Today’s Whumptober was originally going to be something different, but writing yesterday’s flashback made me think of another way to apply the “doctor’s visit” prompt, so.... I’m going to add a harm to children warning to this one too, just to be safe, though I feel like it’s YMMV on how much that actually applies.
---
Alion brings the witch's boy home wrapped in his cloak, bundled up head-to-toe, only his shadowed face peeping out from within the heavy, fur-lined fabric. Because of the burns, he says, and his men nod solemnly. None of them say a word about what else is hidden under his cloak: the horns, small but distinctly curved, the fork-ended tail, the yellow eyes.
He'll have to make sure that none of them say a word to anyone else about it, later. It's fortunate that most of them have families, children, of their own, but that hadn't stopped those villagers. The witch had saved their own children, and yet they would have burned hers along with her all the same. And as for the poor woman herself... Alion can't seem to get the too-familiar scent of burnt flesh out of his nostrils.
The Black Legions had burned people at the stake like that during the war. Innocent people, civilians, sometimes for the slightest hint of resistance and sometimes as an example and sometimes for their mages' foul arts. He hadn't been in Hannieth when it was overrun, hadn't made it back until two years after, while they were driving the Black Legions back over the Arneth mountains and he was finally able to liberate his home. But Alion knows it happened here. He doesn't know how the villagers could stomach doing it to another human being, witch or not. There are more humane ways to kill those whom cannot be allowed to live.
Which is what he should do with this child, he knows. The Lady's priests are adamant on the subject of demonspawn. He was an Iron Shield, not a Blooded Sword, but the principle is much the same. And yet, when he sets the boy in front of him on his saddle and wraps his cloak around him and feels him trembling, hears his bitten-off whimpers, realizes he's trying his hardest not to cry, Alion finds that he can't stomach the thought of even the kindest of deaths for his young burden. He's only a child.
It's a long ride from that, his farthest-flung village, back to the fortress. By the time he arrives, Alion knows what he's going to do.
"Put my horse up," he orders Sir Talwell, bundling the boy under his arm as he dismounts. The child's gone still and silent, and he doesn't know if that's good or bad. "And make sure that no one speaks of that incident until I've had a chance to address them all. I'm going to find Doctor Zenka."
"Yes, my lord," Sir Talwell says, taking his horse's reins along with her own. "Should we wait in the great hall for you?"
A good thought. "The conference room," Alion corrects her. This will be better as a private discussion. "Though it may be some time."
"We'll wait, my lord," is all she says in answer.
Alion leaves that to her, striding into the fortress with the cloak-wrapped boy in his arms. Either Zenka is in his workroom or he's out of the fortress entirely, treating the townsfolk or gathering supplies; either way, Alion wants to keep this boy there, in the private, quiet sanctum the doctor has created, until Zenka gets a chance to look at him. If the doctor is out, there's no point in sending a servant after him. He won't leave a patient he's with, and if he's wandering the mountains he won't be easily found.
Fortunately, he's in, grinding away at some kind of paste with a mortar and pestle. He sets it aside as Alion enters, approaching with interest when Alion sets the boy down on the padded table at the center of the room and pulls the cloak off. As the boy's features are revealed, he looks with interest, but no stronger reaction, at the small black horns and trailing tail.
"What's this?"
"A child," Alion says, flat-voiced, putting all the iron he can into it. "He's been burned."
"So I see. Not badly, though, which is a mercy. With the right salve, this will mend right up, with no scars. It must hurt right now, though. You're being very brave, my dear boy. I'm afraid we'll have to get these clothes off so I can look you over and make sure all these burns get treated, if you'd like to take them off for me?"
The boy is awake, somewhat to Alion's surprise, but as silent as he'd fallen on the journey here, biting his lip hard and staring wide-eyed at Zenka. Alion puts hands on his shoulders to steady him and feels them stiffen. Of course he's frightened, alone in a room with two strange men, even if one had rescued him from the fire. Even through the thin, soft fabric of his shirt, his skin is scorching hot under Alion's hands.
"You have to let Doctor Zenka look at you," he tells the boy. "I will force you to obey him if I must."
"I can tell you're feverish already, from how flushed you are, which means those burns might be infected," Doctor Zenka adds, leaning in almost as if he's sharing a confidence with the boy. "If I don't treat you now, I'll have to do it when you're much sicker, and that will be harder for both of us."
