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Emily wasn’t sure if Delilah, for all her power and supposed cunning, just didn’t know that Jessamine’s hidden room (now Corvo’s secret Spymaster office) led to the Imperial Safe Room, or simply never thought that Emily would make it far enough into Dunwall Tower to bother guarding it properly. Whatever the case, she found it nearly untouched once inside. The only sign of disruption was in the far corner, where Emily found a mess of wood, wire, and dead flowers that appeared to have been torn apart with particular vehemence.
She frowned, trying to figure out what exactly had been destroyed and whether or not it was important when The Heart shuddered against her chest. Then came Delilah’s voice, bitter and seething—
I laid precious pigments coaxed from jewels and the rarest pieces of whale bone upon His altars, and still He would not speak to me.
Your pathetic excuse of a father laid down nothing more than wildflowers and shiny baubles, and yet He watches over him still.
At that, Emily blinked. She’d known that Corvo had flowers delivered to the Tower every week; nothing like the stunning arrays of rare and exotic specimens brought in by many of the courtiers and nobility, but simple bouquets with things like foxgloves, primroses, daisies. She could even recall the delivery of the scattered bouquet on the floor from a few days before the anniversary memorial, because the cheerful yellow sunflowers had been so markedly different from the thousands of somber blue roses ordered for the Throne Room. But she’d always assumed that they’d been for some private observance to her mother, and she never asked about them because she didn’t want to pester her father about how he chose to grieve.
Had Corvo really been ordering flowers to place on his shrine to The Outsider all these years? Emily hadn’t known he’d even had a shrine. But then again, she hadn’t really known he’d been Marked either, beyond a vague awareness that Corvo was an unusually skilled combatant and spy, even accounting for all the rigorous training he put himself through. What she knew now, she only knew from The Outsider, and now the vicious hissing of Delilah in her ear—
I plotted to steal your face once, little sparrow, and then your throne. And I would have succeeded had He not set Daud against me!
Why does a sad, pathetic girl crying for her lost mommy and daddy captivate him so, when I, the greatest witch of the age, cannot?
Emily glanced at the Mark on her hand, hidden beneath silken wrappings. At that island in the Void, The Outsider had said Delilah was a part of him now, and that he didn’t like it. Emily assumed he’d helped her for his own selfish reasons, but now…
Part of her protested as she bent to gather the scattered pieces of wood and wire. The clock was already ticking, her window to move against Delilah shrinking with every passing second. And yet Emily’s heart flooded with a sudden urge to fix the destroyed shrine, to pay her respects and say her thank yous while she could. Her ego was not so big as to believe she couldn’t lose to Delilah, and if she didn’t do this now, she might never get another chance.
Emily took the scattered remnants up with her to the safe room, hoping to find it untouched and dismayed at the destruction that would up greeting her there, worse than it had been in the secret office. Thorny roses spread from massive vines blocking the exit to the outside, the Imperial vaults were empty of their reserves, and everything else was in utter chaos. But for the moment there was no one here, and she doubted whether any of the witches would bother coming back, not when there was seemingly nothing left to take.
And so Emily set to work, clearing off a space on one of the desks before carefully laying out her gold embroidered scarf upon it, feeling it was no longer necessary; even if she’d wanted to, there could be no hiding her identity from Delilah. Then she threaded the salvaged wood and wire together until they resembled something like the fan shaped structures she’d seen at other shrines and laid it atop the scarf. Candles were found in a drawer, though sadly she had nothing to light them with. As for offerings…
She had no blood to spill and only a few small pieces of whale bone, already weathered from their use in bone charms that she’d long ago broken down for parts. The Safe Room had been ransacked of anything that could be considered valuable, but if The Heart’s whispers about flowers and shiny baubles were true, maybe that wasn’t what The Outsider wanted anyway.
Emily stepped into the little sleeping space where she’d spent so many nights during the rat plague and cast her gaze around for anything that might be suitable. A drawing she’d done of the tower outside the Hound Pits Pub remained tacked to the wall; she took it down. The audiograph atop the cabinet was miraculously untouched, and still held the card with her mother’s final message to her; after a moment’s hesitation, Emily took that too. But beyond that, the only things left in the space were broken bottles and rotting fruit; nothing she felt fit to leave at a shrine.
With a sigh, she turned to leave, and then caught something out of the corner of her eye that made her gasp.
Mrs. Pilsen, her beloved childhood doll, was slumped over in the toilet.
The day Emily had received Mrs. Pilsen burned within her memory like a waiting lighthouse upon a storm battered coast. It’d been her fifth birthday, and the whole day had been nothing but parties and presents, with Emily parading around in a frilly dress of tulle and taffeta, silken ribbons in her hair and velvet shoes upon her feet. The court fawned over her, simpering about how darling she was, how utterly precious and delightful. Emily hated every second of it, wanting nothing more than to rip off the ridiculous dress and kick off the shoes that pinched something awful so she go climb trees outside in the rare sunshine, and eat a simple picnic lunch with her mother and Corvo. But she was a Princess, and her birthday was an excuse for the court to celebrate in excess, so she’d had to endure.
