#jack be whumpy

[whumpninja]

Whumper melts down royal Whumpee’s crown and has it forged into shackles/a collar for them to wear.

[whumpninja]

Weirdly specific image in my head with no context:

Two whumpees, curled up together, clinging to each other with a sign nearby reading “Each sold separately.”

[whumpninja]

Enemies Closer

Part 2: Alive

Featuring: medieval whump, historical whump, non-sexual nudity, graphic descriptions of starvation/injuries/sickness, blood, bathing, whumper turned whumpee

Masterlist

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“Beggin’ your pardon, Lord Protector, but there’s a man at the kitchen door with a dead body in a wheelbarrow. Says it’s for you.” The young serving girl giggled nervously as she delivered the message, her eyes wide.

“Thank you,” Leander replied, sending her into another round of tittering. They always laughed at the way he said “please” and “thank you” when he addressed them. He felt impolite just barking orders at them, no matter how many times they assured him it was how things were. “I’ll be down in a moment.”

The girl left with a curtsy, still laughing behind her hand.

Leander’s boots sounded very loud, thudding on the reed-strewn floors as he made his way down to the kitchens. The castle was relatively quiet this time of night, but a few cooks and kitchen maids still tidying up gave him puzzled looks and confused bobs of their heads as he came into their territory. He’d tried to make sure as few people would see him bring Emauri into the castle as possible, but it would never have gone completely undetected.

Leander headed for the big main door where deliveries were trundled in. Sure enough, a man stood waiting in the little courtyard beyond, leaning against the handles of a wheelbarrow. The contents were covered by a piece of rough cloth, but one pale arm dangled out of the back. It did look concerningly as though a corpse had been brought up to the castle.

The man who had brought it was not one of Leander’s own guards. He’d not wanted to risk the gossip being spread around the castle itself. A courier from the town would likely talk as well, but it was more likely to be dismissed as the oddities of the nobility. And anyway-

Leander tossed the man a golden coin, then held up another. “For your discretion,” he said firmly.

“Oh, of course, sir,” the courier replied, his eyes on the money. Leander handed it over and moved to the side of the wheelbarrow, steeling himself before pulling the cloth sheet back.

Emauri was breathing, but that was about the best that Leander could say. He looked worse in the moonlight, sickeningly pale and frightfully thin. He was bleeding from somewhere, and the fresh blood stuck to the dried grime coating his skin. He wasn’t conscious. Leander hadn’t thought he would be.

“You’ll want to keep that cloth on him, I expect,” the man said, looking faintly amused. “Them rags fell right off when the guard pulled him out of the cell.”

Leander hastily wrapped the roughspun cloth close around Emauri’s frail body and lifted the limp form into his arms. Godsbelow. He’d probably weighed more when Leander had met him as a boy.

Emauri’s head kept falling back, lolling on his neck, and Leander found he couldn’t bear the sight of it. It looked too much like a dead man. So he shifted his grip, adjusting his hands so he could brace Emauri’s head against his shoulder. His long hair was stringy, caked with sweat and filth; it felt like wet straw. Leander pulled a fold of the cloth up to hide Emauri’s face.

He met with a few castle residents on his way back through the kitchen and up the stairs. Several of them looked taken aback at the sight of the Lord Protector carrying an unconscious man through the corridors. “Someone I used to know,” Leander explained whenever he ran into someone, and left it at that.

He’d chosen the room carefully. It had crossed his mind that he could secure Emauri in the castle keep, which functioned as a prison but was far and away better than that hole he’d been rotting in. But Leander somehow hadn’t wanted to see him behind bars again. So he’d found a spare room in a quiet wing of the castle, on one of the highest floors. It had wide windows that would let the light in, but none of the windows on the upper floors opened, which Leander felt was a good precaution. He’d made sure the room had a sturdy, comfortable bed- it was obvious that Emauri would not be able to leave it for some time- and had asked one of the servants to bring up a tub and draw a warm bath.

Some part of his mind still railed at him, insisting that he was treating an enemy too kindly. Leander ignored it. Emauri was a traitor’s son, but he didn’t deserve to die forgotten in a dungeon.

Leander elbowed open the door of the room he had chosen. The bed had been made up just as he asked, piled with thick furs, and a tub of water stood against the far wall. A soft cloth hung ready over the side.

