Lines in the Sand - Everyone has their Price

Previous update: Sand Hotter than Blood
== Everyone Has Their Price ==
by CupcakeTrap
Sivir looked out from her golden 
balcony, and as her eyes swept over the endless caravan train of new 
arrivals to the restored Shuriman capital, voyaging from Bel’zhun and 
Dar’khos to pledge their loyalty to the new Shuriman Empire, she thought
 about how she had a golden balcony.
A royal golden balcony. An imperial
 golden balcony. She traced her fingertips over the ornately carved rail
 of solid gold. It was the sort of thing that said: not only do I have 
the money for something like this, but I have the money for the guards 
it takes to keep something like this from getting stolen while I’m away.
She could see the Oasis of the Dawn 
from here. She thought about the absurd contrast of where she’d been all
 those years ago, bleeding out into the sand, then manhandled into the 
pool by a strange man who then transformed into a terrifying half-bird 
creature in front of her, and where she was now.
She was, in fact, standing on her golden balcony.
As her skin soaked up the lazy late 
morning heat, she ran her hand over her stomach. It was full from a 
delicious breakfast of unconscionably expensive pastries and Nyrothian 
fruit imported at horrifying cost, rather than torn apart by the 
traitorous blade of a literally backstabbing Noxian aristocrat. Smoothed
 over with some lovely after-bath ointment that a Dar’khosian merchant 
had all but begged her to accept, rather than slick with blood. The 
stomach, as it happened, of a Champion of the League, not a merc 
blacklisted by Noxus.
She wrapped her fingers around the 
rail. She could sense its heaviness in the richness of its luster, the 
indulgent thickness of its casting. It said: you win. You will always 
have as much as you want.
Her post-breakfast, golden balcony 
glow was almost—almost—thick enough to ward off the restrained frowns 
she received when she walked down her spiral staircase and crossed paths
 with one of the many mercenary captains who’d been paid mostly in 
promises.
Kalan Spiritmight greeted her with that obnoxious chest-swelling Demacian accent of his. “If I may.”
She glanced aside, to see who else was
 close enough to listen. Nobody. She looked back at him and spoke 
plainly. “Really. I thought you’d last another week.” She inclined her 
head, and drove the subtext home. “Before caving in to your mercs, I 
mean. I thought, Kalan’s got a good handle on his troops, he won’t be 
back for at least another week.”
He did that thing where he resisted 
the urge to indulge in some ordinary nervous tic, like adjusting his 
clothes or coughing into his hand, by instead tightening his frown as 
though it were driven by a winch. Most of his Demacian-ness had worn 
away after two decades in exile; Sivir entertained the thought that she 
was now looking at the result of a Demacian child from a Great House 
being cuffed about the ears for fidgeting like a commoner.
“My troops faced Noxian legions in 
battle three weeks ago, and held their own. They have received scarcely a
 quarter of what they were promised. I would ask that you remember that 
they are not common sellswords, and they expect appropriately greater consideration.”
He looked her over. “It is on their account that you are now a princess, rather than a prisoner in a Noxian dungeon.”
She started walking, and he followed. 
“Actually, I think I’m a queen. Possibly some kind of empress.” She 
gestured carelessly. “I have a couple Summoners looking into it over in 
Nasus’ library.”
She grinned at his barely restrained retort. “I was only trying to make you feel young.”
She continued down the corridor, and 
noticed the guards saluting. She’d never been saluted before, and she 
liked it much more than she thought she would have. It was better than 
the cheering crowds at the Institute.
She paused as she came to the door 
leading to the courtyard. “Kalan. Listen. When we were a pair of broke 
sellswords, and I borrowed six silvers from you for a new pair of boots,
 did I pay you back?”
He found a way to tighten his frown 
still further. “You did.” He raised a hand, to forestall her next 
sentence. “I take your point. And I trust you will not forget those who 
have brought you to your present station.”
“No,” she said, “I won’t. Tell your 
troops to settle down; once this truce breaks, there’ll be plenty of 
gold to go around. In the meantime, nobody’s starving. If they are, it’s
 their own fault, because there are full marching rations for the 
wounded, and the work crews are taking every able-bodied person they can
 get.”
