Capítulo 171: Cherazza 12 294 AC
She was at a social event when the news reached her, far in advance of when it reached the rest of Yunkai, but that was to be expected. She had spies tracking all that happened to him after all.
She would like to say that she had left gracefully, returning home before her emotions could crush her, but in truth, she was crying before she was even onto the streets.
When she finally cast herself down onto her own bed she was barely able to move. Not by any physical strength, but simply because there seemed to be little reason to.
'Oh, cruelest fate.' She clutched at her pillows. 'Why do you hand me something beautiful and then snatched it away?'
In the days that followed, she did not leave her chambers, she forced her father to take on much of her work. Though he did so without complaint, it gave little comfort.
What was the point of it? Of any of it? If her Viserys would not live to see it?
What was even the point of her? Of her work?
She could hardly think of one anymore.
It was weeks before she stopped crying, and even then, she was not do much recovered as spent of tears. She simply had no more left to cry.
Alone and dehydrated, she sat in her room, eating little, caring nothing for her looks.
If not for her father, she might have starved herself to death, or even thrown herself from the balcony of their pyramid, clattered down to the streets below to go and join her Viserys in whatever afterlife awaited them.
With each day that passed, that call seemed more potent to her. To die by poisoned fruit or sharpened dagger, to suffer some fraction of the pain that her love had undergone, and to die and join him in whatever solemn land lay beyond the boundaries of death.
In truth, even despite all the care her father was giving her, she might have gone that way. The image of her love was so painfully etched into her mind.
But the arrival of another of her spies stopped her, delivering news that turned the well of tears about her heart to ice.
He brought news that the Red Witch had been seen in Qarth, that she had not died, not as Cherazza and all others had presumed, in the purge of the Red Cult by the Westerosi barbarians, but rather lived on, escaped, even when her love had not.
That the woman who had taken her love from her, tortured him, broken him, stolen him and sent him to his death yet survived? To Cherazza's ear, it seemed intolerable.
Her heart full of hate, it broke her out of that icy ocean of sorrow, until she could stand upon its surface propelled by the cold rage that filled her body.
It did not matter what risks there were, nor how powerful she was, the Red Witch would die, by her hand and hers alone.
This Cherazza swore to the depths of her heart.
And like a dying fire, now rekindled, she stepped back into that arena of Yunkai, and beyond, the network she had painstakingly built now an obvious tool for her hatred.
The most potent assassins of southern Essos were hired, brought in carefully, screened for any connection to the cult of R'hllor, even a touch of the Red Witch's allies.
Those found to be touched were killed.
Those not touched she brought on as agents, but also as tutors.
It would not be worthwhile to take her revenge on the red witch, if she did not do it herself, after all. She would never be a true assassin, trained from birth as the best of them were, but she cared little. She needed only land one final strike.
But that did not mean she could not use these tools, these knives she sharpened in the dark to make that revenge complete.
While some, like the newly ascendant goat king of Qohor were beyond her grasp, there were far more allies of the Red Witch who lacked such power. Like a surgeon's hand, cutting away flesh, she would excise them from Slaver's bay.
Within those first months, the blood of dozens of the most prominent men and women of the old Ghiscari cities flowed through the streets, their deaths only the beginning of the revenge she so desperately desired.
And yet it wasn't enough, could never be enough, she knew in her heart that even when she killed the thief that had stolen the life of her beloved, it would not bring him back.
And yet, she felt, she still needed to do it herself, to sink her blade into the flesh of the one who had killed him. To slay his tormentor like a sacrificial offering to his memory.
And so she practiced her newfound trade in the waning months of the year, her knife found the hearts of her father's rivals, or of their prominent supporters. She had close calls it was true, and she was almost caught many times.
But when her father was unapproachable in Yunkai, when all who might oppose him were dead, save for the still young bastard child of her own love, who she could not bring herself to kill?
Then she knew she was ready.
Like a thief in the dark, she left her father's pyramid for the last time, accompanied by her retainers. Draped in the darkness of the moonless night, she left her home behind.
Whether she returned she did not care, for in her own mind at least, her goal was clear.
Her witch-hunt had begun.
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