“Here we are,” Leander told the near-corpse in his arms, unsure why he felt like he should say it. He crossed the room in a few swift strides and set Emauri down next to the tub, pulling back the roughspun wrapped around him.

“Godsbelow,” Leander muttered, his stomach roiling.

He’d seen Emauri’s pitiful state in the dim light of the prison and the cold gleam of the moon. Now, seeing him in proper firelight, Leander wondered if he’d only brought him out of prison to die more comfortably.

Emauri was skeletal. Not thin, not even starved- skeletal. There was no meat, no muscle left. He was jutting bones draped with skin, washed almost translucent by years without sunlight. Bruises stained his face, marched their way down his arms, spilled over his chest and stomach. Any areas that weren’t bruised or cut were dotted with festering sores, and his whole frame was caked with filth. His body was cool when Leander reached out to touch it, and he snatched his hand away, thinking of the cold flesh of dead men.

The fresh blood was coming from a couple of deep gashes in Emauri’s back. They didn’t look newly inflicted; rather, they looked like older wounds that refused to heal properly, tearing open at the slightest movement.

Leander had intended to get started right away, but he found himself sitting back on his heels and just- staring. It seemed very much as though Emauri had been thrown in that cell seven years ago and simply left there. Leander knew the guards had to have fed him and given him water at least sometimes, but it looked as if they hadn’t. Had they ever bothered to go inside the cell and see how wretched their prisoner had become? If they had, had it mattered to them?

How long has he been like this? Surely not the whole seven; he would have died by now. He must have been slowly fading, the end rushing up faster than the beginning. It was easy to imagine the boy Emauri had been, still strong and healthy, pacing the cell and snarling arrogant curses at the guards.

It was also easy to imagine when that voice had finally fallen silent.

“Enough,” Leander told himself sharply. He’d meant to get the worst of the blood and filth off before bathing Emauri properly, and he set to it now. He dipped a corner of the roughspun into the tub and attacked the darkest patches of grime.

It was slow going. He’d feared to use soap or wine in case Emauri couldn’t stand it; his only weapons were water and the roughspun. Seven years of grime resisted him valiantly. He learned his lesson about scrubbing too hard and fast when a too-vigorous motion succeeded in knocking a crust of dirt from Emauri’s shoulder, but tore open one of the sores beneath. Leander had to be careful, after that.

Eventually, though, he felt as though he’d gotten the worst of it. The roughspun was black with filth. He’d burn it when he had a moment. For now, though, it was time to get Emauri into the proper bath.

Emauri was frail, but he was tall- Leander had remembered him shorter than himself, but stretched out on the floor of the castle he could tell Emauri had gained an inch or so on him. It was easy to lift the collection of bones Emauri had become. It was not so easy to sort them out into a tub of water that seemed suddenly much smaller than it needed to be. Emauri’s eyelids flickered when Leander lowered him into the warm water, and he made a sound that might have been an attempt at a word but was more likely just a feeble moan. He did not wake. Leander wished he would; senseless as he was, he couldn’t hold his own head up, and Leander had the difficult task of bathing him and simultaneously keeping him from drowning.

The water almost instantly turned a horrible grayish-pink, the color of rotting flesh. Leander stared at it, feeling oddly overwhelmed. I should have known one tub wouldn’t be enough.

He set his teeth, wet the soft cloth, and started in. He found that he could use an arm to brace Emauri up while leaving his hands free, as long as he resigned himself to being thoroughly soaked. Emauri did not resist him at all, so it was easy to reposition him as needed. And with the water softening the coat of dirt and dried blood, Leander could work a little harder at removing it without causing fresh damage.

When the cloth started to drip greyish instead of clear, Leander carefully positioned Emauri’s head back against the side of the tub and went down for a fresh bucket of water. He could have had one of the few servants who were still awake bring them up, but somehow it felt right to do it himself. Besides, they had enough to do keeping a large cauldron of water ready to fill the bucket when he needed it. They watched him flinging quantities of filthy water tinged with blood out the kitchen door and said nothing. Leander wondered if they would, if they knew who he was attending to upstairs.

