Daughter of the Night

The first thing you need to know about me is that my childhood was entirely shaped by my mother and her profession. She had a titanic impact on my upbringing, and without her I wouldn’t be here now.

I was born in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland in 1868. Western Europe boasts a large faerie population, as you can imagine. I didn’t grow up there by any means, however. Not with my mother. No, we traveled. Constantly. Usually we were forced into moving our location because my mother couldn’t afford to be in one place for any length of time. It made her easier to track down.

My mother’s name was Elramarkaine, although her contractors and suppliers knew her only as Noire. She had entered into the business of trafficking illegal faerie products as a misguided youth, but she had risen through the ranks quickly. Not only was she a superb tactician when it came to dealing shipments without attracting the Court’s attention, she was a master thief. She had completely mastered the art of Fae stealth, lockpicking, disabling alarms, manipulation, you name it.

By the time I was born, she was in full command of thirteen trafficking checkpoints across North America alone, and she had her hands in many more worldwide. Her business had been booming for almost seventy years.

The reason she was so hard to track down, and the same reason she was such a brilliant thief, was that she could blend in with her surroundings easily. She could pass herself off as a human for weeks at a time, she was fluent in twenty languages, and she knew different cultures like the back of her hand. She put new meaning to the word ‘untraceable’.

That’s not to say that she was like most people. She was wholly individual and rarely developed close relationships, which is probably why I never knew my father. She was quite paranoid, although I’ll admit that her paranoia is what kept her out of the Court’s prisons for so long.

She started off small, you must realize. She would steal a few articles of value from a faerie noble’s house, sell it to a fence, and repeat the process. Her ambition led her to bigger and better objectives, however, and before long she had her own crew of thieves and was plotting out elaborate plans to capture exquisite Fae artifacts.

She always succeeded. My mother wasn’t simply a burglar when it came to robbery; she was a force of nature. Eventually she realized that the most profitable trade was faerie weaponry and technology. She never considered giving away the secrets of our race, of course, but faerie technology was, and still is, coveted by certain shadowy clientele. However, it was excruciatingly difficult to obtain any because the Fae guarded their secrets with an unwavering determination.

So she began to deal in contraband goods; faerie steel, building materials, Fae-invented power sources. For her, it was difficult but not impossible. She had contacts, after all, and her own wit.

So I was raised breathing in illegal trafficking, and because of my surroundings it took me little time to cultivate a flair for thievery and smuggling. My mother quickly built an empire, and she gained infamy and prestige. As her son, I was due some of the same merely by association.

I was maybe thirty, barely an adolescent by Fae standards, when my mother’s empire began crumbling.

The first crack appeared when the Court arrested one of our minor suppliers for mismanagement of its employees. Before we could act, the shipments that we would have collected were discovered. Further investigation by the Court revealed one of our major trade routes.

Although word of the discovery reached my mother before the Court’s Guard could ambush a shipment, reorganizing the routes so as to remain clandestine put a strain on her financial resources. It also made trade more conspicuous.

It was maybe two years later when one of our major clients was successfully bribed into giving the Court the location of one of our warehouses. We lost a valuable client as well as years’ worth of contraband goods.

Another thing my mother hadn’t counted on was how her long-term trafficking would dilute the value of Fae goods. Prices started dropping as demand dropped, and although Fae technology was still highly prized, it was no longer rare enough for my mother to be able to rake up huge sums of money the way she had in the past.

And then, of course, the major blow came. My mother’s most trusted second-in-command betrayed her and began his own trade system, using most of my mother’s checkpoints and trade routes. He offered lowered prices to her clients on goods that he had taken from her, so she lost almost half of her customers and products in a matter of weeks. She no longer had a monopoly over her trade and no means with which to reestablish it. Her empire was collapsing around her and she was powerless to stop it. All the money she had collected through the years seemed to slip through her fingers as expenses piled high and income dwindled to nothing.

During all of this, I had been rising through the ranks as a master thief. I didn’t enjoy the political aspect of running the business and was scarcely aware of the fiasco that was developing in my mother’s empire. Rather, I preferred the physical act of stealing products and getting them to our bases. I was in the habit of infiltrating Fae labs and storehouses in all sorts of locations, from Shanghai to Johannesburg. I didn’t keep very close contact with my mother during these times, which is why she never informed me of her final master theft.

