The Mathers Girls, In Their Own Words

[Threnn]

Rosie says:

"Where'd I . . . more a 'we' you know, Sweetheart. It's always been Lyr and me. It's more than being just twins, so don't give me that shit. It's . . . well here, sit your ass down. I'll give you a spin.

My folks were Gilneas born but ended up in Grand Hamlet. Shit, Darkshire. You'd prolly know it as Darkshire. Anyway, it was one of those things that business took them on the road when they were young enough to not worry about having to move across the world? Dad was a blacksmith, my Ma did some healing. Not like, priestess stuff, but with herbs, you know - doctoring type. They got a little place on the outskirts of town, set up a smithing business out of the barn. They did all right for themselves, managed to pull a profit, built a bigger house. Couple years later we were born. The Hamlet was a pretty good place to grow up. Good schools, good folks. Everyone knew everyone else's business, but that's the way of small towns I think. You know, thinking back, outside of the occasional school fistfight - which we always won, Sweetheart, cause we'd cheat - there was nothing really major about anything. Then we hit fourteen. Before then we were like everyone else in town. But the summer of fourteen, that's when the shit hit the wall.

So you know how twins run in families? Maybe you don't, but they do. My Ma was a twin too. Her sister, my aunt Greta, was still in up north when she got knocked up for the first time. She was nervous - my mother'd had a bitch of a time with us, and apparently their mother had nearly died delivering them, so Greta wanted my mom there when she was popping out her kids. It was the middle of the school year, though, so my parents didn't want to pull us out. It was supposed to be a short trip. I still honestly don't know how the fuck she did it, but Lyr convinced Ma that we were old enough to stay on our own for a few weeks. We'd be fifteen in a month or so anyway, not THAT young. One of the neighbors agreed to look in on us, the teachers had us during the day, so in theory, it wouldn't be a big thing. No boys, no parties, home before sunset, and pick up meals at the inn. They left us a little gold on the table and off they went.

Well? That prolly would have worked, except they never came home. No word, no nothing. Fourth week came, then the fifth. At least the money they left us fed us for the first three months. It got tight after that.


Lyr says:

It got real tight, and not just for us. They said there was plague in the north, and then word came down that someone'd killed the king. There were people dying up there, and I guess we should've worried for our folks, but word also came down that Genn Greymane still wouldn't open up his fuckin' wall, even when people were banging on it and dying at its gates.

We never knew how Ma and Dad planned on getting in, only that they said they had a way. Maybe Aunt Greta snuck 'em in. Maybe they sailed from Southshore. They never told us. All that really mattered was, while everyone else looked all hushed and doleful around us, whispering behind their hands that the "poor dears' parents are probably dead and gone," we knew they were safe beyond that wall.

'Course, we didn't disabuse our neighbors of the notion. Pity makes charity stretch a long godsdamned way, you know? Extra biscuits from the innkeeper, the cobbler knocking a few coppers off of a pair of boots when we'd worn ours through... We took what we could get. But the winter wore on, and people got scared that the sickness would come all the way south. Then their husbands and sons went off west, to fight across the sea with the longears. Then they went north, to fight the man guilty of patricide and, what, two counts of regicide?

Ever wonder why the Night's Watch has so many women? It's because there weren't many men left to protect us when the worgen started howling and the gloom began to creep.

Come the turn of the year, the charity'd just about run out. There weren't any extra biscuits, by then. The innkeeper started doling out less and less. First we lost the extra biscuits. Then we lost biscuits altogether. Then there wasn't any meat in the stew. Started being more broth than vegetables, and even that was coming in smaller and smaller bowls. Dad had taught us how to snare rabbits and squirrels, but those were awful scarce when the snows blanketed the ground.

People get funny, when they're scared. They'll pack away food and firewood, hiding it in their cellars so the neighbors can't see what they have stored up. They get mean, secretive, suspicious. They get ugly to anyone who's not their own kin. There are exceptions; we knew a few of them, too. But for the most part, if you weren't blood, you weren't surprised when they said "no," and didn't meet your eyes. Or when they closed the door firmly in your face. Or when they didn't open it at all.

When the darkness came to Duskwood, we learned how to steal.


Rosie says:

I actually kind of liked it. Stealing I mean. Dick thing to admit, yeah? But there was something exhilarating about snatching a pie out of a window, taking a loaf of bread. I got caught a couple times, Lyr got caught a few more than me, and folks started "Watching out for those Mathers girls". We got something of a rep, and it wasn't a good one. Neither of us really cared, though. We were eating, and that was the important thing.

