Mia
Far from feeling accomplished with her two successful missions, Mia had felt the guilt she guessed would be appropriate for a murderer like herself. Of course, feeling anything at all was a great surprise to her, but she had always expected to take joy in her work. After all, she had taken great pleasure in ending the miserable life of Johnny Clark, but he was a slob. With his sister, it had been different. She had been characteristically calm when she had left that dreary social gathering behind, but her sleep that night was disturbed by the first nightmare she’d had since she was eight years old.
She was surrounded. Spellwarriors, templars, Royal Army soldiers, and angry civilians alike had formed a mob around her. They prodded her with various weapons to keep her at a berth as if they had all been afraid to come close. As they did so, she could hear the whispers of vicious accusations.
“Traitor.”
“Monster.”
“Murderer.”
“Demon.”
Those were not words Mia would ever choose to be described as, but were they untrue? She had committed high treason twice in the span of a week and killed far too many other people in the meantime, none of who were the sort of enemy she had been trained to kill. In all of her fantasies of being a Scarlet Starling, she was sticking her knife into the hearts of the real demons and monsters. She would never be seen doing it, but she always pictured innocent people whispering about her deeds; praising the bravery of whoever had sent the worst of society to the Forge for a well-deserved eternity of exhausting labor.
Now, she wasn’t so sure she didn’t belong in the Forge.
As if to confirm this fear, a massive iron forge rose from the ground beneath her and swallowed her in its searing flames. The pain of it had felt so real that it had driven her to tears for the first time. Fortunately, she did not suffer long. The shock of her predicament had sent her heart hammering into overdrive and forced her awake.
She brushed her natural wavy, golden hair out of her face, rubbed the blurriness out of her eyes, and took in her surroundings. She was in her own bed for once, nestled in the top floor of Solan’s mayoral estate. She had taken little care in decorating her room, whose sole furnishings were a four-poster bed with navy blue hangings and creamy white bedding and a small, artisinal wardrobe that held the few clothes she owned; her various costumes were hidden elsewhere.
These accommodations were the best part of being one of the Starlings: the mayor of the southern shore was also the head of the guild. Along with being the perfect cover, Dinorah’s position gave the Starlings a safe haven where no one ever asked questions. After two highly publicized jobs, Mia had found it difficult not to appreciate these facts. Even if she had been identified by the spellwarriors or the press, this village was the safest place in the world for her.
Mia pushed aside the navy blue curtains and glanced outside. The sun had not yet shown itself, but the sky was painted with the dark grey of pre-dawn. Well, I guess there’s no point going back to sleep now. She decided to while away the rest of the dwindling night doing… well, nothing. No matter what she task she tried to set herself too-- reading, drawing, or practicing her dexterity with her knife-- she always found herself distracted by dark thoughts. When she had nearly impaled her foot after dropping her blade, she sighed and gave in to the thoughts.
Nothing had turned out as she had expected. If Mia were being honest, she never considered herself to be innocent. On the contrary, she only truly felt alive when she contemplated her vicious crafts. Even now, picturing the blood she had drawn gave her a chill of pure bliss, but she had at least enough humanity in her to know that most people don’t deserve her cruel affection. She had hoped that she could offset the evil in her heart by directing it toward evil itself, but what terrified her most was that her failure to do so in the last two cases didn’t seem to matter. She still relished the ferocity of her first kill and the ingenious guile of her second.
Look at me, feeling shit. Mia suppressed the urge to smack herself. Get it together. This is only a little setback. I’ll find myself on the right path soon enough. Of course, this was optimism to the point of foolishness as logic told her, but this seemed to please her unwelcome new emotional side. That thought did not sit well with her; it was as if the thought didn’t truly belong to her. Grow up!
Dawn would eventually come and beckon Mia into action. Now that she was home, she intended to talk to her mother directly about her unexpectedly gruesome course. But Dinorah wasn’t there at the moment, she recalled. “I’m going out until dawn, dear. Get some rest,” was what her adoptive mother had said the exact moment Mia had returned to the house. So she waited. Nothing wrong with that in her line of work.
Right on cue, the sun’s first rays poured over the western hills and illuminated the winding cobblestone path down to the rest of the village. There, Mia could clearly see the perfect mask of Lady Winstrom strolling up to the house. She was accompanied by a man whose wide-brimmed, pointy hat obscured most of his identifiable features. Probably Mario. Mia dressed quickly and rushed to greet them. She had been delayed by the complexity of her dress; an impractical fixture of her life as the daughter of someone important who also happens to be an assassin who prizes the ability to blend into public.
When she reached the lobby, she had noticed that Mario was not wearing the hat she had just seen, but a smoking jacket and loose-fitting slacks. The barest traces of exhaustion had worn into his face, which was new to Mia. The older assassin had always seemed to be a fountain of energy with a gaping smile to match. He was capable of putting on the most intimidating façade at times, but even that look had a fire behind it that promised never to convey anything as weak as fatigue.
Dinorah smiled at Mia and beckoned to her. “It’s good to see you up this early, Amelia! You’ve saved me the trouble of sending for you! Come to the sitting room, my little Starling!”
