Face-Slapping11 min read
"Don't Move" — A Blade, a Bath, and the Banquet
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"Move," I hissed.
I was on the roof with a bow that trembled in my fingers and a plan that felt like a rope around my throat. Below, silk curtains billowed. Music leaked up like smoke. He was in the bath.
"I told you to keep quiet," Callen whispered from the darkness at my shoulder. He smelled like cold iron and hot wind.
"I can do this," I said. My voice was small. My heart was loud.
The arrow left the string with a clean sound. Time went thin.
"Shit!" Callen swore, the word sharp. "Drop!"
I didn't know why I hesitated. It wasn't the men in front of me. It was the man in the tub. He was beautiful in a way that made my hands clench: dark hair, broad chest, pale skin shining with milk and flower petals. I told myself to breathe. I told myself he was a target. I pulled the string again.
Something in the bath exploded—water, petals, a gasp—and then a figure moved like a shadow, and Callen's hand closed around my throat so fast I thought it would break.
"Callen!" I croaked. I tried to bite air. My bow banged uselessly against his ribs.
The man from the tub stepped out, and his voice was silk and knife. "Is that how you kill someone?"
I should have been angry. I was small, I was masked; I was supposed to be a ghost. Instead my face burned and I lied like a child. "I—I'm clumsy. I missed."
He laughed low. "You came for me?"
"I came for a reward," I said. It was the truth and a lie.
He pulled off my mask to look, because he could. I saw him look. That look dug at me. He smiled as if he found a new toy.
"Get her dressed," he said to the servants. He gave me his coat. He let me cover myself, and then he said, "You have nerve."
Callen hit the roof and we ran. Firecrackers scattered the night; someone had set a smoke device to cover the escape. I landed on the tiles, breathless, alive. Callen kept cursing me the whole way back.
The next day, Grayson Abe called me in.
"Sit," he said when I bowed. Grayson was quiet when he wanted to be. His eyes were water-deep and smart. "Tell me what happened."
I told him, short and raw. He looked at the red on my cheeks and at my hands and then up at me like he was measuring a bridge.
"You nearly let him humiliate you," he said finally.
"I wanted to kill him," I said.
"Then you almost did something else." He folded his hands. "Elyse, you will not go back into a place like that again. Not alone."
"Then what do you want me to do?" I asked.
He offered me a job. "Stay by my side for now. Guard me. Learn to be seen without being eaten."
I thought of Callen's shoulder where my throat had been. I thought of the list of men who had bought the life I was given. I thought of the ledger that named Gunner Diaz as trouble. I thought: if I could not be the arrow that killed him, maybe I could be the blade he never saw.
"All right," I said.
Callen healed slowly. He limped when we went out on a job from Grayson's place, and I hated that I had to be grateful. Grayson trusted me in ways that made my chest hot and my jaw tight. He gave me a place near him I did not ask for. For a while, the plan was simple: we would finish what had been started. We would go together and pull the thread that pulled at the dangerous men.
Then Grayson's sister, Lady Vera, arrived at court. The house whispered politics. There were maps, and names, and old debts. Grayson talked less and watched more. Lady Vera's voice was kind and sharp. She sat me across from her one evening.
"Elyse," she said. "Would you mind being near Grayson? As a guard? He has many eyes on him. A quiet one at his side calms the room."
I told her again that I was a killer, not a lady. She smiled like a blade. "There is honor in a different place."
The truth was this: they wanted me kept where I could be seen and not killed. They wanted to use me. They wanted to keep me safe. I wanted to use them.
We sent Callen and two others to the south to find the men who had ambushed our team. Callen swore he would take every name. He promised me he would not fail. I wanted to believe him.
He failed.
We found him half-dead on the floor of an inn. Three weeks later he was getting better, but they said his right shoulder would never be the same. I stood watch over him and dreamed of the day we would cut Gunner out of the world.
Months passed. I learned to look like I belonged. Grayson taught me ceremony, not because he liked it, but because he needed me to stand where eyes could see me. He taught me how to hold a cup, how to look like a servant who had no story. It was a strange lesson for a man who carried war in his palms.