As she left him behind and walked out into the late morning sunlight, she thought about how exactly she was
 going to pay them all. Usually, there’d be battlefield looting to tide 
them over while the finances were worked out. Noxus letting that truce 
through the Council had proven strangely inconvenient, in that regard.
She saw Leona standing at the top of 
the steps leading up to the Sun Disc’s immense stone cradle, her arms 
outstretched. Solari warriors and a handful of Summoners knelt beside 
her, all gazing beatifically up into the face of the disc.
It was really kind of strange.
She glanced up at the Sun Disc. She’d 
have thought, given her imperial blood, that she’d feel something. But 
other than that vision in the Oasis, she didn’t seem to have any more 
reaction to the obviously very magical artifact than the guy who brought
 her breakfast up this morning. Actually, if she had to bet, she’d say less.
 She usually felt some kind of tingling around strong magic, like a 
Nexus. All the Summoners told her that this capital was absolutely 
flooded with thaumic energy, and she believed them, but it was virtually
 silent for her. Sometimes, she entertained strange flights of paranoia,
 wondering if she’d angered her ancestors by spending most of her adult 
life looting their graves. Maybe she’d ask Nasus about it.
Then she recalled the lifeless bodies of the “unworthy” among the Solari delegation being carried out from Nasus’ library. Yeah, or I could not.
She worked a bit of fruit out from 
between her teeth with her tongue, then looked over at Leona. She’d 
never asked, but she was pretty sure Leona was the sort of person to 
wake up with the sunrise. (How could she not be?) And it was hours after
 sunrise by now. How long had she and her pals been standing there?
So she asked. “How long have you been out here?”
Leona did not even seem to hear her. “I mean…what are you, a cat in a sunbeam?”
She looked back at a girl who was scrubbing the steps to a shine. “She’s like a cat in a sunbeam, or something,” she repeated.
The girl smiled awkwardly at her, and 
nodded. She stared up at her, in that annoyingly speechless way that 
people reacted to Champions sometimes. Just staring, amazed, a little 
scared, a little excited.
Sivir frowned, and looked around. “You
 people spend too much time staring at things. All of you,” she 
muttered, as she walked down the steps to the somewhat busier lower 
level.
She casually tossed her blade as she 
went. For a long time, it had just been her weapon. Then she found out 
it was some kind of priceless ancient artifact. She kept expecting Azir 
or someone to tell her to treat it with more respect—stop tossing it 
around like a toy, stop using it to pop open bottles of ThaumaKola—but 
he never did. She’d taken to deliberately pushing him, being even more 
cynical and generally disdainful of all his mysticality and reverence 
than she actually felt, but he’d just stare back at her.
The guard opened the prison door as 
she approached. She stepped through into the cool, earthy air. Time to 
get some work done. She clipped her blade to her thigh as the guard 
unbolted the cell door labeled with that weird-looking version of the 
character for “six” that until recently she’d only seen carved inside 
tombs, as part of colorful phrases like, “six plagues upon whoever 
disturbs this sacred place”. In fairness, it did give me a cold.
The Piltovian prisoner was sitting at 
the table inside, still wearing his battle-torn uniform. He stiffened as
 she took her seat. She kept a straight face, so as not to ruin the 
atmosphere.
“Lieutenant Hayworth Harrowmont. Serial number RF07438773.”
She looked him over. He was shaking.
“Hi. I’m Sivir.”
He tried to look fierce. “Lieutenant Hayworth Harrowmont. Serial number RF07438773.”
She arched an eyebrow. “You might need
 to write that down.” She rather casually got to her feet, opened the 
door to the cell, and asked a guard for a pen and parchment. She brought
 them back, and laid them out on the table.
He stared at the pen, and its sharp nib.
She waited for him to take it. “What?”
He slowly took it into his shaking hand. “You’re just giving me this…sharp…pen.”
“My day job is fighting the deadliest 
warriors of Valoran on the Fields of Justice.” She leaned in. “Yes, I 
just gave you a sharp pen.”