Six trips up and down the stairs for more water, and Emauri finally began to look something like the boy Leander remembered. His dingy hair washed out to the silvery blond Leander knew, and he was able to work the worst of the knots out of it. The skin that had hidden beneath the coat of grime was papery and pale, and the bruises and cuts showed up far more starkly against it. There were dozens of marks and wounds Leander hadn’t been able to see before. A scar at his temple, quite old. A ring of raw flesh around his ankle where the shackle had been. That collection of cuts on his back, which Leander guessed had been made by some sort of lash. Several of the nails were missing from his hands and feet. One of his legs had been broken and healed badly. Leander was no physician, but he knew Emauri would not be able to walk on it.

He also knew that the former prisoner was ill. With what, he couldn’t have said. But Emauri’s thin body trembled, and it went beyond cold. Even after Leander had lifted him from the tub and dried most of the water from his skin, a sheen of sweat formed over it. When Leander pried up one of his eyelids, the slate-grey eye beneath was glassy with fever.

But Leander had to attend to what he could first, and he could do nothing for whatever disease had claimed Emauri in the prison. He could, however, get him proper clothes- save for the fact that Leander was shorter than Emauri and far more broad in the shoulders and chest. None of Leander’s shirts would fit him. He’d have to borrow one from some servingman or one of the guards.

Leander moved Emauri closer to the fire and folded the cleanest corner of the roughspun over his emaciated frame, just in case someone got curious and looked in. Then he turned to the washtub, deciding he might as well see to that, too, and fetch a shirt on the way back.

The full tub was heavier than he expected, and a frustrated part of him that had never bothered with castle manners wished that the windows up here did open, so he could throw the water out and only have to lug the empty vessel. He dragged it as far as the staircase before realizing that he was inevitably going to slop water all down the stairs. Someone could slip and be injured. Worse, the senior housemaid would be livid. And he still hadn’t found anyone to borrow a shirt from.

The answer to both Leander’s problems came with a chuckle and a rattle of armor. “Leander, what are you doing?”

Rainier Velue- Second Captain of the Royal Guard, tall as a pine, slim as a reed, and Leander’s closest friend in the whole world- stood behind him on the staircase, looking bemused at whatever Leander was trying to accomplish.

“Help me,” Leander panted, hefting the washtub down the first step.

Rainier obligingly took hold of the rim, and Leander gasped in relief as the washtub became much lighter and easier to balance. Together they heaved it down several flights of stairs which hadn’t felt so numerous when Leander had merely been toting a bucket, and sluiced the water out the kitchen door to join the rest of it. Even the last of the kitchen staff had gone to bed by now; they were alone.

“Should I ask why there’s blood in that water?” Rainier said quietly. “I’ll keep your secrets, you know, if you’ve done something stupid.”

Leander snorted, then turned it into a heavy sigh. He could trust Rainier, he knew that. But Rainier had very good reason to despise the Tarasques even more than Leander himself had. Could he be trusted with this?

He has to be, Leander decided. He’s my captain. And my friend. He has to know.

“Can I borrow a shirt?” Leander asked instead of answering.

They went up to Rainier’s solar together, keeping their steps as quiet as they could- Abril, Rainier’s wife and Leander’s First Captain, was sound asleep. They both knew that if they woke her she would not hesitate to make her displeasure known. Lord Protector or not, she’d thrown boots and books at Leander’s head more than once. Her aim was wicked.

Rainier slipped in to retrieve a shirt and came back victorious and unbruised, a bundle of muted blue cloth under his arm. “If this is for you, it won’t fit,” he warned, his green eyes twinkling. “For all the rich food the cook shoves at you, you’re still a scrawny shepherd boy.”

Leander jabbed an elbow in his ribs for that and led him, almost without knowing he was doing it, down the corridor to the room where he had put Emauri. At the door he turned to his friend. “I won’t ask you to agree with me on this,” Leander said. “But I will ask you not to tell anyone else except Abril. I wouldn’t make you keep a secret from her. And the two of you can be as angry with me as you want, just- be angry with me alone. It was my decision.”

Rainier’s easy smile had dropped from his face. “Leander, have you done something you shouldn’t?”

“Probably,” Leander sighed, and pushed open the door.

Nothing had changed. The fire had burned a little lower, perhaps, but that was all. Emauri lay on the hearth, still silent, still senseless, wrapped in the roughspun.