You know, this is going to sound really strange, but as shitty as having Constable Pritt slapping us on the wrist was? Getting caught was the best thing that could've happened. We learned to not repeat mistakes. We got better at being badder. Worse. Sure, four or so overnights in lock up sucked, but it was the last time either of us saw the inside of a jail cell, and that was . . . nearly eight years ago? Smart folks learn from their mistakes, Sweetheart.

So you see this tattoo here? The pie? Yeah, lemme tell you about that one. I know it's sort of random, but there's a story there. There was this one woman, Old Lady Hallers. She was one of those houses the kids avoided on Hallow's Eve. House was in shit condition, sat on a hill. The front porch was a fucking menace. The fourth and eighth slats were gone, and the rest of it had molded over. Anyway, first few weeks we were pinching food to eat, we avoided her place too. You grow up believing something is bad, takes a lot to get past it. I think it was Lyr's turn to "go shopping" - that's what we called it - and the usual spots had gotten better at keeping us out. Padlocks on doors, carts moved so you couldn't just whisk something off the top. Don't know how she got the stones to do it but she went to Hallers place and nabbed a rhubarb pie straight out of the kitchen window. We called it witch pie. Witch pie is pretty fucking tasty, especially if you hadn't had anything to eat in two days.

That kind of opened Hallers up to us. When I got desperate a week or so later, I snatched a Strawberry pie. Four days after that? Lyr nabbed a mincemeat. Took us a bit to figure it out, but Hallers was onto us. She knew what we were doing, and she was offering. Well, we were in the market of taking. Course we suspected she was fattening us up to eat us, but after a while, we even got past THAT and started leaving her presents in thanks. She was the only one who seemed to realize how bad off we were and was willing to do anything about it.

That's why I got this tattoo, for her. She died a few years back, and we went to her funeral. She never actually met us face to face, but she was prolly the best friend we ever had.


Lyr says:

So, with Old Lady Hallers' pies and my occasional attempts at a stew we did okay for food. Don't kid yourself on the stews: in those days I chopped shit up, threw it into a pot with some water, boiled the fuck out of it, and prayed we wouldn't get sick. We didn't, so I guess I did all right. I eventually got better, too, but that was a long time coming.

Anyway. It kept us from starving, but it didn't keep us warm. Funny, the things you never even think about because your parents took care of them. How much do you know about firewood? Let me tell you, it's not just a matter of hacking down a tree and sticking it in the fireplace. You gotta have the right kind of wood, and you can't burn it the day you cut it, most times. That shit has to dry out for a season or so. Else it'll either never fucking catch or it'll smoke you out of the house.

But when you're fifteen, do you think about that? Fuck no. We'd helped dad stack wood and all, but it was just another chore to us, something to keep us from getting bored and causing trouble. We sure as hell weren't thinking about stocking up during our first weeks of being on our own. We didn't think about it when the weather started getting cold, either. Far as we knew, we had wood leftover from the year before, and it'd carry us through.

We were wrong.

Come January, we couldn't pretend that the pile wasn't dwindling anymore. We were running out, and if that happened, we were fucked. At first we just swiped it from other people's woodpiles, but like I said, times got lean. The neighbors got smart and put their stacks where we couldn't reach them, just like they'd been doing with their food.

Our emergency store ran out a week or two before the Lunar Festival. We got by for a couple of days on dead branches from the woods, but we knew had to start cutting down trees ourselves. Think on this: two skinny, half-starved girls, clothes not nearly warm enough for the cold, trying to swing our father's axe at a tree. We were asking for frostbite or a severed limb and we both knew it. I don't think we even put a dent in that fucker before it got too dark to see. We spent the night huddled on the hearth, watching one of our mother's endtables burn way too fast.

Next morning, I went to see the woodcutter. He had about half a cord in reserve, but we sure as shit didn't have any gold leftover to buy it with. So he named another price... not coin. I told him to fuck himself and left. But desperation has a way of making you reconsider your standpoint. Rosie and I woke one another up with our teeth chattering more than once that week, and it was probably only a matter of time until one of us got the fever.

I went back to the woodcutter. His offer was still open. I took it, and the only other thing I'll say about it is this: on my way out, I stole a hatchet and a pair of thick gloves from that son of a bitch.