Nodding jerkily, the boy reaches up and starts to undo the buttons of his shirt. His hands shake. Alion takes his own away and gives him his space while he undresses. He folds his ragged, dirty clothing, scorched around the edges, very carefully and sets it aside on the table when he's done.
Zenka has turned away to mess around at his workbench while the boy is undressing. Alion thought it was to give him some privacy, but he turns back around with two jars tucked into the crook of his arm, and a mug in his hand that he holds out to the boy. Alion recognizes the thick, greyish-cream liquid inside as one of the man's sleeping draughts.
"Here we are, something for you to drink before I start cleaning those burns. I can't make it painless, but it should hurt less if you have this," Zenka says encouragingly.
The boy takes the mug, peers suspiciously into it, and sniffs the thick potion. "This is a sleeping draught."
It's the first thing he's actually said in Alion's presence. His voice is rough, no doubt harshened by smoke and held-back tears, with some of the glottal accent of the lands west of the mountains.
"Ah, you're a very informed young man," Zenka says, smiling widely at him. "It may make you sleep, yes, especially in your condition. Or you may just relax. In either case, you will hurt less, isn't that true?"
"That's true," he says slowly, nodding. He looks at the other things Zenka has, the jars he's opening up--he leans closer to sniff one of them, which is pungent enough that Alion can smell it at a distance. Then he takes another careful sip from the mug, seeming to judge the flavor. Apparently deciding that it meets his standards, he tips it back and drinks more deeply, grimacing as it goes down. Alion can't blame him. The stuff is foul.
"All right," Zenka says, dipping a cloth into the less-pungent jar. "We'll start with the minor burns, why don't we? Then once that's started to take effect, we'll move on to the bad ones, like those on your feet."
He waits for the boy to nod before he begins, gently cleaning the lesser burns where the boy's clothing had protected him, then smearing the pungent contents of the other jar over them. The boy bites his lip again and goes very stiff and still; Alion puts a hand back on his shoulder, which is thankfully unharmed, in case he needs steadying. Slowly, despite the occasional whimper the boy can't help but voice, he starts to slump under Alion's hand. He tenses and whines a few times when Zenka gets to his feet at last, but by then, the draught has mostly taken effect.
"Well," Zenka says at last, wrapping bandages over those last, worst burns. The boy is lying limp and still on his side on the table, overwhelmed by the sleeping draught. "What now, my lord orn Hannieth? I will say, if you intend to put him down now that I've gone to the work of treating him, I'll have some objections."
"Good." Alion still has his hand on the boy's shoulder. He's so small, so young--no older than his own son, probably a few years younger. "Because I don't intend to do that. But to avoid it, his true nature can't get out."
"And how will you do that?" Zenka lays a light blanket over the boy's sleeping form. "A hat and baggy pants? All it takes is one accident."
"That's what his mother was doing, from what I was told, and you're right about that. I know you prefer to work on human patients, Zenka, but I also know you'll go out to the farms and pastures when called. Have you ever dehorned cattle, or docked a dog's tail?"
Zenka looks back up at Alion, going white. "No," he says, slowly, after a long moment's pause. "But I've been called in the aftermath, when they've gone bad. And they can go very wrong."
"Then you'd be best suited to make sure it won't, wouldn't you?" Alion refuses to let his gaze or his voice waver. "I know it's a cruel thing to do, but letting the Bloodied Swords get their hands on him would be crueler."
"His eyes are yellow, did you notice? How are you going to hide *that*?"
"My eyes are practically as yellow, so it wouldn't that strange, from someone in Hannieth territory. Our family's thrown enough by-blows over the generations." Alion pauses, considering. "In fact... it would explain a lot, if he was thought to be my by-blow. I can't acknowledge him as such. It would be disrespectful to my wife's memory, and it might give our enemies leverage to challenge Cirion's inheritance. But you and Sir Talwell are some of my most trusted advisors. If you spread the rumor, that would suffice."
"Well." Zenka breathes out heavily, shaking his head. "If I'm going to take a knife and a bone saw to him, we might as well get it over with now. I drugged him up heavier than I like to, in case... in case you weren't going to be the man I thought you were. But I'll need someone to hold him down. He'll be out of it, but I don't imagine he'll sleep through all of that."