“Mother of mountains,” Rainier swore, his eyes wide. “Who’s that? What’s happened to him?”

“I found him when I went to look at the old gaol,” Leander answered. He crossed the room and bent down beside the almost-lifeless form, working the shirt over his head and his arms and settling it over his chest. It still fit badly, but better than one of Leander’s would have done. He balled up the roughspun and flung it into the fire. “Help me get him on the bed.”

Rainier pulled back the furs on the bed and Leander gathered Emauri into his arms again, setting him down on the mattress. He thought Emauri’s eyes flickered again, but once they had settled him, he lay still.

Rainier was looking him over, his lip caught between his teeth. “I think you’d better get Master Brindle to have a look at him, whoever he is,” he said. “He’s sick. And starved, and-“

He broke off suddenly, brushing a lock of the silver-blond hair away from the face and bending down to look more closely. Leander knew he’d worked it out, then.

Rainier turned disbelieving eyes on him. “Leander,” he said, very softly, “tell me this isn’t who I think it is.”

“It is,” Leander answered. “I don’t know how it is, but it’s Emauri Tarasque. Alive.”

“I can fix that,” Rainier bit out, and drew his dagger.

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Taglist: @incoming-crisis @stars-hide-our-fires @vampiresprite @melpomenelamusa @kira-the-whump-enthusiast @pigeonwhumps @yougivemewhumperflies @starryybrained @scoundrelwithboba @whumpyreader @f1shs-b0nes

[whumpninja]

I really love whumpees getting dragged from their bed (especially if it’s like a kidnapping/capture situation) or woken up and suddenly BOOM there’s whump, or getting woken up with the whump- like getting kicked awake or getting cold water thrown over them to wake them up.

In other news, my cat woke me up by jumping directly on my rib cage.

[whumpninja]

happy 4th of July throw a British whumpee in the harbor or whatever

[whumpninja]

So thankful for you, whump community!

Now go whump a sad guy. Or girl. Or person of indeterminate gender.

[whumpninja]

Happy 4th of July! Here’s something not at all related!

Enemies Closer

Part 4: Master Atticus

Featuring: trauma, mention of nightmares, chains, sick whumpee, unconscious whumpee, medicine of the historical variety, a weird pigeon

Masterlist

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Leander had never felt worse in his life, standing in the doorway while Rainier explained the situation to Abril. She began looking deeply irritated, her arms crossed across her chest. When Rainier got to the part about Leander finding a prisoner in the old gaol, she had dropped her arms and started looking far more concerned than angry. When Rainier told her who it was, she started to shake. Tears rose in her eyes and she pressed a hand over her mouth.

“It’s really Baron Tarasque’s son?” she asked, getting enough control of herself to speak.

Rainier nodded. “It’s him all right, the snake bastard.”

Abril’s breath caught in a sob, and Rainier moved to her at once. She fell against his chest, crying quietly. Abril had always cried quietly. Rainier stroked her hair and gave Leander a furious look over her shoulder.

Leander felt like the worst tyrant alive.

At last Abril dragged in a deep breath and became First Captain again, if an unsteadier captain than usual. Rainier kept a hand on her arm. “He was in the gaol?” she asked Leander in clipped tones. “For how long?”

“The guard didn’t know. I’d guess since soon after the last battle. He’s- he’s been there a long time.”

“Good,” Abril said curtly. “Why didn’t anyone tell you he was captured?”

Leander sighed. “In all honesty, Abril, I think they forgot. There was so much happening in those days. Each man probably assumed someone else had told me and didn’t bother any more about it.”

“What are you going to do with him?”

“Why does this feel like an interrogation?”

“Because it is one. What are you going to do with him?”

“He’s sick. And hurt. And nearly starved. I’m going to have a healer look at him.”

“Not what I’m asking.” Abril stepped forward and put a finger in Leander’s chest- not jabbing him, just making sure he felt the pressure. “Long term, Leander. What are you going to do with him?”

Leander opened his mouth to answer and realized he had none. He hadn’t thought about it, and when he did think about it, no reply came to mind. He couldn’t keep Emauri chained in the spare bedroom for the rest of his days, but he couldn’t send him back to prison. He couldn’t welcome him into the court; the nobility would be outraged that one of their own had been left to rot in gaol and the common folk would be outraged that he wasn’t still there. He couldn’t find work for him- it was obvious even without a healer’s advice that Emauri would never again be as he had been.