I never came out and said it, but Rosie knew damned well how we were suddenly up to our ears in firewood. And when spring rolled around, we learned how to swing those fucking axes and cut our own.


Rosie says:

What do you say to a sister who spread so you didn't fucking die? Not much to say, is there? "Thank you" doesn't really cover it. There's also that thing if Lyr doesn't want to talk about something, she doesn't talk about it. Stubborn to all shit. It's like trying to get milk out of a dead cow. I left it alone, but you know? I hated that son of a bitch. Hate him now, still, for taking advantage. One day . . .

Let's move on, yeah? Before this goes somewhere bad.

So half the furniture was gone, but we had wood at least. The beds had stayed put and the couch and table in the kitchen were left too. Everything else had been sold or burned, but . . . we didn't really give a shit. We were still afloat. Not great, but . . . doing all right. Hallers kept us fed, though just barely; it was enough to avoid taking sick. The season was hard, but we survived. Kinda goes without saying we dropped out of school by then, but what we lacked in book smarts we made up for in other smarts. Like . . . I could draw. Real well, always could. My Ma used to put my pictures out on display, would show them to anyone who stopped in. Lyr was always real athletic, could pretty much beat up all the boys in town and did. It's those things that got us our first jobs, really. Mine came earlier than hers did.

The town hall in Grand Hamlet was always heated, and it was public, and during the days, if we were trying to skimp out on how much wood we used, we'd go there and read til it closed its door at supper time. They couldn't really kick us out. We weren't DOING anything, just trying to stay warm so what Lyr'd sold herself for was enough. I think they knew booting us would have solidified their places at the worst people ever, so they left it alone. Anyway, I was doodling at one of the back tables when Sirra Von'Indi stumbled across me. He picked up a portrait I'd done of one of the magistrates who worked in his office, and asked if I'd had any formal training. Told him "no". He nodded, we got talking, and come to find out he was looking for someone to do letters for him, you know like . . . the fancy imprints at the top of stationary? Embossing, that kind of thing. It was only fifteen hours a week, but it was cash, and we needed cash. It didn't buy a whole lot to eat, but instead of having to pinch bread, we could actually buy a loaf here and there.

Worked out well for a time. Then I met Adar.

Fucking slickears.


Lyr says:

I should've caught on to shit with the slickear sooner. There had to be something, somewhere I missed. I mean, fuck, how do you spend nearly every waking moment with a person, survive the winter the way we did, and not know that something's... Shit. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself, and it's Rosie's to tell you anyway. Best I got for not seeing signs I should've is that I got caught up in my own shit. Fucking flimsy, but there it is.

Rosie got her gig with Von'Indi. When spring came, I started doing odd jobs where I could find them. Pockets loosened a little because there were men off fighting still, and more coming home dead or not at all. That, and the ones that did come home had to go right back out again because of the howling in the woods. Sure, they were closer to their farms and families, but Southern Elwynn wasn't any safer than the north, not anymore.

So I spent time doing whatever work I could find. I mucked out stalls, I helped with planting, I learned how to mend fences and put wheels on carts. It wasn't as steady as what Rosie had, but it was something. There were some places, though, that didn't want to hire me. I'd knock on the door and they wouldn't answer. Or some grim-faced farmwife would swing the door open and tell me in no uncertain terms that she wouldn't have my kind in her house. At first I didn't know what the fuck it was about, but I'm a smart girl. I figured it out pretty quick.

The woodcutter'd talked.

It wasn't everyone. It wasn't even most of them. But it was shitty, and it felt shitty, and since one of them was the tailor's wife, I was pretty sure me and Rosie were fucked if we needed new clothes come winter.

That's about where Ebonlocke came in. It was market day, and Rosie was off trying to snag a bar of soap when the apothecary wasn't looking. Probably a good thing she was across the way, because there was Clarice fucking Gnarltree, looking at me like I'd flashed my tits at her husband Morg. All I wanted was a new handle for our frying pan, and she turned me away with a sneer, said something about not needing my business. I stood there, debating whether or not I ought to hit her with said frying pan -- whether it was worth a night in jail to get her nose out of the air by squashing it bloody -- when a hand closed on my shoulder.

Althea Ebonlocke leaned down and said, "You know, every member of the Night's Watch gets her own mess kit. New pan, a new place setting. They're nothing fancy, but they're sturdy enough."