Mia could not help beaming. She could hear the pride in her mother’s voice to be able to call her a Starling at last. She was strongly motivated to follow in her mother’s footsteps by her vicious inclinations and a sense of dark justice. Yet the affection she had received was at least half her reason for working so hard to prove herself. Together, the three of them walked into the spacious sitting room. As customary, Mia and Mario stood at the center of the room, where the lynx crest of the village was in prominent display. Mia found herself staring into the great cat’s eyes as Dinorah took her place in the plush armchair directly across from them. When the mistress nodded, the two of them sat beside each other on the couch to Dinorah’s right.
Dinorah turned to Mia and said, “How have you fared? The first are always the hardest for the fledglings.”
Mia gave her mother a courteous smile. “It was fun, of course. I suppose I feel some guilt, but you always say that will fade with experience.”
“It’s so very good of you to remember my words, dear,” Dinorah said fondly. “That is the most important lesson I’ve ever had to teach you.”
“Wickedness is infections, so we bury our poisoned hearts for the good of all,” Mia recited from memory.
“No one ever expected you to memorize those words verbatim,” Mario said teasingly.
“They’re important!” Mia snapped.
“Do you know why that is?” Dinorah asked with narrowed eyes.
The girl nodded. “That is… well… the Starlings are all naturally wicked. But we direct that wickedness at evil so we can be redeemed.”
Mario stifled a chuckle, drawing an expression of ire from his mistress. She shook her head patiently and replied, “Not exactly. Yes, there is darkness in all of our hearts, but that doesn’t make us naturally wicked. We are not a guild for violent brutes with the barest glimmer of a conscious. The Scarlet Starlings are created by tragedy. When an innocent soul is harmed by a wicked one, their evil infects the victim. This trauma rips a veil from our eyes and shows us the truth of the world.”
This explanation had confused Mia. She sat there after Dinorah had finished speaking with her eyes glazed over and her mouth open. “What truth?”
Mario’s eyes were alight with a fearsome gleam. “The truth is that the world is crazy. You could live your whole life without ever knowing the limits of mortal insanity, but those of us who’ve seen it once now see it everywhere we go. The Starlings are people who aren‘t too far gone to be useful to society. We choose to do so in a vital way that only warped people like us can.”
This only confused Mia even further. She didn’t see anything like this at all. Mortals of every shade had generally seemed harmless and boring to Mia. Those interesting few that she’d come to know were definitely well in the minority as far as she could tell.
Dinorah sighed. “I can tell you don’t understand yet, darling, but you will. When we have completed Operation Lighthouse, it will all be perfectly clear to you.”
With that, the time for amiable discussion was over. Now was a time to get some answers. Mia stared hard into her mother eyes as she reflected once more on her lingering sentiments, which had grown so very near to a sliver of outrage. Mario tensed a little as he caught Mia’s eye.
“What is Operation Lighthouse?”
Her question had flown out of Mia’s mouth like the point of a thrown dagger. She knew that she needn’t be so confrontational. Dinorah’s attitude seemed rather accommodating, so there was no reason to suspect she had no intention to conceal anything. Dinorah had ignored the edge in her voice while Mario jumped.
“For the longest time we have been vilified for our work,” Dinorah explained with a patient smile. “We have brought peace to so many who were wronged by the scum of the world, but now to even ask for our help is considered a crime worthy of imprisonment. The problem is that the innocent can’t see the darkness that surrounds them as we do. We are going to rip the veil from the eyes of all so that they will know where evil truly lies.”
“And part of that is to kill the royal family,” Mia murmured, thoughtfully. “Because we want to put someone on the throne who’s more sympathetic to our cause.”
Dinorah nodded. “Precisely. With our ally, the future king of Resta, we will show the people of this rotten world the reason we exist.”
“That just leaves the youngest of the family and the queen herself,” Mia continued.
Mia’s stomach turned at the thought. The Queen herself might have been the member of the Royal Family who most deserved the attention of the Starlings, but Anthony Clark had to be the least. Everyone knew that he was a doctor who resided in Solan’s sister village to the east. Rather than embracing the excesses of royal life like his three siblings, he had become a caring, competent doctor. He even traveled to Solan on a weekly basis to help the villagers who otherwise lacked access to a doctor. No matter how far she had tried to broaden her view of evil, there was nothing she could think of to justify that man’s murder.
“I think I’d like to sit the next one out,” Mia said woozily. “My conscience hasn’t weakened enough to take the last prince on yet.”
“That won’t be necessary,” a new voice had suddenly interjected.
The man with the pointed hat showed up, proving that Mario didn’t have such poor taste in headgear after all. He walked into the room and took off his hat with a graceful bow. There stood the very man Mia had been talking about. Anthony Clark had a calm expression on his face, which seemed odd for a man surrounded by killers. Mia eyed him up and down and found that she felt differently about him in person than in theory. As she stared into his eyes, she was sure that she could see the very wickedness of which they had recently conversed. Mia had been about to stand up in response to his intrusion, but stopped when she felt Mario’s hand on her shoulder.
“What are you doing here?” Dinorah demanded. “I asked you to wait in the dining hall!”
“I beg your pardon,” Dr. Clark growled, a wolfish smirk smearing his face. “But is that any way to talk to your future king?”
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