And then the order came. The map changed. Lady Vera pulled me aside and said, "They want peace. But some men will not stop. There are two: Gunner Diaz and his father. The house must not lose face."
I felt my throat close. It was the same house I had targeted that night. It was the same man who had lifted me like a toy. I felt my fingers go cold and hot at once.
"Do you want this?" Grayson asked that night.
"Yes," I said. "For Callen. For the men on the list. For reason. For myself."
"Then we go," he said.
We went in darkness. Callen helped. He still limped, still cursed, still loved the quick strike. This time we planned to slip in as servants and do the thing quiet and clean.
It failed the first time. A trap waited for us in the orchard. Callen died on the floor with his eyes open long before he left his boots warm. I should have been the one to die there. Instead I was dragged into the house, stripped of mask and will.
Gunner Diaz liked to hum. He liked to catch flies in his mouth. He liked to smile at the people he broke.
"You tried to kill me," he said the night they closed my face in. He was leaning on a cane, as smooth as a cat. "Why not try again properly?"
"You will pay for him," I hissed.
He laughed. "You think murder fixes all debts? Come. Stay. Be useful."
They made me clean his rooms. They made me test his food when he wanted to be sure. He watched me and fed me small cruelties. One night he took the blade from my shoe and said, "You keep knives for a life you think you can leave. Try staying. Try serving. Try bleeding on someone else's floor." He put me on my knees and cut a line on my palm as a 'mark of service.' He told me no one would believe me if I spoke of him. He chose me as his tiny, dangerous joke.
I bided my time.
Callen recovered enough to whisper plans into my hair. Grayson pretended ignorance, but I learned he had eyes everywhere. I learned that to turn the table on a man like Gunner, I needed a public stage.
So I took a stage. I wrote messages. I gathered proof. I kept a list of faces who had been sold, a ledger of bribes, receipts. I stole what the servants threw away: letters, matchsticks, the perfume bottles filled with other men's names. I kept a scrap where Gunner had laughed about a woman he'd ruined. I kept a ring with his blood on the inside, pried from a cuff when he fell asleep with wine.
I planned the banquet.
"Tonight," I told Grayson when I had everything. We stood at the back of the hall, among lanterns that smelled of oil. "Tonight is when we make it public."
"You will stand before them?" Grayson asked.
"I will stand with the ledger," I said. "You will do what you promised. Callen will watch. Other faces will be there. I want him to beg, Grayson. I want him to fall on his face."
He did not smile. "You will feel no mercy from them if this fails."
"I only need it to succeed once."
The banquet room had three hundred guests. The town's great families were there. The garden's lanterns swung. There were musicians and courtesans masked in pearls. Gunner arrived with that same easy smile and his pale skin and his silk coat. He sat at the high table where power had a voice.
"Let the entertainment begin," he said.
I moved like a shadow when the song swelled. I had broken up the ledger into pieces and passed them to half a dozen people: a maid with a bright temper, a soldier with two daughters, a clerk tired of taking bribes, and a priest tired of a liar. I had asked them to stand a signal we all agreed on: when the violin fell silent and the bell chimed, they would unfold the papers.
The bell chimed.
The music dropped like a blade.
"Stop the music," I called. My voice did not shake. "I have something to say."
A hundred heads turned.
"Who is this?" Gunner smiled like a predator.
"I am Elyse Brady," I said. "I was a thief, a killer, a shadow. I am also the woman he tried to break."
Gunner's eyes flicked to me. "She lies."
"Is it a lie that you paid men to ruin families?" I asked, and a paper slid into my hand. I read names he had signed. I read the note where he called women "useful" and said he would take them for sport. I read the receipt where he had given money to the man who had tracked Callen. I read the little note with the phrase, "Keep her quiet." I read the ledger where he wrote, "Rune Day: pay to silence."
He lashed out. "You have no proof!"