Before I knew it she was steering me along the street towards the town hall, selling me on all the benefits of joining up. "There's a monthly stipend, of course, and on days you patrol, we feed you a hot meal. We'll fit you with a new cloak and new boots, and teach you how to swing a sword."

I think she could see me calculating how long I could have the cloak before giving it to Rosie and pretending to lose it, because she said "I'm sure we can spare a couple of things for your sister, too."

And that was that. I followed her into the town hall, signed my name in the roll book, and became Watcher Mathers of the Night's Watch.


Rosie says:

One thing I will say about the son of a bitch? Adar was pretty. Tall, blond, had the green eyes of his folks, but they didn't glow as much with him? I mean, looked normal really, like human green eyes. I started seeing him in the spring, and he treated me like gold at first. Brought me things, chocolate and candy. Fairly standard fare for courting. It's a little hard to think about how many times we ate the chocolates for dinner instead of real food. My wages only went so far, and we'd learn to budget, so if that meant a caramel supper, so be it. Surprised we have any fucking teeth left, to be honest.

I think I'd been seeing him for three months when Lyr took the job with the watch. It was getting a little tough around town - folks thought I was Lyr, so I got the stink eye as much as she did, and didn't that piss me off. The good news was, the watch clothed us, I fed us, and we were keeping our heads above water. We didn't NEED charity or the towns folks as much. Also didn't need to steal Old Lady Hallers pies, though we did sometimes just because. I started leaving the flowers Adar gave me on her window. She liked that. I could see them on a vase on her kitchen table through the window.

Anyway, even without our folks around, things started looking up for us. Lyr was off training, doing a hell of a job from what she'd said, and I was falling in love with my dream guy. Who cares if his ears stuck straight up, he liked me how I was, or so he said, didn't want me to change. That's why I moved in with him. Thought this was it, I was in love, something was perfect, and for a while it seemed that way. Til his birthday. I didn't have a lot of money still, and what I did have I piped through to Lyr to make sure she got whatever the watch didn't cover, which meant I got him a bottle of his favorite booze and drew him a card for a gift. Apparently wasn't enough. Didn't talk to me for three days for not doing more, for not "appreciating him or loving him enough" whatever the fuck that meant, and when I told him to get over it, he wasn't six and birthdays shouldn't cause this much bullshit, he smacked me.

If you talk to women who've been abused, it's a lot of the same story. You think it'll only be the once, the smack, so you don't worry about it. I mean, after the first time he apologizes, promises it won't happen again, and then it doesn't for a while. Until the next time he's pissed. Everything repeats after that, the only difference being? The time in between slaps gets shorter, and the apologies are less emotional, shorter. I figured out after a while that I had a particular tone of voice he didn't like, one that'd get on his nerves, so I started not to use it. I think that was the first time Lyr noticed something was fucked up. She asked why I sounded different, and I did what I do.

I lied to her.


Lyr says:

You ever heard the phrase, "one lies and the other swears to it"? That was Rosie and me, growing up. Don't get me wrong, I can tell a whopper when I need to, but if we were headed for a grounding, I let Rosie do the talking. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, she had our parents eating out of her hand by the end of the story. They'd have believed the sun was green if she spun it.

So you'd think maybe I should've known she was full of shit, but I didn't. Maybe it was because she'd spent all that time honing her skill. Maybe it was because she'd been so fucking happy with him, and I didn't want to believe anything could be wrong. Yeah, I missed the hell out of her when she moved out. Our parents' house was way up by Raven Hill, far enough out of Grand Hamlet that the only window with a candle in it at night other than mine was Lady Hallers'. It was quiet up there, but I took night patrols with the Watch and it wasn't so bad. That way I didn't have to lay in bed listening to the wolves howling, and I made sure my patrol route took me past Lady Hallers' house, so I knew she was all right, too.

But never once did I wish that Rosie'd have a reason to move home. You get down as far as we'd been, you don't wish it on anyone ever again. Rosie'd gotten out, and I loved her too much to want her to ever have to slink back in.

Guess you could say love made both of us blind. Different kinds of love, different kinds of ways, but there you go. She lied, and I swore to myself that she was being straight with me. I don't even remember what she said. Maybe if I heard it again today I'd be able to shoot holes in it, call her on every little point that didn't add up. Then again, the best lies are simple ones, ones that skim along the truth, and maybe she told me one of those ones.