She watched him write his name and 
number down on the parchment. It seemed to calm him, and this was only 
going to take longer if he flew into hysterics, so she let him write it 
out on his own time, collecting his thoughts. It was a Piltovian style 
pen, with a thick barrel and smooth-flowing ink. Pilts liked that sort 
of thing. She’d been clever with the details.
He looked up at her, and swallowed.
Go on, let’s hear what you’ve come up with.
“Whatever you do, I will not betray Piltover.”
She gestured vaguely. “Whatever I do?”
He met her gaze. “I assume,” he said, 
trying to grab hold of some semblance of control by acknowledging the 
inevitable, “that you’re planning to torture me.”
She feigned surprise. “Oh. Would that help?”
She gave him time to finish his mental stumble into disorientation before she continued.
“Because I think you’ve been through enough.”
He had absolutely nothing to say.
She took the pen from him, and the 
paper, and sketched the part of Shurima that he’d been taken from. “The 
way I see it,” she drew out a few boxes to represent units, “you were 
written off as ‘acceptable losses’.” She marked out the sequence of 
battle in the sort of standard military notation that he’d be familiar 
with from his academy. Her mercs driving a wedge between the 
Lieutenant’s small expeditionary unit and the larger regular force to 
the south, Azir’s militia flanking them from the north. She slashed a 
double-hatch through his unit, the Piltovian way of marking “unit 
broken”. And finally, she used a line with a single loop leading into an
 arrow to show the regulars retreating, leaving the Lieutenant and his 
friends all alone.
She pushed the paper back to him. “I’m
 assuming you radioed for reinforcements. But Piltover decided that 
wouldn’t be prudent. Which is why you’re sitting here now.”
She set the pen back down on the table
 top. “You know the problem with torture? The problem with torture—one 
of the problems—is that you have to keep torturers
 around. They’re hard to come by, they’re not well-balanced people, and 
they’re usually more trouble than they’re worth. Bit of advice from 
someone who’s seen her share of combative operations: the ones that have
 torturers on the payroll? They’re not the stable ones.”
She shrugged. “I mean, yeah, I can 
slap you around for a bit and maybe figure out something with pointy 
implements, if you like, but I’ve got a busy schedule today.”
She smiled. “So instead of torture…how about gold? You like gold?”
She held the silence until he didn’t seem to know what to do except to nod, very slowly.
She nodded back, as though working across a language barrier.
“You’re a doctor. A graduate of Branton Academy for the Caducial Sciences. I’d like to pay you,” she paused, deliberately, “gold,
 in exchange for your assistance treating my wounded soldiers. Those 
Noxians put some nasty hexes on them. I’ll gladly pay you to figure out 
how to put them back on their feet.”
She could see the wheels turning behind his eyes. Curing hexes? He knew how to do that.
“In case you’re wondering, no, the 
alternative is not being tortured or killed. Or sitting in this prison 
eating our food for free. The alternative is that we turn you out on the
 street here. You try to leave, the guards bring you in, and don’t 
expect them to be gentle about it—you’re a prisoner of war. You’re free 
to join a work crew like anyone else. You get as much food and water as 
your crew leader thinks you deserve for the work you do. No promises 
that they’ll be fair about it when they’ve got Shurimans holding their 
bowls next to yours. You slip, you try to lift a rock that’s a little 
too heavy, you can’t work, you go hungry. Unless you’ve made some 
friends who’ll share theirs with you, and somehow, I don’t see you 
making a lot of friends here. We have been kicked around by you Pilties for a long, long time.”
She crossed her arms and settled back 
against her chair. “But speaking of friends. You find a way to cure 
those hexes? You set some bones so people don’t limp for the rest of 
their lives? You’ll make a lot of friends. Maybe you think we’re all a 
bunch of savages and cutthroats and fanatics. But let me tell you, 
nobody’s more popular in a merc camp than the medic.”
He smiled uncertainly, like someone 
slowly setting their weight on ground they think might cave in. 
“Alright, then. Let’s go with that.”
She smiled back. She was pretty sure 
she could see the moment at which he felt that relief washing over him, 
told himself that he was going to be okay, that it was over. She knew 
how dearly a person would pay, in that moment, to hold on to that 
feeling.