I was recuperating from one such mission at a safe house in Bogota when I received the news that my mother had died.

I had to collect the full story in bits and pieces from several different sources, but in the end I figured out what had transpired. In her desperation, my mother had set sights on the pinnacle of faerie weaponry; the armaments of the Knights of the Realm of the Fae.

She had attempted to steal the katana of the Summer Knight, known as Tanau Gwyllt, Wildfire in English, as well as the longsword of the Winter Knight called Rhewlif, or Glacier.

Her plan was simple; she had built a fake persona within the palace almost a decade ago, and it was a simple matter for her to switch places with a maid within the Summer Palace. Under the guise of a servant, she spent months discovering the hidden secrets of the palace and the Guard and the movements and habits of the Knights. She eventually worked out the perfect method to steal Wildfire.

For all her tactical genius, however, my mother only ever made on major blunder, and it was the mistake that killed her. She underestimated the abilities of the Summer Knight. She had taken the sword successfully, but she hadn’t counted on the Summer Knight being able to track down the sword.

What she hadn’t realized was that the weapons of the Knights form a sort of bond with their owners that can only be broken by the warrior’s death. It is the greatest asset of the blades; they cannot be stolen without killing the warrior with which the blade is bonded. That is in part the reason why only the Knights are bestowed such valuable weapons; thieves and bandits should not, theoretically, overpower the two supposedly best warriors of the Fae.

The Summer Knight hunted down my mother and killed her, as was his responsibility. Looking back on it from my current position, I am surprised and grateful that he killed her immediately out of anger rather than capturing her and taking her in for questioning before a public execution. Still, maybe if she had merely been taken in for questioning I would have had the opportunity to rescue her…

At any rate, my predecessor was named Siamarnekaede. The name should sound familiar, because it is familiar. It is a tradition among the Fae that one’s children inherit parts of one’s name as their own name. Daughters will take a part of their mother’s names for themselves, and sons will take parts of their father’s names. Siamarnekaede’s son is named Siamarkechek.

Regardless, when I learned of my mother’s death I also learned of my inheritance to a vast empire that was in its death throes. There was little I could do with no money except shut down section after section of our operation without drawing the attention of the government. I made many enemies by doing so; many of the Fae’s livelihoods came from illegal trade.

I was under tremendous pressure from various advisors and clients to salvage something from the remains of my mother’s operation and begin anew, but it was impossible with the competition from my mother’s former right-hand man.

Despite all the people who expected me to perform a miracle, who were positive that I would fill my mother’s shoes, I was alone. I had never been so alone. I had made some friends over the years, but everything I had been taught and everything I had ever believed stemmed from my mother, and she was gone. The expectation was that I had been groomed for the position, but in truth my mother had never even considered placing her massive operation into my incapable hands once she was gone. She knew I had no talent for operating her empire, and I knew I had no interest.

Yet, somehow, the trafficking business had come under my control, and I was clueless as to what to do. I was so, so alone, and I was terrified.

Which was why I shut down the trade and went back to my roots, honest thievery. My plan was simple; I would succeed where my mother failed and steal the weapon of the Summer Knight, and by doing so, I would redeem her honor.

In order to get closer to my target, I joined the Guard. By posing as a new recruit I was surrounded by men and women my own age; I could blend in and escape the searching gaze of my enemies while simultaneously exploiting the secrets of the Summer Palace. It was perfect.

What I had never planned on was how much I enjoyed my time in the Guard. Among other things, I was taught the arts of combat. Blades, blunted weaponry, barehanded, ranged weaponry. What I had never expected was that I was naturally gifted at fighting. All the years I had spent mastering stealth and infiltration seemed to fuel my talent with blades.

Make no mistake; I was by no means the best among my peers. Most all of the recruits had been exposed to some sort of combat training before joining the Guard, and I had been taught nothing. My inferiority to the rest of the recruits made me work that much harder to master weaponry, however, and it quickly became my passion.

I never lost sight of my true goal, however; the Summer Knight was always nearby, and so was his weapon. Often he came to the barracks during one training session or another to demonstrate certain moves or explain another battle tactic. Unlike my peers, who were filled with admiration, I was filled with a haze of bloodlust. He was my mother’s murderer. I could not forget, and I would not forgive.