When it was finally her bedtime, Corvo came in to do his customary sweep of her chambers and say goodnight. But before he left, he handed her a plainly wrapped package with a small, secretive smile.
“What is it?” Emily had asked, too tired from the long day to think.
Corvo had laughed. She’d loved it when he laughed, because he only ever did it around her and mother. It was like a special secret shared between just the three of them.
“It’s a birthday present, silly.”
Emily had over a hundred birthday presents waiting for her somewhere in the Tower, but she’d still ripped the package open with greedy fingers and crowed in delight at the doll inside. She must have received a dozen similar toys that day already, but they were fragile things crafted of porcelain and silk, made to be looked at instead of played with. Corvo’s doll was felted from sturdy wool, her clothes sewn from finely woven linen, and Emily knew she’d be able to drag this doll anywhere she wanted.
Even now, Mrs. Pilsen was holding together, if a little soggy from her stay in the toilet.
Emily picked her up with slow, shaking fingers, gently wringing out the dampness as best she could over the sink. She’d longed so deeply for the comfort of Mrs. Pilsen during those long, terrible days trapped at the Golden Cat, and then the slightly better ones at the Hound Pits Pub. And yet when she’d finally been able to return to the Tower, Emily found she couldn’t bear to touch her old doll. Mrs. Pilsen belonged to a different girl, one who had not found herself a pawn in the games of schemers. Who had not nearly fallen to her death in the arms of a traitor high above the churning sea. Whose mother was still alive, and whose father was not haunted by blood upon his hands that only he could see.
She would never be that girl again. But neither, Emily hoped, would she be a naive young Empress who let everything she ever held dear be ripped away from her weak, pampered hands. And whatever his reasons for doing so, the fact remained that The Outsider had been instrumental in making that change.
So she placed Mrs. Pilsen against the fan of wood and wire, along with the drawing and the audiograph card. Then she took out a few shards of whale bone she had left and placed them upon the makeshift altar too. No sooner had she done so than she heard the whisper of Void song, and the whole thing became enveloped in a now familiar, if still strange and otherworldly, purple glow.
“People have placed many dolls at their shrines to me across the ages,” came the voice of The Outsider from somewhere beside her. “Effigies made of wax and bone, adorned with bits of hair and nails. Painted with blood and other even less pleasant things.” She felt a shift in the air, and then he was in front of her, sitting on the desk without actually touching it. “But you might be the first person to ever offer me a children’s toy.”
He fixed her with a black-eyed stare that Emily still found unnerving, though she tried not to show it.
“Is that okay?” she couldn’t help but ask. “I know it’s not exactly traditional, but I thought if Corvo gave you flowers, then…”
It was so difficult to hold his gaze, especially when he looked at her like he was now, expression unreadable even as his eyes seemed to pierce through to her very soul.
“You can place whatever you’d like at your shrine, Emily Kaldwin,” The Outsider replied tonelessly. “People think they need to satisfy me with offerings and sacrifices, but the truth is the object matters less than the intent behind it. And I already know what your intentions are.”
Of course he did. Emily tried not to fidget.
“I just thought… I thought I should find a way to do it now. In case… In case I don’t have another chance.” She swallowed nervously, and then before she could stop herself blurted out, “Is it weird? To want to say thank you?”
For a long moment, The Outsider did nothing but stare, his black-on-black eyes burning into the very core of her until Emily was sure she couldn’t take it any longer. Right before she was about to look away he spoke.
“Exceedingly. It would seem you are your father’s daughter, in that respect.”
Emily felt her lips twitch at that. “Corvo said thank you too?” she asked.
“Yes,” The Outsider answered after another too long moment. “Many times.”
His gaze dropped to the shrine, and he reached out a finger to run it against the yarn woven hair of Mrs. Pilsen, and then to the pieces of whale bone beside her, which thrummed headily under his touch and then began to smoke. She watched as The Outsider seemed to weave that smoke between his fingers while the bone charms burned to ash, then the drawing, and finally, Mrs. Pilsen. The audiograph was left untouched.
Something bright and burning and incorporeal had gathered in his upturned palm. The Outsider held it for a moment before making a gesture as though to set it down, and when he lifted his hand, Emily saw that a new rune sat upon the shrine, fresh and positively brimming with power.
She stared at The Outsider. He stared back with the same indecipherable look he always had.
“I’m not normally in the business of lending such a direct hand to my Marked,” he said, in a tone with absolutely no inflection. “But I believe you’ll need all the help you can get, Empress.”
Black-eyed bastard! screamed the Heart against her chest. He says he doesn’t play favorites. He lies.
I will make him regret his choices.
I will watch him burn.
And despite it all, despite her worries and her doubts, despite everything that had happened, and everything she still had to face, Emily smiled.
Maybe The Outsider did play favorites, she thought to herself as she moved to pick up the rune and draw upon its power.
But Emily Kaldwin knew better than to turn down a gift.