“I don’t know,” he admitted quietly.

Abril’s hardened face softened a little. “I wanted you to say it,” she told him. “You think with your heart, Leander. That’s good. But you have to think with your head, too. Rainier and I try our best for you, but you are Lord Protector. The blame will always fall on you.” She became captain again, standing straight and tall, planting her feet. “Right. You don’t have a long term, so we’ll focus on the short term. Rainier, ask Master Brindle to come see the- the prisoner.” Leander could tell she’d wanted to say much harsher words.

Rainier nodded and took himself off to the healer’s tower. Leander went to the window at the end of the corridor, staring out at the lightening sky. It wasn’t quite full morning.

“I’m sorry, Abril,” he said.

He heard her sigh behind him. “When I had nightmares, I used to tell myself that it was all right because everyone in them was dead. I still have them. I’m in the Tarasque house. It’s dark. There’s blood. The baron stands over me with a knife. Emauri holds the lantern for him. They’re both laughing.” Her voice trembled in her throat. “I remember the baron telling me that what he was doing to me would be nothing compared to what he had in mind for you. When they put us up on that wall and tried to make you surrender- I’ve never been so afraid in my life, Leander. And he was there. He was there and I thought he was dead and now you tell me he’s not only alive, but living in my home.” She was Abril again. Leander wished she’d be First Captain. The First Captain never sounded like she was going to cry.

“I couldn’t leave him there, Abril. I know who his father was. I know what they did. I still couldn’t leave him. Part of me even wanted to, but- I can’t know that a man is suffering and let it continue. I had to put a stop to it.” He wrapped his hands around the stone of the windowsill and watched the sun and thought about a pitch-black prison cell.

Abril said nothing else. He knew she was still there, but he didn’t turn to look. They stayed silent and waited for Rainier to come back.

When he did, he had a look of grim satisfaction on his face. “Where’s Master Brindle?” Abril asked.

“Not coming,” Rainier said, flat and cold as steel.

“Why not?”

“He says he won’t treat a traitor.”

“You told him?” Leander felt the first flash of anger rather than guilt. “Why?”

“I thought he ought to know. I swore him to secrecy first. He said he’ll look at him if the Lord Protector commands it, but he won’t waste his medicines and things on a kingsman.” Rainier shrugged. “He was a soldier in your army, Leander, you can hardly blame the fellow.”

“And the town healers will talk.” Leander glared at Rainier. “Fine. If Master Brindle won’t treat him, I’ll send for Master Atticus.”

“Master Atticus is still alive?” Abril blurted.

“He lives at the edge of town now, keeps himself to himself and doesn’t advertise his practice much. But he’s alive and well, and he’ll come for a summons from the Lord Protector.” Leander turned back to the open window and silently added I hope.

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Leander sent a messenger with a sealed letter to Master Atticus and went to his rooms to wait for a reply.

By the time one came, it was early afternoon and he was nearly out of his mind with impatience. He’d thought of going to see Emauri again, but he had eventually decided he’d stepped on Rainier and Abril’s toes heavily enough.

He didn’t see Abril for the rest of the day. Rainier’s stopped by his room at midday to tell him, in severe tones, that he was going to look in on the prisoner. Quietly, Leander asked him to give Emauri water, and pretended not to see that Rainier was carrying a chain.

“He wouldn’t drink,” Rainier reported, coming back empty-handed. “Got it down his throat. It wouldn’t stay there.” He shrugged, as if it made very little difference to him. “I have a guard posted.”

“Thank you,” Leander told him, sincerely, and thought he saw Rainier’s eyes warm just a little.

Just as the shadows started to lengthen, Leander heard a horrific bwooooo sound on his balcony. He jumped nearly out of his skin and hurried to see what on earth was making it.

The ugliest pigeon he had ever seen sat on the railing. It had one eye that looked outward and another that stared straight up into the sky. Its feathers were ragged and in some places nonexistent, and its feet were an absurd yellow. There was a note tied to one of them. When it- somehow- managed to look at Leander, it said Bwooooo, and held out the leg for him.

“Um- thank you,” Leander said, untying the note. The pigeon preened its patchy feathers.