From the look Zenka gives him, heavy with censure and expectation, Alion knows that's more than request for help. It's the price the man expects him to pay in exchange for asking him to do this. He nods solemnly in answer and steps forward, rolling the boy over onto his stomach and settling his hands on the boy's back.
"The sooner done, the better," he tells Zenka, and watches as the man starts to gather together the necessary tools. It's not a kind thing they're doing, but it's a necessary one. He reminds himself of that as Zenka begins, as the boy wakes and begin screaming, as they have to bind him into the bed afterwards. There were no other good choices. And it's his duty, as Duke orn Hannieth, to make the hard ones.
Given that this is supposed to be whump, I’m staying very tame, rip.... Follows fairly directly on the last piece and again covers two days, with “Do you trust me?” from the 4th and “betrayal/misunderstanding” from the 5th. (It was supposed to also have “broken nose” in there, but they were both remarkably resistant to taking a swing.)
---
The chapel is the largest building in the outpost, because of course it is. Beside its stone walls, the wooden barracks and palisade look rough, temporary, unpolished, though they've been there just as long. Cirion wouldn't have expected the Iron Shields to prioritize their faith over their defenses; his father and Myerzo have told him often enough that the defense of the weak *is* the faith of the order. But he supposes there's no one out here in this wild stretch of wood to protect.
As he draws closer to the chapel, sliding from shadow to shadow, he realizes a bit more. The chapel is built tall, but it doesn't have the graceful arches and delicate stained glass he's used to in a chapel. The windows are shockingly narrow, no more than arrow-slits, and the walls are sturdily built, with a rim of crenelations on the gently-sloped roof. The great doors of the chapel are recessed, with a raised portcullis before them, and the smaller doors at the sides are iron-bound. The chapel is their bastion, if this outpost does need to be defended. Even a whole detachment of Blooded Swords would find it a struggle to besiege.
Cirion is suddenly very glad that he chose stealth for this mission, and not a frontal assault. It's difficult to keep himself unseen, even in the shadows. It's still easier than combat magic. That's never been his strength, even if it grows stronger when he feels his cause is righteous. His righteousness isn't *this* powerful.
Once he's in the chapel's shadow, he waits there near one of those smaller doors. He guesses that, if this detachment is anything like his brother, they'll disdain the great doors unless they're conducting some kind of ceremony. And this door is the one closer to the barracks, so he hopes they'll come in and out this side.
It's over an hour, an hour of his shadow-cloak slowly trying to shred itself away from him as his attention wavers, before his gamble pays off. The man who comes stalking through the door, another knight on his heels, is wearing the coat of a Knight-Captain, though it takes Cirion a moment to recognize it without the gold trim of a parade uniform. He doesn't know the man's face, which at least means Myerzo wasn't caught by his own men.
The Knight-Captain looks about as he exits, alert to any danger. Cirion holds very still and tries not to breathe as the man's gaze sweeps over him. His eyes are cold, like snuffed coals in an equally cold face. They pause, just for a moment, as if he can see Cirion there. Cirion breaks out in a cold sweat, frozen in fear like a rabbit in a predator's gaze. Then the Knight-Captain looks onward, sweeps onward, and Cirion can breathe again.
He draws his first breath in too loud, nearly a gasp, and has to freeze again to be sure that neither of the knights heard him. Then, as they pass him by and the door finishes swinging closed, Cirion darts forward and gets a hand in the jamb just before the latch can click home. He holds the door there, not-quite-closed, until the knights are nearly to their barracks, then slips inside.
Logically, he'd known that Myerzo must still be alive, for the detachment wouldn't be waiting for the prisoner transport Cirion had outrun to get here if he wasn't. But relief still sweeps through him as he sees the familiar figure, broad and blunt-faced and square-jawed, kneeling in front of the altar. His eyes are turned up towards the icon of the Lady on the wall, and he doesn't look away even when he hears Cirion's steps on the stone. It's so typical of him that Cirion would almost think he'd walked in on a perfectly normal scene of prayer, if not for the gag in his mouth and the ropes binding his wrists and ankles together behind his back.
