@emeraldknight
The aerie was quiet, the birds all asleep or simply clucking quietly to one another from their perches. The sounds were a lullaby to Shae, curled up in the alcove where her low cot and small dresser resided. The manor was near silent, and for once sleep was easily within reach.
It didn't last long.
Quiet as a shadow the thief slipped through the halls. He knew exactly what he wanted, and he knew how to get there.
What he hadn't been expecting was the amount of resistance in his way. The servants he came across were easily dealt with, but it was like they traveled in a damn pack. No sooner was one dead when two more came peering out into the hallway to take her place.
So he left significantly more evidence of his passing than he would have liked. But he got the job done, all without even waking the master of the house. Going back the way he'd come was asking for trouble though, so he decided to sneak out through the west tower.
The ravens exploded into the air as a stranger entered their domain, the sound of wings and harsh cawing echoing through the aerie. Shae bolted awake, eyes wide as she looked around frantically.
A hand suddenly covered her mouth, the weight of a foreign body pressing her down onto her cot. Her eyes widened, staring up into a burning golden gaze, marred by a large burn scar over the left eye.
"Easy, little bird." The stranger smiled, his other hand moving to cover her throat. Shae thrashed underneath him, but he was far too strong for her to throw off. His hand on her neck tightened and she stilled.
The smile curved into a smirk, a snarl. "I should kill you," he noted softly. "But...I don't think you'll be telling anyone what you saw, will you, little bird?" His fingers stroked the garrote scar across her throat and she shuddered.
Then he was gone, the weight lifted as he vanished through one of the high windows of the aerie. Shae lay on her bed, panting and shaking. Then a sudden burst of energy shoved her from the cot and she bolted for the door to the aerie, sprinting down the spiraling stairs of the tower and into the manor proper.
As she threw the door open her feet slipped in something warm and sticky. She froze, eyes going wide as she took in the carnage around her. Her mouth fell open in a silent scream.
***
It was nearly a week before the "law enforcer" her master had contacted was set to arrive at the manor. Things were quiet, much more quiet than usual- eerily so. Hardly anyone spoke to each other as they went about their duties, and when they did it was in hushed whispers.
They still couldn't quite clean the blood stains in the hall in their entirety.
The staff's numbers had been reduced by nearly two thirds during the break-in. All of her closest friends, then people who'd practically raised her, who she'd grown up with, just...
gone. Even if Shae
could speak, she didn't know if she would have been able to after that.
And her master was growing impatient. She tried, over and over she tried to describe the man who had done this to her home, but no one could understand her. Kitty and Martha had been the only members of the household who ever read her signs with consistent accuracy, and they were- they were dead.
She felt trapped, more than she ever had before. The birds were her escape, forgotten or half-written messages littering the floor of the aerie. She'd tried reading them, but she only knew fundamental letters at best- maybe if she could have written it down they would have listened to her, but no one was patient or calm enough to try to help her through it.
And no one seemed to notice that she was the only one who'd survived an encounter with the thief.