“One more thing, and we’ll shake on 
it.” She pointed at the piece of paper, at the drawing of the unit of 
regular troops that had fled. “These guys. The ones who ran and left you
 surrounded. I want to know where their ammo depot and supply center 
is.” She picked up the pen and offered it to him.
He took the pen, but hesitated. “That’s military intelligence. That would be treason.”
She gave him a skeptical look, and 
allowed a moment for him to weigh the consequences of a hypothetical 
court-martial against the less dramatic but still rather unpleasant 
alternative she’d sketched out for him. “So don’t tell them you told me.
 Or pretend it was tortured out of you, if you want to be dramatic about
 it.”
She watched him think it over. No need
 to rush him, no need to scare him. Just let him do the math. And, in 
particular, to realize that lying to her would be profoundly stupid.
He flipped the paper over, and began drawing a map. “Here. Not far from the oasis. They keep the supplies in the caves.”
She was mildly surprised. That wasn’t 
far from Bel’zhun and Zaun’s mines. An aggressive position for Piltover.
 And a vulnerable one.
She took the paper and shook his hand.
 “I’ll send your chief nurse up with lunch. He’ll get you sized for some
 new clothes while he fills you in.”
He didn’t thank her, but she didn’t particularly mind.
She was halfway down the hall when 
Summoner Sajj, the Icathian, came around the corner. She looked up into 
his eerie purple eyes. Now here was a seven-foot-tall, robe-wearing, 
altogether rather unsettling magical phenomenon that did give her a rather unpleasant tingling sensation.
She tried not to look too perturbed. A strange itchy-shivery sensation radiated from her Shuriman armor into her skin.
“What?” she asked.
He unlocked Cell Four with a wave of 
his hand. The enchantments glowed unevenly, and the bolt screech-scraped
 along its track. She’d been surprised when Azir didn’t protest her 
hiring of Void-touched Summoners; she was no arcane theorist, but 
Shuriman magic did not seem to get along with Void energy. Of course Azir isn’t perturbed. He’s Azir. Being immortal must make you pretty cocky.
“In here,” the Summoner said, and ducked his head down as he entered the empty cell.
She stepped aside from the entrance. 
She didn’t really want to be standing in between him and the door when 
he used that Void mojo to close it.
She crossed her arms. “I’m waiting.”
He grumbled inaudibly and traced some 
figures over the tabletop with his fingertip, then dusted them with 
silver powder from a pouch inside his robes. The powder revealed the 
pattern he’d traced out. He struck his fist into the center with a heavy
 thud, and she had the distinct impression that something had changed. 
Judging from the way the Summoner’s eerie aura now seemed to echo around
 inside the room, she figured it was a silence field going up.
She glanced over the walls, and didn’t see any melty purple abominations dripping down them.
“So. Silence field? Wait—let me guess. You’re really Reginald Ashram. I knew it.”
He laughed, lowly, which she hadn’t expected.
“You are most amusing, Sivir,” he said, which she also hadn’t expected. “Your quips fill my heart with mirth.”
“Yes,” she said, “I can see that.”
She briefly considered what his heart 
was actually filled with; she’d bet on some kind of purple-black ichor 
at two coins against anybody’s one. She briefly sensed her blade urging 
her to hurl it into his chest and find out, but this was not a promising
 business prospect.
He continued. “Your Emperor has unleashed great power, long held apart from your Runeterra.
 But it has flowed far beyond this city’s walls, and there are others 
who can wield it.” He stepped forward. “The lich queen Nefara has 
stretched her hand to the sky, through the Void, through the veil
 between life and death.” He spoke about these things the way a sane 
person would describe…an inspired work of art, a misty lake, something nice.
“She raises an army of harrowed souls, Shurima’s ancient dead. Your Emperor speaks of the resurrection of Shurima, but though the ruined walls rise at his command, the dead hear him not. They hear her, and she them. The oath by which she bound herself to the masters of the Void loosens. Azir’s throne, she would make her own.”