It went like that for another year and a half, just about. She'd visit me, or I'd visit her, and something'd be off. But whenever I asked, she had an explanation. Towards the end, she probably even had them prepared ahead of time, knowing I'd ask. I started suspecting it after a while, but what proof did I ever have? Rosie's good, she's damned good, and if she's hiding something, you're not likely to find it. Especially when what she's hiding is the truth.

Then came the day I finally caught her out.


Rosie says:

We wrestle. It's a thing, always been sort of shits that way. Few times we've gotten onto spats on the box, people listening probably thought we were insane. It's just how we are. Never goes anywhere, just you know, sisters fucking around with sisters and pissing each other off. There was this one day, she had it off, and she stopped in. I think I asked her some stupid question about whether or not she'd gone dyke yet with all those women around in the watch, and then she was clobbering me. We're about the same size? But don't let that fool you. That girl's strong. Real strong, and she had me ass over teakettle in two seconds flat, tugging my hair out of my fucking skull.

Her elbow hit my side at some point, and that's when the shit hit the wall. Adar had this thing, right? He'd smack me, which wouldn't leave a mark, but when he was real mad he always left my face alone while he kicked the shit out of the rest of me. It'd been going on awhile, and I kept thinking and hoping . . . well, I didn't want to go back home with my tail between my legs, telling my sister that the guy I said was prince fucking charming had turned into a total dickhead, so I'd kept it quiet. And shit, she couldn't REALLY know cause my face was always fine. Everything got laid raw when she accidentally jabbed me in the ribs during the dyke fight and I nearly puked on the floor. I think she always suspected he wasn't treating me right, but that sort of sealed the deal.

She put me in a headlock and pulled my shirt up to look at my ribs. He hadn't broken any, but had come too damned close, and I was black and blue from tit to hip.

I think that's the only time in my life she's screamed at me, like. . . really screamed. We went back and forth, crying and hollering, and she finally got it through my skull I needed to leave. I agreed, told her I would, and she wanted to come with, but I said no. I had to do it on my own, I was a big girl.

. . . mistake. Huge fucking mistake.


Lyr says:

I told her she could do it by herself. That I trusted her, and I'd have dinner ready when she got back. I fidgeted around for, I don't know, maybe five minutes, taking stock of what I had in the cabinets and trying not to start crying all over again. Snot and tears don't make great seasonings, you know?

Even though there was steady money coming in, I was always buying things as cheap as I could. That meant food that was sidling right up to its last edible days. I'd bought peaches the day before, out of the basket Old Man Brown'd marked "damaged." They were a little banged up, probably dropped by one of his grandkids when they were plucking them from the trees. You know what happens when you drop a peach, don't you?

It bruises.

I stood there holding that mangled piece of fruit, and all I could see was Rosie's stomach. I was out the door faster than I could think about it, running as hard as I could. I figured it'd only been fifteen, twenty minutes since she'd gone; if I ran hard enough, maybe I could catch her. Only, I think maybe she'd decided to run, too, so she could get back to Adar before her nerve left her and she decided against leaving him after all. I might've been in the Watch, but Rosie's a hell of a runner. Had to be, with all the stealing we did.

I got to Adar's house and the door was unlocked. I didn't bother knocking. No sound came from inside, which scared me more than if I'd heard them fighting. At first, though, it just seemed like an empty house. Maybe he hadn't been home when she got there and Rosie'd gone off to find him. Or maybe she'd told him she was leaving and he'd gone out to let her pack in peace. I tried on any number of not-so-bad situations in the thirty seconds it took to get to the kitchen. Then all my best-case scenarios went flying right out of my head.

It was just one thing. One out of place little godsdamned thing: a pot on the floor and a puddle of water that hadn't been mopped up. Otherwise the room was as spotless as it had ever been when I came to visit. But that puddle scared the shit out of me, and I started screaming for Rosie. I found her shortly after that, though whether the groan I heard was hers or mine, I'm still not sure. She'd crawled halfway to the back door before the pain was too much. The back of her shirt was soaked. The skin beneath was blistered, pink, peeling off in sheets, like nothing I'd ever fucking seen before. I really thought she was dead. I was sure of it, and...

Give me a minute.

Right. Okay.