"Then ask your man who sold me the poison," I said. "Ask the cook who admitted you hired a healer to keep your secrets. Ask the guard who held open your door. Ask the priest who refused your wedding gift. I have them. They will speak."
They did.
A maid stood. "He paid my husband to take a girl away from our alley. I have the coin." She lifted a coin, the edges bright. Her voice shook, but she stood.
A clerk rose. "He signed for fabric with the name of the girl he kept," the clerk said. "We found hair under the bed." He reached and pulled the hair—real, obvious. People gasped.
"Enough!" Gunner barked. He reached for the papers.
"Don't!" Grayson called from the room's edge.
Gunner lunged. He threw his wine. He grabbed the choreographer of the house and dragged him to the middle. "This is slander!" he roared.
"Close the doors!" Gunner shouted. His voice tried to fill the room, but something snapped then. People moved away from him like a tide pulling.
"Why did you take money to silence men?" Grayson stepped forward, slow and steady. He did not raise his voice. "Why did you make a litany of women's names like they were a list of prizes?"
Gunner's smile faltered. He was used to being the man who gave orders. He was not used to a man with the look Grayson had: a look that said, "I will ruin you by paper and witnesses." Gunner's face went light, then red, then hard.
"These are lies!" he barked. "I will sue you! I will—"
"Hear them speak first," Grayson said. "Then go to any court you like."
"Guard!" Gunner roared. "Seize her!"
Hands reached for me. I did not move. I had expected this. The guard's hands were clumsy; the clerk who had stood earlier had friends in the law, and a soldier who owed him raised his sword. The room split.
We let the room split. A woman's voice read a letter about Gunner's arranging a marriage then taking the girl. A child's father pointed to a name: "He took my sister's dowry," he said.
Gunner's face went from red to grey.
"You're lying!" he screamed again, louder, and then his voice tore into a new sound: fear.
He tried to laugh. It came out thin. "You think I will let this stand? I will buy this town!"
"Buy the servants' mouths?" a man said. "We have receipts."
Gunner took out his cane and began to stomp, desperate to make noise break the confession. "You are fools! You will be ruined for this!"
A woman in silk—the wife of one of Gunner's friends—stepped forward and tore open a small black wallet. From inside she pulled a scrap with Gunner's seal pressed into a ribbon.
"Is this yours?" she asked.
Gunner ran his hand over it. For the first time, his hands shook. He had been powerful when he controlled who spoke. Now the room pounced on his power like a pack. The maid who had been paid to keep silent cried out, and a dozen others marched to the middle and told what they knew. Men and women who had been bought with coins and favors—now they stood and spat the memory into the hall.
Gunner staggered. He tried to deny and then to charm, and both failed. His voice lost shape.
"Shut up!" he begged at one point. "You're all mad!"
A child called from the back, "He took my aunt's name off the register. She was a good cook."
People turned, and then the guards who answered to other masters stepped back. Rumors reached them; guns are brave when the wind is steady, but tonight the wind ran with truth.
Gunner's shoulders drooped. He walked toward the high table and then he fell to his knees on the polished floor. His silk coat fluttered, and his hands shook. He looked at me like he'd been split open.
"Please," he said. It was not a roar. It was the sound of a man asking a favor he had never once in life begged for. His voice cracked. "Please, I'm sorry. I didn't—"
Lies had always been his method. Not tonight. Tonight his apologies were small, thin petals.
"Beg," someone said—one of the women whose name he'd ruined. "Beg in front of them."
He bowed his head. "Please," he whispered. "Please don't—I'm sorry."
Then his mask dropped. He tried to speak again, and he reached for the high table as if to draw power.
The crowd began to call out. Not insults. Not pity. They called out the names he had stolen. They told short, clean stories—one-sentence truths that landed like blows.
"She had a baby, and he left her with nothing!"
"He paid for a silence I could not afford!"
"He took my sister's pride!"
It went on and on. The room grew loud, filled with exhalations and small, merciless things.
A man held up his phone—an odd new object that captured more than memory. "This is recorded," he said. "This will be on the messenger's board before sunup."
