Work Text:
Giovanna de Riva is barely a Crow — hardly more than a student — but here, with Heir, she gets to be a girl who’s become a woman at last.
Their lookout over Treviso is isolated by design, just near enough to home that Viago will not suspect, but far enough that they won’t be overheard. Heir’s voice is a low hum, just above the sound of water lapping against the piers below. She’s relaxed here, for her — which means that she doesn’t stand straight, she doesn’t clasp her hands behind her back, she doesn’t jut her chin and peer at Giovanna down her nose.
Here she sits, one leg drawn up and the other stretched before her, slouched back against the stone arch that opens to a view of the water. An arm is draped over her knee, her wine glass dangling dangerously from slim fingers — her leather suit, usually buttoned tight, is loosened enough to show a sliver of her pale throat. She watches. A certain softness plays at the corner of her mouth that Giovanna only sees when they’re alone, as her former student waxes her bowstring.
“Gio.”
“Hmm?”
Heir takes a final swig of her red vintage, holding Giovanna’s gaze over the rim of her glass, before she sets it down beside her with a sigh of satisfaction. She stands — she rolls up her sleeves, just above her wrists, but she may as well have opened her shirt for the effect it has. Giovanna hopes she’s not staring. When she looks back up to meet Heir’s gaze, she knows she’s been caught, for there’s a fading glimmer of a smirk on her face.
“Take your stance.”
Heir makes an up—up motion with her hand. Giovanna stands, bow in hand.
She’s a student again, from before the letter with the Chantry’s seal came, asking for Heir’s help in training the Inquisitor. She’s a girl, watching Heir pace between fledglings, watching how she twists the knife of her disapproval into those who disappoint her — sometimes a literal knife, when the fledgling does not improve. Giovanna’s heart thunders in her throat again, convinced from much panicked practice it is next on the blade of her displeasure.
Or perhaps not panic, but something else — something that flutters as she aligns her body like she was taught, as she raises her elbows and chin to become the arrow that flies forth from her bow. The string rasps against calloused fingertips as she draws it to her cheek.
“Not enough wax,” Heir tuts.
She’s close — Giovanna can feel the warmth of her body as she circles her, as she stands behind and eyes down the length of Giovanna’s sights. Close enough to have heard the sound of the under-waxed string. Close enough to see the slight hairs that stand up from the surface of it, as well as the hairs now rising on Giovanna’s umber-skinned arms. Close enough now for Giovanna to smell her — the warmth of wine and leather.
“Your core,” Heir says.
Giovanna hears her move, feels her presence come nearer — a touch on her waist to alert her, as if she wasn’t already aware of Heir’s closeness, and suddenly a palm slides to cover the curve of her stomach.
Heir’s hand is warm. Ungloved. Giovanna’s belly whooshes — she imagines that hand on her bare skin, moving lower, lower —
“Engage your core,” Heir murmurs in her ear.
It takes all of Giovanna’s training not to allow her pointed ear to twitch at the sound, the feeling of whispered breath. She obeys Heir, as always, wishing she could obey her in other ways.
Heir presses on her belly, against her strength. “Your breath, your accuracy, comes from within here. A Crow would not so easily forget.”
“And this Crow,” Giovanna dares to tease, no longer a fledgling, “has been drinking.”
Heir’s severity lifts again, just for a moment. She chuckles, and it’s an indulgent sound, close enough to taste. She raises her hand to Giovanna’s on the bow and taps — the feeling of her bare skin on hers, no gloves, no leather between them, is enough to send Giovanna’s mind reeling.
She surrenders the bow to Heir’s hand.
With Heir’s tacit nod of permission, Giovanna sits, back against the colonnade, and watches. She plucks up her own glass and drinks, eyes fixed on the Assassin, drinking her in as she does her beautifully aged wine.
Heir plucks up three arrows from her own quiver, nocking them one at a time and letting them fly into the Drowned District below — her form is perfect, her eye true, but the wine has made her more loose, more liquid, more beautiful in her natural accuracy. Her body is a cat’s, her muscles relaxed and powerful and languid in their assurance of their own power. Giovanna watches the master shoot her own bow and wishes she were the arrow between her fingers. She watches the brush of fletching against the assassin’s lips and wishes she were the feathers.
The last of the arrows flies. Heir’s arms drop, her chest rising and falling with easy, deep breaths, and she casts her eye towards Giovanna again.
“Take back your weapon,” she says, warmth playing around the corners of her mouth. “And retrieve my arrows, my drunken Crow.”
Giovanna gestures with her empty glass. “Now?”
“Now.” Heir raises her chin in her old instructor’s pose, but the warmth of a secret smile still lingers. “I will reward you with more wine upon your return. And perhaps, even, an induction ceremony into the Crows of my own invention.”
Giovanna scrambles to her feet. Her pulse whooshes in her ears, her protective braids swinging loose around her shoulders, and she takes the lattice down the side of the building with little regard for gravity or caution.
Above her, Heir’s chuckle washes out into the open air.
The stars are out. Giovanna only has their light to go by, down in the drowned, stinking parts of the great Antivan city. Above the ridgeline, the rest of Treviso sparkles. But her prey is here, arrow after arrow, and she must find them all.
The first is fixed in the side of a building, square in the center of a knot in the wood. She wrenches it out.
The second pins an adder to the post supporting a causeway. The head of the arrow perfectly pierces the snake’s throat, leaving its mouth free to snap uselessly at the sky. Giovanna casts the dead, harmless creature into the water.
The third is most difficult to find — it blends into the dark stain of a Crow mark, splashed artfully on an upper stone wall. The arrow is fixed in the mortar, and Giovanna has to carefully work it free for fear of losing the arrowhead within the crack. It releases the briny scent of squid ink once loose.
Heir is waiting for her when she returns, muddy and breathless from her hunt. Her assassin has loosened more of her neckline in her absence, exposing skin straight down to the chest. She smiles, truly smiles, at the sight of Giovanna with a bouquet of arrows in hand.
“A small test,” she mutters, raising her glass to her lips, “but one still befitting a Crow, I suppose. Good eye.”
Giovanna pauses to catch her breath — it’s been punched out of her anew at the sight of Heir. With the arrows returned to the quiver and a full glass returned to her hand, she takes a seat beside the other assassin and drinks deeply, gasping between gulps.
“Didn’t realize,” she laughs, “that I’d be running up and down the Drowned District tonight like a fledgling.”
Heir tilts her head in acquiescence. “I am owed your obedience still, my Crow. It is good to see you still know the essence of loyalty, even for the sake of my arrows.”
Giovanna hums an affirmation. Seated beside her instructor, now her peer, she leans forward only slightly — hardly daring to hope. But Heir, with the smirk playing about the corners of her mouth again, leans towards her, allowing the warmth of her body to wash over her. Wine and warmth, together in intoxicating tandem.
“Whether for the sake of your arrows or not,” Gio manages to whisper, just before Heir’s lips meet hers, “I am yours.”