I didn't want to leave her, but I had to get help. One of the neighbors came with his son, and we got her back home, somehow. I don't remember much of the trip aside from riding in the back of a cart and holding her hand, apologizing to her, begging her to hang on. Turns out not everyone in Grand Hamlet was an asshole, or maybe enough time had passed that Rosie and I had charmed our way back into their good graces. It could be that Ebonlocke or Von'Indi or someone gave an order, I don't know. The point is, the neighbor's son helped get Rosie inside, then he rode into town and came back with a healer before a half hour had passed. Never even learned the kid's name, I was so focused on Rosie, but I'll always be fucking grateful to him and his dad.

We haven't seen Adar since that day. Probably knows that if he ever shows his face, he's a fucking dead man.


Rosie says:

He'd gotten pissed, thrown the boiling water at me. Fucked up my back, ruined it really. I was face down for six months. Funny the folks who came out of the woodwork to check on me, some of them the same people who'd whispered about Lyr being a whore. Fuckers. But hey, what are you going to do. She was busy with the watch, I needed people who could put cold cloth on my back when she was working. Once again taking charity because it was fucking there. Noticing a trend yet?

I'll say this, was bored to shit during recovery. Though . . . it's not all bad, as messed up as that sounds. I learned forgery then. No really, I know that sounds fucked, but Von'Indi kept giving me work cause my hands worked fine, I was just laid up, but the jobs only took fifteen or twenty hours max, so I kept myself busy copying his shit and . . . learning how folks wrote. Strokes of a pen, pen pressures, all of it's actually pretty complicated. So one day I was there, and for shits an' giggles, tried to copy over one of the town records. It was perfect. I mean, exact. Put both documents side by side in front of me, and when he came in to collect the week's work? He couldn't tell which one HE wrote and which one I wrote.

To make a long story really short? The jobs he gave me? Got a whole fuckload more interesting after that. So'd my visitors. A month or so before my lay up was over? Gent by the name of Rikter Varrins stopped by. Maybe you don't know the name, but the folks in Seven do. He's one of Shaw's asshole buddies. He had a job for me and it was a doozy. Paid good, though, fifteen gold. That's the most money I'd ever had. Why'd I care whose name was on the arrest warrant. We ate well for a month.


Lyr says:

We did all right for ourselves. What Rosie's forgery and my job with the Watch didn't cover, we made up in other ways. You can probably imagine that when word came that the Darkmoon Faire was across the river near Goldshire, the people of Duskwood flocked to it. I mean, shit, your town's covered in perpetual gloom, you need a little bit of color in your life, right?

During her recovery, someone'd brought Rosie a pack of those fortune-cards and a little book on how to read them. At first, we just played poker with them, using matchsticks for our bets, but then she started picking up that book and studying the cards. Wasn't long before she could lay out a circle or a cross and spin you a yarn about what was coming in the next year.

Most times we went to the Faire, it was for a bit of pocket-picking and some Darkmoon Dogs. But this one time, we saw the line of people waiting to get their readings done -- palms, tea leaves, cards, there was even some kind of crystal ball. Rosie went right up to Silas Darkmoon himself and asked if there was any room for another reader when the Faire was in Elwynn. She whipped out her cards and gave him a demonstration right then and there, impressed him enough that she had a stool set up the next afternoon.

They had other openings, too, for barkers and ticket-takers and the like. I ended up taking a few stints myself, shouting for people to step up and test their strength, or come see the freak show. They put me with Kerri Hicks sometimes, the world's strongest woman. That's a fucking hustle, let me tell you. Get the audience to take swings with her hammer, they all ooh and ahh over how heavy it is, and how they can only get that little weight to rise halfway up the pole. I'd collect their money while they bet on how high she could knock it, then I stepped on this lever on my way back to Hicks. Changed the calibration of the whole thing. She could've sneezed on it and the weight would've run the bell.

Fucking carnies.

Anyway, the laugh of it was, no one who worked for the Faire realized Rosie and I were two different people for a long damned time. I mostly avoided the fortune telling, but she had other duties there, too, and we'd take each other's shifts now and then. Wasn't any malice in it, just the convenience of having the same face. We pulled some damned good cons that way.


Rosie says:

The money was steady, I'll say that. Heh, guess you could say we had our thumbs in a lot of pies. I'm so fucking witty. But yeah, we weren't really used to being able to afford things like food and clothes, so we were and - I guess to a point - are overly cautious about money. You keep your pinches and pounds tight to chest in case a rainy day comes again. We took . . . take frugal to a new level. You never really forget being so broke you nearly starved.