Gunner's eyes darted. He clawed at the floor. He wanted the floor to open. He wanted the room to stop listening.
"Please," he whispered again, humble and raw. "I will give you everything. I'll leave the city. I'll beg. Don't make this—don't ruin me."
"Why should we believe you now?" Grayson asked. His voice was low. "You always paid for silence."
Gunner's knees scraped on the wood. He began to cry, hot and messy. The rich man, the predator, the voice with all the arrogance—he was suddenly someone small and raw on his knees.
"Please," he babbled. "I will kneel. I will beg. I will go. Just—let me go."
People who had been afraid of his money and his threats now watched him fold in public. Some recorded. Some laughed. Some spat. Children pointed. Someone threw a napkin at his head. It hit like a little flag.
"Leave our town," said one of the elders. He stepped forward. "Leave and never come back. Kneel and beg on the road. Apologize to every woman you hurt before you go."
Gunner caught at the elder's coat like a drowning man. "Please," he said. His voice was thinner and more real than anything I'd heard from him.
"Beg," the elder said again.
Gunner crawled forward and bowed so low his forehead bled on the floor. He kept crying and kept begging and kept naming us as the ones who had ruined him. He was no longer the man with silk and coins. He was a human pleading to be left with breath.
The crowd hissed with satisfaction. There were a hundred witnesses. They recorded the kneeling, the pleading, the humiliation. Someone spat. Another took pictures.
Then came the last, sharpest blow.
Grayson stood. He walked slowly to where Gunner knelt. He pulled a small packet from his sleeve—the ledger pieces I had given to the town's people all sewn together again into that long, ugly truth. He shook it where Gunner could see.
"All of this," Grayson said. "Every name, every price. You have a choice. Leave and never be heard from again, or let us see the courts. Let us send everything to the capital. Let your family read it. Let your father's house crumble under what you have done."
Gunner's face collapsed. He looked up and saw not a man pleading, but a city with a memory.
"No!" he cried. "I'll leave. I'll leave." He tried to rise, but his knees were raw. He waited for a hand to pull him up. No hand came.
"Leave by dusk," declared the elder. "And on the road to the gates, you will kneel at each mile and beg forgiveness."
"Please," he said again, and this time the voice was hollow and small.
The crowd did not cheer. They did not turn on him like wolves. They recorded, they watched, and they let the law of humiliation run its course.
When he was dragged out—begging, pleading, hands clasped—he looked back at me. His eyes were glassy. "You will regret this," he said.
"Regret what?" I asked.
"That you left me alive," he whispered.
Too late.
He was taken through the gate like a criminal who had been found wanting. Men and women smiled with a sharp pleasure. The messenger boys would carry the story to the market. The performances of a powerful man had been reduced to a kneel and a name.
When it was done, I felt sick and whole at once.
Grayson came to me. He did not praise. He placed a hand on my shoulder and it was as light as a breath.
"You did well," he said.
Callen came too, bandaged arm and still limping. His face had the look of a man who had watched something happen and had to live with himself.
"Was it enough?" he asked.
"No," I said. "But it's a start."
We had made him small in front of the world, and the world had watched. It was what we wanted: his power taken away in public. It was what I wanted: to see that arrogant smile broken into something ugly and human. It was what Callen wanted: a name paid, a debt started.
Later, when the town buzzed and the lanterns were out, when drunk men told the story in the alleys and women whispered in kitchens, Gunner would learn what true punishment meant. He would be taken from house to house. He would beg. He would be stared at by market children. He would never sit at the high table again.
I stepped outside into the cold air. A neighbor woman reached out and grabbed my sleeve. "You were brave," she said.
I nodded. "We did it."
"And your hands?" she asked, looking at the scar on my palm. "They will heal."
"They will," I said. "But some things don't heal the same way."
I thought of all the women who had lost more than a night. I thought of Callen and of Grayson. I thought of how small a banquet could be when it contained such a big truth.
"Come," Callen said. "We have to plan the next step."
"I will be ready," I said.
And I was.
The End
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