Daud
“You’re overestimating my employer’s generosity,” Daud said dryly, making no move to shift away from his careless leaning against the bars. “Which I’m starting to think is a habit of yours. Overestimating.”
He let the cigarette fall to the floor and crushed it lightly with the heel of his boot, and his arms folded against the metal of his door. “He’s going to let me simmer in here,” Daud informed him. “Seethe a little. Stew. We left on a bit of a sour note—won’t bore you with the details—but suffice it to say I don’t think he’s chomping at the bit to bust me loose. Probably thinks a little time in a cell to cool me off is just great. Convenient, even.”
He glanced around the cell, his eyes lingering on the various flaws in the design. A loose stone here, a rusted bar there. The cell window led directly to the street, which seemed a vast oversight, but Daud supposed they were used to housing a milder manner of criminal there, and had no need to consider such things like escape routes and subtle flaws. Still, he made conversation. For some reason.
“Lock wouldn’t be hard to pick,” he pointed out, giving the door a demonstrative shake. “They didn’t take my belt, did they? Could use the prong as a pick, if I had a mind. Could use my bootlaces as a ligature, if I had a mind for that too. Tied shirt to break the rusted bar on the window. Loose stone to knock out the good-looking guard and search him for keys. You know, just thinking aloud here. Maybe you could move me to a cell that would give me just a little trouble breaking out of it?”
Somehow, Corvo could believe that of his employer, the famous actor turned viscount, who in his brief acquaintance of the man, imparted a contemptible sort of frivolity in all that he did, and a pettifogging possessiveness of the young man in his employ. He remembered with a tentative exactitude, the way the man, grey beyond his years, had raked his eyes down Daud’s form, loathe to part from him, even with the promise of a girl in a garden, waiting for him like snare amongst the brambles.
But did that explain his desire to be free, at the cost of his own reputation and infamy? Or was that challenge in his explanations, of all the ways he could thwart Corvo and his men, for Corvo himself? For some unexplained enmity that should not have existed, if he had meant as little to him as he’d implied in his elegant double speak? Or was Corvo once more only an easy mark to redirect his personal frustrations upon?
It hardly mattered, when every one of those potentialities were hateful to him.
He listened, to every possibility Daud posed and knew beyond certainty that his prisoner was capable of every single one. And he attempted to keep his composure as best he could.
“Have a seat, Mr Daud,” he managed to repeat calmly, despite the crooked smile that belied his frustration. His hands never left their disciplined clasp behind his back. “We’ve allowed you the liberty of freedom within your cell. I’m wondering if I shouldn’t apply the fetters we ought to have, if not for the respect administration had for your employer.” He reached for the ring of heavy iron keys hooked within his belt. “It’s your choice. To give me reason to regret it, or not, sir.”