At that point, though, things were all right. Shaw kept tapping me on the shoulder, called me his Golden Girl, which I promptly told him to stuff up his ass. He didn't appreciate that. "Golden Girl" became "That Pain In the Ass Mathers Girl". Didn't stop him from pulling me on on bigger jobs, though, especially when he found out I could keep my mouth shut. Thanks to him we didn't need the faire after a couple seasons. There was one night, a few weeks after we'd come clean about being twins to the Darkmoon people? We'd quit, given our two weeks, and the locals were sending us off proper, with enough drinks to float a battleship. Lyr and I, well, I guess you could say we learned our worser habits from the freak show. I'd had one or two too many whiskeys, couldn't hold my drink for shit then, and ended up spilling my guts about the scars on my back. Showed it to Gladys the Tattooed Lady. One thing became another and . . . well, my shoulder got done up with the dragon, Lyr got the the Watch crest on her bicep. We were so wrecked we didn't remember getting it til the next day when we woke up sore.

You know, thinking back, I wonder if we invoked some bad luck that night, cause sure in shit didn't Lyr's tattoo become a fucking target a couple years later.

That's more her thing, but . . . well, it sucked. It really, really sucked.


Lyr says:

Look, what I did was stupid, and I know it. Let's just get that out of the way.

Watchers go out injured all the time. We have rotters in the graveyards, worgen in the woods, and the biggest fucking spiders running around alongside starving wolves. Everything's hungry in Duskwood. Everything. So when Ellie Spratt got her teeth knocked out and her head bashed in by the Red Masks on a trip past Addie's Stead -- did I mention we have Defias, too? -- I volunteered to take her patrol. It was right after my own, anyway.

I said everything was hungry. Me and Rosie weren't right then, but same time, we lived in fear of it just like she said. So if a chance came along to pick up some extra coin, we took it. For all we knew it was another couple of meals down the road, or some new socks. Or firewood.

Problem was, I'd been spending the days helping to pitch hay on one of the nearby farms. Before that, we'd been digging a well. Figure with the farmwork and my regular shift, I was coming home and dropping into bed like a sack of rocks. So when my shift ended and Ellie's started, I was fucking exhausted. Couple days of that and I looked like I belonged with the ghouls over at Tranquil Gardens. But it was good pay, so when Ebonlocke said I looked tired, I lied and told her it wasn't so bad.

I was near the Rotting Orchard when they started following me. Couple of shadows, loping through the trees to either side of the road. Worgen like making their victims scream. Did you know that? But they're not stupid. Most days, they left the Watch alone, like they recognized our uniforms and knew not to fuck with us. I guess maybe I smelled tired, or was walking differently than usual, something that let them know I was easy pickings that night. I thought I was ready for them, when they rushed at me from either side. Either way, I was slow. I got the first one, the smaller one, right on the snout. It was enough to send him yelping off into the trees, but it meant I was still mid-turn when his bigger, uglier brother got close.

It got hold of me. Those claws are fucking sharp. Went right through the leather and into my upper arm, so if I tried twisting away, it'd only do more damage. I had the absurd thought of "That's going to wreck my tattoo," and then it yanked. I felt the bone snap, and the muscles tearing, and my throat started hurting from all the screaming I was doing. That's the last I remember of it.


Rosie says:

One of the other patrols found her right before the big ugger took her throat out. They got her back to town, got her cleaned up. No infection, you probably noticed. She's not furry all over, at least, and that's the only way the taint manifests that we know of.

I'd been working that night, but they yanked me out of Shaw's job to let me know about the accident. I pulled some strings in Seven, got some of their healers out there immediately. Last thing I needed was to lose her, and even if it's just one arm, arms can go bad, and bad can mean dead. I cleaned out half my savings to get good people. The shitty thing about it? It didn't do a ton of good She lost most of it anyway. Not lost literally, like they didn't remove it, but even now she's only got some movement. Can't lift above her shoulder, so . . . sword arm went to shit. I guess I shouldn't bitch, though; if they hadn't been as good as they were, they might have had to amputate. They said it was that bad. Worgen are strong, Sweetheart, real strong. If you ever have to get in a boxing match with one, I suggest you bring some friends.