"Myerzo!" Rushing over, Cirion bends down beside him, dismissing the shadow-cloak at the same time he draws his knife from his belt. His brother looks up at him in surprise, whites of his eyes flashing, and then his brow draws down in concern. Cirion puts a hand on his shoulder in reassurance. "Hold on. I'm getting you out of here."
It shouldn't surprise him to have Myerzo shrug his hand off again, but it stings anyway. Cirion ignores the stab of hurt and bends further to cut the ropes binding his brother, careful not to nick his skin. The marks of the rope are livid red against his wrists as they fall away. The last of the sting fades in a swell of anger. Cirion is still careful, though, sliding two fingers under the gag, against the rough stubble sprouting on Myerzo's cheek, to make a gap for the knife.
As soon as that's clear, Myerzo is rising, shoving Cirion casually out of the way with his shoulder, reaching up to claw fabric out of his mouth. He works his jaw a few times, swallowing, clutching the spit-sodden remains of it in his fist, and then turns his frown directly on Cirion. It's angry, now, not concerned.
"What in the Lady's name are you *doing*, walking in here like this?" He keeps his voice to a low hiss, but it's fierce regardless, all the bellowing he'd doubtless like to let loose compressed down into a sound inadequate to hold it. "If anyone had caught you-"
"They didn't," Cirion interrupts, bristling instinctively in response to Myerzo's anger. "My magic got me in."
"Your stagecraft-"
"It got me in here, and it's going to get you out, so maybe, for once in your life, you shouldn't denigrate it," Cirion hisses back. He realizes he's clenching his hands into fists, and makes himself loosen them. He hadn't meant to let Myerzo wind him up, coming in here. But the ingratitude, on top of everything else that's happened between them over the past few months, is a little too much to take.
Myerzo startles back, eyes widening again, as well he should. Most of his life, Cirion has kept that resentment on a leash. Even as Myerzo himself grew angrier and angrier over the course of his pursuit, Cirion has been trying to persuade him to put it aside, to let the people he rescued go, so he's done his best to keep his temper in check. And those words, so long held down, had come out far more bitter than he'd meant.
"You're right. So your magic got you in," Myerzo says, more subdued. "You need to use it to get yourself out again, next. Without me."
The way he subsides knocks all the air out of Cirion. He'd been all wound up for a fight, not for Myerzo to simply give in and move on. He's been nursing that for *years*, the way his father and his brother smiled and nodded and condescended about his skills. For Myerzo not to push back for once, here and now-
It's almost enough, that letdown, for Cirion not to realize the rest of what he's said. But only almost.
"I'm not leaving you behind! Why would I do that? It's my fault you were arrested, so I'm going to get you out."
Myerzo growls low in his throat. Not the aggrieved sigh that means that Cirion is irritating him, but an actual *growl*, like an angry dog. Cirion hadn't known he could make that sound.
"Believe it or not, Cirion, the world doesn't always revolve around you. They didn't arrest me for failing to capture you, though they should have. Though if they did, breaking me out would only confirm all their accusations, so I still wouldn't come."
"You'd let them put you through penance just to prove a point?" That's... very like Myerzo, actually. Cirion should have expected it. "Wait- if that wasn't why, then why *did* they arrest you?"
The look Myerzo gives him is weary and exasperated and contemptuous all at once. "Why do you think?"
"I... don't know," Cirion admits. "I really thought it was because they'd guessed you were letting me go on purpose."
The growl, again, which is getting *weird*. Then Myerzo closes his eyes, clenches his jaw for a moment, opens them again. Meets Cirion's gaze with his own. It always hurts a little, seeing their father's amber eyes in that otherwise dissimilar face. Cirion has his mother's brown, because he looks like her and only her, has nothing of their father in himself. At least Myerzo's aren't a perfect match, a few shades paler-
-and slitted like a cat's. Which is *not* how they looked a moment ago, or ever before for that matter.
"Your lord father never told you, did he." Myerzo must see his shock in his face. "And here I thought all that 'brother' business was overinvestment in the lie. You always oversell-"
"Demonspawn," Cirion blurts out, then regrets it immediately from the way Myerzo winces. His brother's- Myerzo's face closes off. Cirion steps forward, reaches out, desperately trying to correct for that. "It doesn't matter. I don't care. You're still the same person I grew up alongside. And that makes it even more important that I get you out of here. They...."
