There’d been a fight of some sort. Matthieu realizes this in increments, like spokes slotting in a very old wheel. His senses come back through vapors thick as tar, and swallow everything in between the Lion’s Mane and his crawl to the palace. The fight had to do with… well, nothing in particular, he supposes. It went over the way it always did, with him, with every other creature of rage in the realm. The coals are already strewn for the touching.
Tonight, it was a throwaway remark about the Obsidienne. There’d been a circle of believers down at the Mane, spouting nonsense like a thin brew of dirt. Matthieu called them out for the children they were, snidely and loud enough to ensure no one could pretend they didn’t hear. It felt like a challenge to the whole world, at the time; a roar against the tide of events.
The memory is misted over by booze and murk. It’s sultry and looped around his head, and, small mercies, lessening as he hobbles into the hallway. A fight, then. There’s just enough signs to go on: the sting on his knuckles, the slower crackle of their joints when he twists the doorknob, the taste of someone’s blood in his mouth. Like a crown of fog lifting from the battlefield, he imagines he will look down and see the carnage.
The only thing that matters: he’d left his sword at home. It’s the same he always does when he knows where the night is headed, because drawing your blade is so damn natural after a tankard or two. It’s inconsequential: just a swish of metal, an answer sprung from the extension to your own hand. It hardly feels momentous, until dawn splits up, and the sun bursts like overripe grapes on what you’ve done. Saints know, though: where Matthieu’s concerned, the lack of a sword is no guarantee. He could’ve torn out a man’s jaw without any gauntlet or dagger. Lambert wouldn’t have let him, he’d think, but then Lambert’s power was a thing of daylight, for all that the proprietor shrouded himself in dusk.
He waits until he’s inside to assess the damage. His eyes thin at the growing light. He’s let the lamps die out, he thinks. He should start letting chambermaids in here, because, Saints, a broken neck is far more ignoble than an assassin. Matthieu has to bring his fists up to his face to squeeze them, twice, so that he knows the bone won’t give. It could be worse. It would be worse if what he was afraid of happened, if he’d gone into a man and wrung him like a damp cloth. It’s just a scuffle by his usual standards—relief surges out, the last lever that kept him upright. He slumps back against the desk. He is already trawling for another bottle when he spots the open window. The figure filigreed inside it, like a sparrow trapped between the jamb.
Everything comes ten beats later; everything crashes ten measures too slow. The fucking sword. Where’s the fucking—? He’s too sluggish to put up a fight. He braces up for the pounce, but it never comes: the stranger seems as content as a lover, settled snug beside bedframe and covers. For a second, an absurd and wrenching moment that cleaves the haze in two, he wonders if he’d somehow asked them here. Worse things had been done, when he was in this state. Worse things had been held in the dark.
“About as long as it takes for me to reach you. Why? Want to get a closer look?” He licks away the blood, laps at it with a shattering breath. He raises his head just enough to pin them in the scope. “Where the fuck did you come from?”
he watches the chevalier for a beat more, the steps heavy with whatever he’d sloughed off himself earlier that evening that sticks to his boots, the trawling for more to imbibe, apparently suffering a dearth of the relief the booze and the fight have offered him already. wonders, does the leash calandre pull taut around his neck, the bloodshed she goads from his sword hand, compel him to drink, to sniff out the fight and carnage he’s yet to spill?
or does he do it because he has gone without for too long? does he languish without it, as karine does? does he brood, a shadow lost, in the restlessness, the doldrums of peace, wishing for them to become dregs instead, for them to coalesce into the moment before war?
does he resent calandre her grip? how it has morphed through their years as master and prized pet? how has it changed? is she all he knows?
such a plethora of questions he seldom muses over so deliberately, not even with his kills. but perhaps this strikes differently because this chevalier is hardly a victim, because he is so revered and feared in equal measure--and does not every deity known for his cruelty stumble when he is without a waiting heart for his blade?
he recognizes that crush of panic; the darting eyes, the twitching fingers hungry for the comfort of a pommel, not quite realizing yet karine had moved the sword from its usual resting place and tossed it under the bed without much reverence for its own role in carnage. the shoulders stiff with bracing. how deliberately karine watches him with the semblance of an ancient ritual, red smile spreading thinly, the dark of his eyes trained curiously, blossoming into black wells that offer consumption, so that the echoes of matthieu’s might would have a resting place, somewhere.
“would you afford me one without the threat of a slaughter?” karine asks, and he’s finally in motion, sliding off the window’s ledge like silk unspooling. “because i would be terribly disappointed if you couldn’t.” for a moment he simply stands, silhouetted against the open window and the brutal backdrop of the night, to see how the chevalier reacts.
“i’m sure you can hazard some guesses as to the where and how; dead lands, the maw of a beast. nimble fingers. hardly novel, is it? ah, but the why of it.” he draws closer, soundless as a sigh. “i was simply hoping to catch an encore.” lifts a hand to thumb a spot of dirt, or a speck of blood, on the knight’s jaw. “and because i am curious.”
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