The Cleansing

Iskrin stands at his washstand, looking in the mirror at the wound on his shoulder. He reaches his slender fingers up to touch it and winces at the pain. Fucking Drow, he thinks to himself, recalling the mercenary who gave him this pretty gash. 

It has been 12 hours since the hunting party of AmranKai returned successfully to Ansa’fel with Lorien and the drow mercenary as prisoners. Iskrin has spent the time since in the House of Healing in the tender care of Master An’Dorel. Ezran, the fae assassin, is the worst for wear, but Iskrin and Bolan Tale, a friend of old, have come out relatively unscathed. Bolan has returned to the Undercity to see what he can learn about the identity of the drow mercenary and her dead colleague, and Iskrin has returned to his tower to brood.

“It was a mess,” he says to Carolyn, who is lying naked on his bed, a thin silk sheet across her legs and belly. “They had the drop on us. We only won through superior numbers, not superior skill.”

“But you did win,” she says levelly.

“Aye. But Venish is going to have to go. He landed but one blow. Even Bolan was off his usual form. Only Tensa performed well. And as for Ezran…” he leaves the sentence unfinished. His disappointment with himself for bringing the assassin in, and with the fae’s performance, was immense.

“From what you told me, he landed two of the three blows that took Lorien down?”

“Aye, but Lorien took chunks out of him in return. Ezran is not used to his victims fighting back. I should never have put him in that position.”

“The world won’t mourn for Ezran to be taken down a peg or two, my love. Come to bed.”

Iskrin turns to look at her for a moment, then shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Today highlighted for me what I have felt for some time. The AmranKai are going soft. We’ve become so comfortable in our secret deals and whispers and politics that when the blade is needed, we’re undisciplined.” He draws his knife from its sheath on the belt of his pants lying on the floor. “It’s my fault. I turned us into information merchants. But we cannot only be the eyes and ears of the Crown, we also have to be its fist.”

“Surely that is the Royal Guard?” Carolyn asks, standing and drawing on a gossamer-thin robe before moving to the sofa by the fire. 

“Yes and no. The Guardians are a hammer. The AmranKai need to be a blade.”

“Now you’re mixing too many metaphors for me!”

Iskrin shrugs and returns to looking at his reflection. “I know what’s in my mind,” he says quietly. He looks into his own blue eyes for a moment, then reaches up to the locks of floppy gold hair on his head. Clenching a bunch of hair in his fist, he starts to hack at it with his knife.

“Stop!” Carolyn cries. “What are you doing?” She launches from the sofa and holds his knife hand by the wrist. 

“What I must,” he says, trying to wrench from her grasp. She’s strong for a human. “This foppishness,” he growls, indicating his hair, “is emblematic of what I have done to the AmranKai and myself.”

Carolyn looks at him, taking in his tired, drawn face, the treated wound on his shoulder and the anger in his eyes. She sighs. “If you must, at least let me do it,” she says, gently taking the knife from his hand and laying it on the edge of the basin. She moves over to the wardrobe and pulls from it her medicine bag, withdrawing a cutthroat razor and returning to Iskrin. He eyes it suspiciously. “Human females are not naturally hairless you know,” she says. He nods his assent.

Carefully and with tenderness, Carolyn begins to shave his head, the golden locks falling to the floor like sheaves of wheat. As she cuts, she holds back her own sense of loss at his beautiful hair, but she feels his shoulders ease and sees his face relax in the mirror as the hair is removed, as though a great weight has been lifted from his shoulders so that he can pursue the new course that is now set in his mind.