Sivir did not, as a rule, rely upon 
the word of Icathians. You could never be sure what dimension they were 
coming from. She’d once made small-talk with a Summoner by cracking 
about how Malzahar’s dire prophecies—the destruction of Runeterra, the 
coming of the “daddy” that Kog’maw went on about, the annihilation of 
the League—never seemed to come true. The Summoner, a spectacled Zaunite
 who fidgeted with his sleeves when anxious, had tugged his cuff against
 his wrist and mumbled something about how they did come true, somewhere, and we’re lucky it wasn’t our somewhere, lucky this time.
“Alright. And if I ask you how you know this, are you going to say something other than ‘I hallucinated it’?”
He frowned. “I have seen it.” He took a step toward her. Her blade seethed for her hand.
She forced her hand up to rub the back of her neck, and nodded as skeptically as she could.
“As have others of my order.”
“Alright. And who else ‘knows’ about this?”
“The Council. And they have forbidden any to speak of it. Or of the expedition they dispatched to her city of the dead.”
That did get her attention. “And?”
He smiled silently.
She held up a hand. “Fair enough, 
stupid question.” She nodded. “Alright. Consider yourself to have just 
earned a bonus. Even if I’m fairly sure you Icathians live for 
delivering eerie prophecies.” And even if I know you aren’t telling this out of the purply-black goodness of your heart.
She probed further. If there was an important truth here that he was hiding from her, she sensed it involved the Council.
“You’re a Summoner. The Council forbade you to speak of this to anyone. So why are you?”
He spread his lips out into his cheeks, and flourished a bow. “I am your loyal servant, by the oath I have sworn.”
She pressed on. “Why is the Council keeping this so quiet? How many of their souls do you guys own?”
“You are most amusing,” he repeated. Her skin crawled.
Of course he’s keeping something from me. Of course this is a scheme. But
 it seemed to her that trying to wring the real truth out from this 
Icathian was the sort of thing only a lunatic would endeavor to 
accomplish, and Sivir intended to return to the land of sanity.
She walked past him to the table, and 
took her blade into her hand. It sang as she swept it up through the 
hexed air to hold it aloft. She struck its edge into the center of the 
gleaming silver pattern, and the Icathian enchantment burst apart, 
silver burning black. She found it strangely satisfying.
She glanced at the engraving on the side of her blade. If you start talking to me, I swear I’m booking four weeks on Aeaea. She clipped it back into place against her thigh.
“I do so enjoy our little talks, Summoner,” she said, as she passed him on her way out.
“I am ever pleased to be of service,” he answered.
She made eye contact with a guard standing in the hallway, visibly wondering what had just happened inside that cell.
“Did you know Reginald Ashram has been living on Nyroth for the past three years?”
He furrowed his brow, as though finding all possible responses equally dangerous.
And so she continued on, back out into the sunlight.
Why warn someone about an enemy? Well,
 to force a pre-emptive strike, perhaps. He’d said they were losing 
their control over Nefara; perhaps they wanted her gone. But the thing 
about undead enemies, besides the fact that you just cannot bribe them 
to switch sides, is that if you don’t win, you lose double when your 
casualties get back up from the killing field and start hacking at you. 
For all she knew, they were trying to feed Nefara.
But you also warn someone of an enemy 
when you want to distract them, set them up for a sucker punch. The 
geopolitical equivalent of hey, what’s that behind you?
Or it could be something a little more
 mystical. She was sure that Nasus had some ancient lore about banishing
 the undead, and the Void. And this was a good reason for her to ask him
 for those spells. She did not like the idea of an Icathian giving her 
homework. Nasus was always scowling about THE SECRETS OF SHURIMA, and YOUR PRESUMPTION THAT YOU COMPREHEND THE POWER YOU SEEK. Maybe they’d find more than they bargained for in those old books and buried temples.
But the thing about Icathians was 
that, though they were just about always up to something, always trying 
to manipulate you into something you’d never wish for, they weren’t 
necessarily averse to you getting what you wanted, either. Here’s
 one securus; buy me a big bag of diabolical schemes, but you can keep 
the change, mwahahaha, the Void hungers for your soul, have a coffee on 
us.''
She knew that everyone had their 
price, and she was going to make damn sure she knew what Sajj and his 
associates were trying to buy.
Next: The Sun Rises for Dar’khos
Category:Lines in the Sand
Category:LitS