Lyr uhhh. Well? She's angrier than me, I guess is the best way to put it sometimes. She gets pissed. I have a temper too, not suggesting I don't, but she gets really, really mad. I can't remember how many people got tongue lashings after she was told no more weapon work. I think she felt like she'd failed us, like she couldn't carry her load anymore, and it made the frustration worse. She even tried picking a fight with me, grabbed me and started yelling, but I was smart enough to just let it slide.

In the meanwhile I did what any good sister would do in my shoes: I kept her drunk on rye as often as she needed, and held her head over a bucket when she puked it up the next day.

Ebonlocke felt guilty about the whole thing. She'd known Lyr looked too tired and hadn't stopped her from taking the patrol when she really should have. She checked in a few times, brought food, books, whatever she could think of to help Lyr's recovery.

In the end, I think she's also who brought in the Tor.


Lyr says:

These two ponces showed up in their robes of state one day, knocking on our door and inviting themselves in. These two pristine looking men, their noses all in the air when they realized we didn't exactly have a sitting room, or tea and biscuits to offer them. I suppose most of their apprentices do a lot of boot-licking before they're allowed in the Tor's hallowed halls. I tried throwing them out at first, but Rosie shoved my ass down on the tattered loveseat and made me hear them out.

You didn't need two good arms to be able to wield magic, they said, and that they'd make special arrangements for me, since I was starting out a lot later than their typical students.

I told them I couldn't afford their tuition anyway, let alone waste my money on their fancy silk dresses. That was all right with them. They actually figured we "could come to an agreement."

The woodcutter'd wanted to come to an agreement, too. Yeah, I know. I probably should have realized the one that said it didn't mean it like that, but it's what I heard, and what I thought, and my sight went red. My right arm might be fucking gimped, but I can still throw a punch with my left. Rosie and his friend had to drag me off of him. He was a bloody mess, nose smashed and running, eye on its way to a hell of a shiner.

I felt kind of bad, after, but only a little. I also figured that any tentative offer was about to be rescinded. Only, he looked at me, while he held one of our dishtowels to his face and bled all over it, and said, "I think I know just the person to whom you shall be apprenticed."


Rosie says:

Like I said, temper, only this time? It saddled us with a creepy fucking dead person. We didn't know it at first. I mean, they had to teach her the basics before giving her over to someone else, so she spent a while just doing the small things: lighting fires, making a snowball, playing with static, all sorts of weird mage-y shit. She really resented it at first, bitched and pissed and moaned, then there was that first time the little shit put a fucking pile of snow she'd conjured down my back. Think that was when she figured it wasn't SO bad.

Anyway, Tor put up with her, though I'm not sure why. Neither does she, if you ask her. She wasn't a model student. Wanted to be outside swinging a sword around, not stuck in some room with books making pens float. But hey, it paid the bills, we were secure again, and . . . she settled in. Just made it tough on her tutors til she did. Again, her story not mine, but . . .

Look I don't have too much to say about it. I just know the day they brought in Yva FUCKING Darrows, and that son of a bitch Tor-ite wore that shit eating grin when he did the introduction, I think both of us wanted to puke on our shoes. We knew who she was, what she'd done. Everyone fucking knew who she was. And here was my sister? Stuck with her ass.

Nice job, Lyr. Nice.


Lyr says:

It's not like I requested her. She was my punishment for breaking the shithead's nose, and I was hers for... I don't even know what. I mean, yeah, everyone's heard the stories, thirty men in Winterspring and stealing babies and booga booga. I'm still surprised she hasn't killed me yet, even though she says she doesn't plan on it. She's not bad as teachers go. I mean, I'm learning shit with her that would give the Tor fits.

She likes Rosie, too. I think it's a stubborn thing: she's going to get into my sister's good graces if it takes a hundred years. The more Rosie stonewalls, the more pies Yva bakes. It's actually kind of funny, but I know if I dwell on it I'm asking for a punch to the gut, so I'll stop.

Anyway, here we are in Stormwind instead of Duskwood, doing all right for ourselves. Sure, life could take another turn, dump us back out into the streets, but we'll get through. It's what we do. I've got Rosie, Rosie's got me. It's all we need.

Got a place to crash, though. Even nicer now that the slut demon's gone. I won't sneeze at a steady income and a bar full of men with nice asses and good booze to go and unwind at, either.

Speaking of good booze, you ought to buy a couple of nice girls a drink."