Leander unrolled the note. It was a scrap of parchment, with a single line of writing in a bold, elegant hand.

The note read, You are an idiot.

Leander read it four times. “This doesn’t say if he’s coming or not,” he told the pigeon.

Bwooooo, said the pigeon unhelpfully, and soared off the balcony and very nearly into the opposite roof before it straightened itself out. Leander watched it go, feeling as if he couldn’t fly straight lately either.

A short while later, a serving boy rapped at the door to tell him that there was a strange man in the main hall. “Do you know him?” Leander asked.

“No, sir,” the boy answered, “but he’s got a pigeon.”

Leander sent for Rainier and Abril, and they went together to receive Master Atticus.

The old healer was a tall, thin man with a hooked nose and long ink-black hair that did not dare wave in the slightest. He wore a long robe exactly the same color as his hair, even in the hottest months, and Leander had never once seen him smile. And, sure enough, the scraggly pigeon sat on his wrist with the exact same sour expression on its beak.

Bwooooo, it said, when it saw Leander.

Master Atticus turned and saw him.

“Thank you for coming-“ Leander began.

“You are an idiot,” Master Atticus told him.

“So your pigeon said.”

“Oh, yes.” Master Atticus turned to Abril and held out his arm. “Let Atticus the Younger out the door for me. He’ll make his way back to the house all right.”

Abril stared at the pigeon, then at the healer, then at Leander. “Atticus the Younger?” she asked.

Master Atticus raised one eyebrow and looked at her. Suddenly the name seemed perfectly fitting. She took the bird- who protested with a Bwoooo- and hurried off. Rainier hid a laugh as a cough.

“So you’ve taken some poor wretch out of that gaol and you think I can heal prison fever,” Master Atticus said, turning back to Leander.

“Can you heal prison fever?” questioned Rainier.

“Of course,” Master Atticus replied, finishing it off with his customary “You idiot.”

“There’s a lot more than that to heal,” Leander said. “He’s nearly starved, and there are many injuries, and he’s too ill even to hold down water. And- I feel I should tell you who he is. His name is Emauri Tarasque. He and his father were two of the old king’s most loyal men.”

Master Atticus looked at him.

Leander shifted his feet awkwardly.

Master Atticus continued looking at him.

“What?” Leander asked.

“Does the fact that he is a king’s man have something to do with treating his injuries?” Master Atticus said.

“Master Brindle refused to do it because of it.”

“Brindle began his career treating cows and pigs and ought to have kept at it. Does this man’s loyalty somehow affect my treating him?”

“Well- no, I suppose not.” Leander glanced at Rainier for help. Rainier lifted his brow in a don’t look at me sort of look. “I- thought you should know, that’s all,” Leander fumbled.

“I am a healer,” Master Atticus said, biting off each word in his mouth as though he thought Leander was slightly dim. “I heal people who need it. I do not particularly care whether a person who is sick or injured is one of the idiots loyal to you, or one of the idiots loyal to the old king. I only care that the person is sick or injured and I have the ability to help them.”

Abril came back inside- pigeon-less- just in time to hear the last sentence. She and Rainier exchanged a look that Leander did not care to dwell on. “He’s upstairs on the third floor, in the spare bedroom with a guard by it,” Leander told Master Atticus.

The healer produced a large bag from somewhere under his bat-like robes and swept up the stairs without waiting for an escort. “I shall need some fresh water,” he called to them.

The three of them stood there, staring at each other.

“What a loon,” Rainier said.

Leander shrugged. “As long as the loon knows how to heal. Come on, let’s fetch that water.”

——————————————————————-

They hauled two pails of water up to the third floor and found Master Atticus standing outside Emauri’s room, storming at the guard who also stood outside it.

“-see that I’m a healer, with your hideous head stuck so far up your culette! Now let me in, you misbegotten spawn of a beetle’s buttocks-“

Holding back a laugh, Abril waved at the much-affronted guard to allow Master Atticus to pass. The healer swept into the room in a very offended cloud of black.

“Do beetles have buttocks?” Abril whispered to Leander.

“If they don’t, I’m not going to tell him,” Leander whispered back. He was glad that they seemed to be friends again.

He moved into the room and immediately found himself the new target of Master Atticus’ ire. The healer flung a hand toward the bed where Emauri lay. “What in the name of the father of fire do you think you’ve done?”

