Chapter 4: Saved From The Heartward Knife

“Thank you all for coming tonight, good people of Ravnica!” Judith spread her arms wide and smiled a glittering smile. “We have time remaining for one more act only, but it is our showstopper.” She sat down on a table on the raised stage beneath a large wooden arch; suspended from which via one taught rope and two slack ones was a large, nasty looking knife pointed straight down towards her. At each side of the stage a large, nasty looking devil stood, each one connected via the shirtless waist to one of those slackened ropes.

“We’ve become very close over the course of this evening, all of you and I.” Judith crooned to the enraptured audience. “And yet is has been difficult to ignore your lust for blood, scandal and carnage underlying the relationship. Now I find myself in mortal peril, only to survive by virtue of your faith and adulation.

“In a moment I shall cut this rope.” She indicated beside her. “And that blade shall plunge toward my unprotected breast. At the same time these gentlemen shall leap off the sides of the stage, seeking to tighten these ropes and pull the knife back again, saving me. But can they do it? That is where all of you come in. Flatfoot, Featherweight?”

The two devils stepped toward to the forefront of the stage, where there stood a large box of eggs.

“Mr Flatfoot and Mr Featherweight here have a rather… unique ability.” Judith continued. “Though their appearance always stays the same, how much they weigh is directly proportional to the noisiness of their surroundings. They shall now demonstrate. I will ask you all to remain quiet for the moment while they step onto the eggs, then starting from THIS side-” She gesticulated to her left. “If you could all make as much noise as you can, whooping, hollering, clapping, anything you see fit to make a din. For the rest of you, once you cannot hear yourself think over your right hand neighbour, take up noisemaking of your own, and so on. Stand up while you’re doing it, and we’ll see how many of you have stood up when the eggs finally crack.”

Flatfoot and Featherweight stepped onto the eggs, the feeble shells surprisingly supporting their human-sized frames handily, and gestured to the crowd. One by one the rows of fans got to their feet clapping and yelling, and by the time ten of them had done so, Featherweight’s eggs had cracked beneath his feet, and Flatfoot’s were soon to follow. The demonstration finished, the two devils returned to their posts and leaned back over the edge, ready to drop.

“I’m ready to cut!” Judith sang. “And if you’ve come to love me, my public, you will clap and cheer, so that my gentleman friends fall fast enough that the knife is yanked away ere it pierces my chest. BEGIN!” Picking up a curved knife that lay beside her on the table, Judith slashed the rope free and flattened herself against the boards. As the devils leapt the crowd erupted into thunderous applause and cheers, and the knife dipped down to an inch above Judith’s chest before it was yanked back up to the top of the arch, pressed against the beam by the weight of the two stolid devils.

The applause and adulation continued, and as Judith sat up surveying the crowd, her eye was drawn irresistibly to what she realised was an all-too-familiar face within, shrouded beneath a bright blue hood that stood out amongst the sea of darker clothing.

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There was a knock at Judith’s dressing room door. Dressed only in a scarlet dressing gown, she might have been loath to answer it had the cadence of the knock not betrayed the identity of its owner.

Pulling open the door revealed Lavinia’s sullen face, framed by the bright blue hood she had worn in the audience. Judith looked her up and down with a frown, unsure of what kind of tack to take.

“You know it’s fake, don’t you?” She joked with a slight smile. “The stunt. I was never in any real danger.”

“Of course you weren’t.” Lavinia murmured, her upper face not moving at all. “Objects of the same shape and volume fall at the same speed. As long as at their lightest Featherweight and Flatfoot together outweigh the knife, you’d always be saved.”

“Clever girl.” Judith leaned on the doorframe and sighed. Neither woman spoke for a moment.

“I got your letter.” Judith whispered, a little mournful. “Would you like to come in?”

“If that’s all right.”

“I don’t know if any of it’s all right, Vinny, but I’d like to talk about it in private.”

Lavinia followed her into the room and sat down at her direction. Judith took a seat in the big armchair and stared at her with pursed lips. There was an uncomfortable silence.

“I’m sorry.” Lavinia said. Judith had expected the arrester to be avoiding her gaze, but when she looked, the deep brown eyes she had secretly cherished so long were locked with hers. “What I did was… wrong. And cruel. You didn’t deserve that.”

“I’m sorry too.” Judith replied, holding up her hand as Lavinia made to object. “You hurt me a lot, and you’re responsible for it. But it happened because of me. You were in a vulnerable position and obliged to trust me, and I took advantage of that to introduce something outside our agreement for my own selfish ends. It was wrong, and I regret it.”

Lavinia looked like she was about to argue for a moment, but she turned away. “That doesn’t give me the right to behave how I did. It was silly to imagine given what we were doing this wouldn’t come up. I should have asserted my boundaries better.”

“It would have helped, but I think perhaps you asserted them as best you could have done, at the time. There’s obviously a deep hurt involved here.” Judith said. She stayed silent for a moment before continuing. “I didn’t kill your brother, Lavinia, and I don’t know any of the people who did.” It was a difficult sentence that put the grand dame’s heart in her throat.

“I know.”

“But that doesn’t change things, does it?”

“It should.”

“Yes.” Judith’s tone was suddenly terse. “It should. And if it won’t, in the end, I don’t know that we have much more to say to one another. But trauma in particular needs time and effort. I’m willing to help you with both.”

“Why?” Lavinia looked up with hollow eyes. “Why would you help me at all after what I did?”

Judith pursed her lips and didn’t answer for approaching a minute. Then she tapped her wrists together and held them out. “Bind me.”

“I…” Lavinia recoiled in fear and confusion, almost tipping her chair over. “Wha…”

“Bind me. Cast the charm again. You have my permission this time. I want you to have no doubt that I’m telling you the truth.”

Lavinia leaned forward and tentatively took hold of Judith’s outstretched wrists, and looked at her with deep uncertainty in her eyes.

“Do it.” The grand dame instructed, a slight hint of the tone she used to instruct the pet garnishing her voice. “Bind me with your truth magicks, Arrester, and ask your question again.”

Slowly and carefully, though she’d surely done it thousands of times, Lavinia drew the sigils for an interrogator’s truth charm in a weave around Judith’s hands, where they rotated slowly in a glowing loop.

“Why would you help me after what I’ve done to you, Judith?”

Judith leaned forward over the loop holding her hands tight, her face inches from Lavinia’s.

“Because I love you, Lavinia of the Tenth.”

Lavinia hadn’t the time to gasp or speak before Judith’s lips met hers. Judith felt her relax and, after a moment, reciprocate the kiss, her manner less certain and more repressed than Judith’s, but nonetheless passionate and genuine. As their mouths parted, Judith felt Lavinia’s hand on her upper arm, a gentle request for her to lean back. Judith smiled, and complied just a little, enough to see Lavinia’s whole face as the arrester reached down and tugged the loop of sigiled light off her wrists, winding it around her own left hand and pulling it tight.

“I love you too.” Lavinia said, her voice cracking. “And it frightens me so much.”

“Oh darling.” Judith smiled kindly as she leaned back in her chair. “No doubt, but would you have it any other way?”

From the way Lavinia shivered and blushed even as she cracked a smile, Judith strongly suspected she wouldn’t.