I spent seven years with the Guard, and in that time, I met and befriended a faerie named Tristanarium. He was good-natured, a much better fighter than I, and always ready to laugh. As our friendship grew, I often caught myself about to tell him of my past. It was hard keeping my knowledge of the world out of our daily discussions; I had been places that he never had, and I had witnessed things that he never would. It was difficult to maintain my façade around someone whom I respected so much, and as time went on I realized that my resolve was weakening.

That was what pushed me into action more than anything. For the first time in my life, I was content. There was nobody to oversee my actions, no pressure placed on me to be someone I wasn’t. I was truly free. And by harboring no ambition for myself but to advance among the Guard, I was breaking off from the only path I had ever known.

So I stole Wildfire. Oh, it wasn’t easy. Siamarnekaede literally slept with the damned blade under his pillow. I had to drug him into an even deeper sleep before I could steal his pillow, and that was after I evaded his guards. Then I had to escape the Summer Palace without raising an alarm.

Once I had escaped for sure, I traveled to Scotland, to an old fence that I had used frequently for independent thievery. I had always considered her a friend, so I was entirely unprepared when she turned around and handed me over to Hencheinalke, the faerie that had betrayed my mother.

Hencheinalke was delighted to remove Wildfire from my possession; I had successfully executed the most difficult robbery in the history of the Fae and like an idiot I had carried one of the two most valuable weapons in existence to his doorstep. He didn’t have to lift a finger.

I struggled. It was the first time I had a legitimate opportunity to put the skills I learned with the Guard to use. But I was far from deadly, and I was quickly overwhelmed. In repayment for my resistance, I was beaten severely. I couldn’t move for days from the spot where I had fallen.

That gave Siamarnekaede all the time he needed to follow the trail that Wildfire’s magic had left to my location. He found me where I had been left, on the ground curled into a ball.

To this day, I assume that the only reason I didn’t meet my mother’s fate was because I already looked like death. Even a faerie as passionate as Siamarnekaede couldn’t unleash his fury on someone who had already been beaten to within an inch of his life. If Hencheinalke hadn’t done that to me, I’m sure that I would have been killed. Of course, if I hadn’t been beaten Siamarnekaede wouldn’t have caught up to me in the first place, but still.

Although I’m sure Siamarnekaede could still feel Wildfire’s trail, he knew it was long gone. He would have no hope of attaining his weapon without backup. He was forced to return to the Court. Instead of killing me, the Summer Knight brought me back to the Palace with him as a criminal. It was an awkward journey home, to say the least.

When I finally did return to the Summer Palace, I was met with more blatant hostility than I had ever known before. I was a disgrace to the Guard and all of the Fae, for stealing such an artifact as Wildfire was blatant treason, but above all, I lost Tristanarium’s trust. The public cried for my execution, for I was the thief who had stolen and then had foolishly lost possession of the two signature weapons of all of the Fae.

The Queen, however, saw in me an opportunity to secure Wildfire. She realized that I was sure to have some knowledge of whoever had taken the sword from me. I was interrogated for knowledge of Hencheinalke, and I didn’t withhold anything. I wanted to see him go down; he had stabbed my mother in the back, and he had done me no better. Eventually the questions drifted towards my own background, for it was realized that my knowledge of Hencheinalke’s operations was too extensive for a regular thief, and eventually I revealed my lineage.

After several weeks, the Queen met with me in person. It was the first time I had ever seen Morhiannara, but in the instant I first laid eyes on her I realized for the first time exactly who my mother and I had been defying for so long, and just how wrong we had been in doing so. On any given day, the Queen cuts an intimidating figure, but when she first met me she was particularly awe-inspiring.

She offered me a deal; if I allowed the Court to put my less-than-admirable skills to use in ensuring the downfall of Hencheinalke’s operation, the Court would spare my life.

I had no choice but to accept. Even if there had been another option, I still would have opted to aid in Hencheinalke’s fall. I wanted to see him suffer for what he put my mother through.

What you must realize is that before I had talked to the Queen, I had written myself off as dead. And then my life was handed back to me; I was being shown mercy I had never expected to receive. I had stolen and then lost the Fae’s most prided treasure, property of the Court of the Fae and in possession of none less than the Summer Knight himself. By all rights, I should have died. But by either sheer fortune or the grace of some unseen god, I was offered a second chance.