Leander could not see any obvious mistakes. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve put furs on him! Godsbelow, you had some sense when you were a shepherd, where’s it all gone?”

“He’s been locked in a dark, cold cell for years,” Leander replied, a little stung. “I wanted to make sure he was warm.”

“By loading him up with heavy trappings? When he hasn’t yet managed to keep down a sip of water? You’ll have him sweating out what little he’s managed to hold onto, and he’s not strong enough to go without. No, take those away. A light blanket will do. Even that’ll be a good deal warmer than that hole you told me of.” Master Atticus strode to the bed and flung the furs back.

The room went silent. Even Abril gave a little gasp of dismay on seeing her enemy’s condition.

The blue tunic was soaked through with fever-sweat, and Leander thought some darker patches might have been blood. The bruises and cuts stood out stark against Emauri’s pale skin, and the badly healed break in his leg seemed almost worse. His breathing had changed; shallow and even before, now it was shallow and ragged, rattling in his lungs. The hair spread out on the pillow was stringy, dark with sweat. He was clearly still unconscious.

“Who chained him?” Master Atticus demanded, pointing his chin to Emauri’s better leg.

Rainier had kept his word- one end of the chain was latched around Emauri’s painfully bony ankle, the other around the bedpost. “It’s staying,” Rainier said firmly.

Master Atticus accepted this, setting his bag at the foot of the bed. “At least you had the mind not to put it on the bad one,” he said half under his breath. “I’ll do what I can for him, but he’s too weak to stand much. Leave that water and clear out, the lot of you. I work best alone.”

So they cleared out, the three of them, and left Master Atticus to his work.

He called them back in as darkness was setting outside. He was washing his hands in a basin, and Leander saw that the water was tinged pink. “I cannot reset the leg today,” he told Leander bluntly. “I would have to break it again, and the shock would likely kill him. I wonder if it might not be better, overall, to leave it as it is.” He shook his head, returning to the bedside. Emauri lay just as he had been, his breathing slightly better, the soaked tunic exchanged for a pair of dove-grey linen pants. His back had been bandaged, and there was a wet cloth laid across his forehead. He had still not woken.

“Certainly a fever has set in,” Master Atticus continued. “I gave him a tincture of elderflower, and a poultice on his chest for the weakness in his lungs. He must sweat it out. Keep a cool cloth on him, and make sure he gets plenty of water- even if he coughs it up, keep giving it to him. I will return in two days to see how he is coming along.”

“I’ll make sure he gets the best care,” Leander promised.

Master Atticus shut his bag. “No, you won’t.”

Abril and Rainier frowned.

“You will follow the instructions I’ve given and no more than that,” Master Atticus said. He stepped back from the bed, his expression pinched. “I know you all too well, Leander. You have an unfortunate addiction to being the hero and to being lauded for it. And since this man is in no condition to be singing your praises, you will doubtlessly want him to be well quickly so that he can do so. You will ply him with the best of everything- bread and meat from your own table- to return him to health as fast as possible. And in doing so, you will kill him.”

“How could feeding a starving man kill him?” Rainier broke in, and received a withering look for his trouble.

“Because, Captain,” Master Atticus drawled, “when the body has been used to the coarsest fare, and precious little of that, for years on end, a sudden surfeit of rich delicacies comes as a shock to the system. Not unlike the shock that occasionally comes to your system when the brain you supposedly carry between your overlarge ears manages to produce a coherent thought.”

Rainier, like Leander, was well used to Master Atticus’ biting tongue and only looked a little insulted.

Master Atticus turned to the bed again. “So,” he said. “You may give him a little thin broth and some cool water, but no more than that. You will kill him if I am disobeyed. Am I quite understood?”

“Yes,” Leander answered. “You are.”

Master Atticus picked up his bag and made to exit. “Oh, and leave a candle lit in this room.”

“What will that do?” Rainier asked.

“The candle will provide illumination, Captain,” Master Atticus replied dryly. Then, a bit more gently, and addressed to the unconscious figure on the bed, “When one has been in the dark for so long, he will treasure a little light.”

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It’s Monday!

Ask me or my OCs anything!

In honor of yesterday…which OC has been or should be stabbed?