all been some grand plan by your enemies? You were fooled before...”
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| − | “I wasn’t.” His hand grabbed her own, and closed around it. Unable to continue the slow destruction of her blouse, she sat still. “She is an assassin. If she really had wanted to kill me, I would be just as dead as I would if Leaf decided to kill me. I know that when you meet her, you’ll understand.”
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| − | “Meet her...” She looked up to the pathway and saw that someone was crossing the perilous bridge, passing through the mists that swept behind the waterfall. “I’m not ready, Nathan. Tell her to go back.” She stood, shaking, and crossed her arms before her chest, rubbing her forearms.
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| − | “You tell me if you see deceit in her.”
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| − | “Will it make any difference?”
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| − | “Even if it’s there, even if this is the Mask’s most brilliant ploy to capture and break a solar exalted, I swear it will be the breaking of him. What he has intended for evil, I will redeem for good.”
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| − | Rivers withdrew to the edge of the terrace. [[Seven Season’s Widow]] stood before Marta, dressed in the cerements of a young woman condemned to an early grave. Her face was pale, and in her eyes she saw the cold light of a killer, but beneath that, like a stream beneath a thin layer of ice, other emotions battled. Fear. Pain. Hope.
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| − | Opposite her, the deathknight saw on Marta’s cheek the dark, poker shaped scar, and it’s mates that marched in regular intervals along her right arm. The two women looked at each other and each saw echoes of her own past.
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| − | The widow spoke first. “In the end, he came to save you...”
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| − | Marta’s voice was hoarse. “...but no one came for you...”
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| − | “Until now.”
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| | 1. [[Rivers Between Us]] | | 1. [[Rivers Between Us]] |