So I began gathering information. Agents of the Court monitored me carefully, for I was still an infamous criminal. It took several years, but from weeding out old contacts and clients and making them squeal, the Court finally knew enough about Hencheinalke’s system that they could begin tearing it apart.

I helped out with the traps and ambushes as well. Needless to say, I was still terribly distrusted, and with good reason, but my insight was very valuable and that overrode the warriors’ hatred of me.

I began leading small numbers of warriors and pulling apart the operation by sabotaging safe houses and ambushing workers. Many skirmishes were fought, and I participated. I progressed from an average fighter to a good fighter as I applied knowledge I had learned from the Guard.

Hencheinalke learned of the Court’s scourge of his empire, and he withdrew into himself, severing many major trade routes and slashing business with clientele. Still, I knew exactly where and how he would reorganize his company, so that with my aid the Court continued obliterating his trafficking operation.

Eventually, we pinpointed his headquarters and the Summer Knight organized an ambush to finish off the trafficking once and for all.

When we stormed the headquarters of the operation, where werewolf and vampire mercenaries as well as some rogue Fae warriors met us inside. They had been bought over by Hencheinalke’s deep pockets, and the ensuing battle cost the Guard many lives. The Summer Knight was monster, I remember. He was unstoppable. His weapon, however, wasn’t. It snapped of at the hilt from a particularly powerful blow, and he was left defenseless before his enemies. It was more by accident than anything that I intervened, killing one werewolf while his attention was diverted and then tripping and sticking my sword into the side of another. It gave Siamarnekaede enough time to find himself another weapon and resume his killing spree.

The Summer Knight reclaimed Wildfire and returned to the Court even more of a hero than he had left it, but the story of how I had saved the Summer Knight spread as well. Rumors of my assistance in the downfall of the trafficking spread as well, and in little time I was as famous as I was infamous.

The Court didn’t know what to do with me. My life was spared because I had aided the Fae as I had promised, yet there were still more than a few of the Fae who wanted to see me dead for my theft.

I wasn’t sure what to do with myself, so my solution was to leave the Court for a while. Before I could, however, a certain faerie caught up to me. It was Tristan. He told me that he didn’t know who I was, but he had forgiven me enough for my deceits that he was willing to find out. Although it was hesitant, our friendship resumed. He had advanced in the Guard in the short time I had been gone, and I was proud for him.

After a week, he introduced me to his aunt. His aunt, you may be interested to know, is the Winter Knight for the Court of the Fae. She wields Glacier, and she is a terrifying opponent. I know because when I first met her Tristan convinced me to ask her to spar, and she disarmed me thirty times in less than four minutes.

Her name was Opheliannere, and she became my idol. For whatever reason, she took a liking to me. Because I met her in the height of summer, the Winter Court was in recess and she had far more free time than she was used to. So she dedicated a lot of her time to training me. I’m not sure if it was entirely of her own volition, or if Tristan pushed her because the Guard wouldn’t take me in, or if it was even the Court itself. Regardless, I was sort of adopted as her apprentice. I wasn’t quite forty years old.

I trained under Opheliannere for nineteen years, coming to know blades of all shapes and sizes as an extension of my body. More importantly, however, I slowly picked up her ideals. She put full faith in the power of the Court and her Winter Queen. She believed in using her power to serve her people by serving the Court. She was such an honest person, and she never struggled with questions of morality or belief. She always did what she thought was right, and she was selfless in that whatever she did benefited the people, no matter the consequences for herself. In the beginning I was skeptical of her resolve, but over time I found that her outlooks and beliefs made more sense than any set of rules I had ever lived by. I slowly adopted her mindset.

In the winters when she was on missions, I would join the Guard. Nobody there knew quite what to make of me; I was a criminal still in their eyes, yet the rumors of my deeds weren’t all bad, and I was turning into a respectable warrior. It also helped that I was close friends with Tristan, who was rapidly ascending through the ranks of the Guard.

After the first few years, Opheliannere began taking me on her missions. She explained to skeptics that I was her backup, but really she was just educating me further. Together we exterminated blood-frenzied vampires, confronted packs of werewolves trying to increase their numbers by preying on humans, and shut down drug trafficking among the Fae.

Eventually I asked her why she was so generous as to take me under her wing; while I had redeemed myself somewhat in the eyes of the public, I was by no means an honorable faerie, and my reputation was patchy at best.

