footsteps || k.j. day nine

Kahinta leaves Johnwayne's corpse by the stairs, and stays down where the world is quiet and warm.

Over and over, her hands slide down the front of her shirt, sightlessly wiping at the blood soaked into the fabric. She can feel it drying against the lower section of her face, and her neck, and all down the front of her, too much of it for her to will away with frantic swiping. Something to show Perdita, when she sees her again. It stains, deeper than the undershirt stuck to her skin, deeper still than her skin. No amount of effort will wash it clean. Her hands keep trying anyway, as she wanders back into the dark and takes the torches from the wall one by one, snuffing them out as she goes.

It's only once her whole world is dark that she sinks into an open loculus and sobs among the sunflowers etched all around her. Another cannon resounds. She lets herself pretend the shaking of her hands is from the vibration of it in her bones, but she knows better. The tomb isn't exactly comfortable, but it affords more security than she's had since Daemon had slept at her back, and she takes advantage of it while she can. Kahinta sleeps, though she doesn't know for how long. Her knife is curled in her right hand, and Johnwayne's is in her left, both facing out toward the opening of the space, gone lax as she rests.

A sound rouses her, hours later and long after the last cannon blast. Music, distant and triumphant up above where the earth curves around her to keep her safe. An Anthem, born into the stars. She thinks of tally marks on the wall, of carefully counting names and faces, and chooses to stretch and roll over in her space to fall back asleep.

Another night of not knowing won't kill her.


Her fingers trail over carven stone and smooth jewels and soft petals as she makes her way back through the corridors toward the stairs, careful steps quiet in the dark that crowds close. Where she expects her foot to hit a body she instead finds blank stone, swallows the thought down with the sour of waking up and budding nausea back down before it has the chance to make its taste truly known against the backs of her teeth. Each step carries her up, up, into the faint light of torches hung on either side of a set of wide doors that has a messenger bad propped up against it.

Kahinta takes her time, blindly sticking a needle through the skin of her cheek with shaking hands, trying to find the gentleness she'd once felt at the back of her head when she hadn't been able to stop the bleeding herself. Instead she finds only fear, dawning like a storm over the mountain, whiting out all else from view.

Temple is so close, and Kahinta wants to scream her throat raw at the thought of her and home, of stepping off of a train smelling like unfamiliar flowers from a far off place and breathing in the smell of earth and hay and pine from her sister's hair. Four cannons before she had slept, maybe only six of them left, or four, or two. She couldn't be sure, two days of lost anthems painting a blind spot in her calculation, but Kahinta had never been perfect with numbers regardless. No more trying to avoid faces she knew, or trying to slip away before confrontation broke out. She had a promise to keep.

Breathing deep, jaw clenched shut, Kahinta steps through the doors and into the sunrise.

Give them hell.