Her response was that when she had first met me, she hadn’t seen the person I had been then, but the person that I could someday be. She told me that she believed in me, that the choices I had made in the past were made and that the fact that I myself had set straight what I had made wrong proved that I was no criminal. She told me that when I had saved the life of the man who had killed my mother, I had earned the respect of many, including her, because I had forgiven a personal grudge for the good of the Fae.

Her words made something click within me. I had been moving closer and closer to her style of thinking over the years, but it was the moment when I heard her speak that I realized that to me, Opheliannere represented all the people of the Fae, and I would die for Opheliannere. I was hers. And as I was hers, and she was the people’s, so I became the people’s too.

After nineteen years, Opheliannere released me from my sort-of apprenticeship. She told me that I had learned all that I could from her, and the rest I would have to discover on my own.

I joined the Queen’s vanguard, acting as an elite warrior and as a personal bodyguard. Many people disliked my proximity to the Summer Queen, but I proved them wrong through years of faithful service.

I had been serving with the vanguard for about thirteen years when the Summer Knight perished. He had been ambushed by rogue vampires while trying to subdue a battle between human sorcerers. He had been facing thirty-four hostile opponents, and he hadn’t survived the encounter.

The Fae went into mourning for the loss of one of its Knights; the people wore black for the month leading up to his funeral. He was buried in the Temple of Solstices, along with the other fallen Knights, as was his right.

The passing of the Summer Knight left the position open, with no clear successor. Many great warriors were vying for the post, yet many more wanted nothing to do with it. The Knights of the Realm of the Fae are known for two things; their devastating fighting abilities, and their terribly short lifespans.

The Queen was unsure of who she should raise to the position, so she followed the advice of the Court and set up a tournament. The claim was that the mission of the new Summer Knight was to win the tournament; therefore, whoever won the tournament was the new Summer Knight.

I was startled to discover how much I wanted the title for myself. I wanted to serve the Fae. Even more than that, I wanted to show my gratitude to Opheliannere by repaying her kindness with service to that which she loved enough to sacrifice herself for.

So I signed myself up.

To abbreviate a bit, I won the tournament. In one of the rounds I defeated Siamarnekaede’s son, who made it clear that from then on he would regard me with absolute hatred and disgust after I stole from him the position that he saw as rightfully his.

My victory surprised all the people of the Fae; they had forgotten me somewhat after my fame and infamy canceled each other out and I had faded somewhat into anonymity. My resurgence as their new Summer Knight was shocking. Even the Queen was mildly shocked.

The only person who wore a knowing smile when she learned of my victory was Opheliannere, the Winter Knight.

At first, the relationship I had with Morhiannara and the Court of the Fae was wary at best; I was undeniably a fearsome warrior, but at the same time I was a loose cannon with an extremely rocky history and a downright illegal lineage. Over time, however, we came to trust each other, and eventually we came to think of each other as friends as well as liege and vassal.

And, of course, when I was knighted there was not one person in the entire Realm who was comfortable with the thought of Wildfire in my possession. The katana that I had stolen from the previous Summer Knight only three decades before was mine by right, but my history with the sword was by no means an admirable one.

Once again, I proved people wrong with loyalty and hard service. I have been the Summer Knight for roughly eighty years, now, which brings me here.

I stared at Aerrin as he finished talking. His gaze didn’t shift from the ceiling even though he was clearly done with his story.

My head was buzzing. I was pretty sure it was from shock. Shock that Aerrinaekaiyan had had such a past, and shock that he had told me all of it in such an honest and straightforward manner. He was a far more complicated being than I had ever given him credit for. His diehard belief in second chances had gone from opaque to clear, and my anger at him melted away like ice under the hot July sun.

I had always thought that my own past was extravagant, but now I was pretty sure that Aerrin took the cake. The reason for his all-out devotion to the Fae, why Siamarkechek hated him so much, it all made sense…

“You’re amazing,” I told Aerrin, hoping that I wouldn’t regret telling him the truth later. “Thank you for sharing with me.”

His eyes were pulled from the ceiling at last and he gave me a small smile, one that wasn’t filled with jesting or sarcasm or friendly mockery. “You’re welcome.”

I rose from my seat. The sun was coming soon; I could feel it in my bones. I looked back at Aerrin, whose eyes had gone unfocused again, before I slipped through the door and began the long walk towards my temporary home in the Summer Palace.