They--'they' the Orders, all of them, 'they' the priests, 'they' almost anyone who catches someone demon-born, as Cirion knows and has never before this moment questioned--burn those demonspawn they get their hands on. It's the only safe thing to do with them, or so everyone says. They're violent creatures, driven by an instinctive bloodlust that can't be overpowered or trained away. Even those who claim to have mastered it are always found, in the tales and stories, to have secretly been brutalizing vagrants or beasts to satisfy their urges. Only fire can cleanse whatever souls they possess.
Cirion wants to be able to reject that thought immediately, in the face of this new knowledge. The thought of Myerzo, who prizes his role as protector above all else in his life, secretly harming innocents is so laughable that he should be able to instantly reject it. But he can't help but remember Myerzo sparring with the other knights when they were younger, hitting too hard, pulling back too late, leaving his partners with deep bruises at best and broken bones at once. He'd been strong, and clumsy, but had there been something else at work...? And there had been the way he'd ridden Kessia down, grim and merciless, intent on her death. He hadn't *shown* any pleasure in it, but that he'd been willing to do it at all, even though she was only a child, the youngest of those Cirion had saved from the Blackthorn....
"I know where that leads," Myerzo says, hard-voiced, bleak-faced, and even with his eyes so changed Cirion can see some kind of deep pain in them, something he's trying hard to shut away. "But they believe the same thing you did, that I'm your father's son, and they think it might have come down through his line. The priests at the Citadel will be able to prove otherwise. I owe your father that much."
It doesn't matter if there might be some secret streak of bloodlust in Myerzo's soul. Cirion draws himself up. "My father has been lying for years, it sounds like, to keep you alive. You owe it to him to *live*. And I- I suppose, after all this, I at least owe it to him to bring you home. He's always liked you better than me, anyway."
"Don't say that of him," Myerzo hisses, once again with all that sharp ferocity that so clearly wants to be a roaring shout. "Don't you *ever* think that he would hold me, hold *anyone*, higher in his esteem. *You're his son.*"
So are you, Cirion doesn't say, because he remains unsure how to process this new revelation. It hurts more, in a way, to know that's been a lie all this time. That his father's preference, the favor he's given the son who could actually follow in his footsteps, hasn't even been for a son of his at all. That he could replace Cirion so easily with someone not even of his blood, with a demon-born child....
It still doesn't matter. Cirion's hand, unmet, has fallen from the air, but he holds it out again. "He'll still want you home. Don't you trust me?"
Myerzo's lip curls. With a scorn that makes Cirion's stomach churn, he answers, so deliberately and steadily that Cirion can tell the words were calculated to hurt. "Cirion, why in the Lady's name should I *trust* you?"
And then he turns his back, deliberately, on Cirion's outstretched hand. He walks back to where he was kneeling before, bound and gagged, and drops back onto his knees. He folds his hands in front of him and bows his head, closing his eyes. Closing Cirion out.
Frustration wells up hot and sour in Cirion's throat. He knows Myerzo to well to think he can be persuaded now. Cirion might, *might*, be able to immobilize him with magic as he's done before, but then he'd have to try and secretly drag a man half again his weight out of the chapel, all the while avoiding the Iron Shields' eyes. And if Myerzo broke free--he'd call those Iron Shields down on them, without a doubt, to try and force Cirion to run. He's known Myerzo for too long now to think he'd do any less.
Stomach roiling, shaking with fury at his helplessness, Cirion draws the shadow-cloak around him again. He'll have to find another way to rescue Myerzo.
As he leaves, he pushes to the back of his mind the question of whether or not Myerzo *should* be rescued from his fate.
I love how I said I was going to do Whumptober as a daily thing and then was too busy the first three days of October to write... but anyway! I figured I’d just fold the first three into one, since certain of those prompt choices synergize real well. Today’s are bound (from the 1st), gagged (from the 2nd) and taunting (from the 3rd)!
While I don’t want to tie myself down to them irretrievably, a lot of the Whumptober prompts work really well with Myerzo and Cirion, a couple of OCs I’ve had in various forms and universes since high school, and most recently made in DnD format. And whatever form and universe, they have a storyline between them that is 90% whump by volume anyway.... So unless it really won’t fit, I will probably write segments from that for most of this month! I can’t promise that they will be linear, or fit together well, or anything, I’m kind of fanficcing my own internal universe, but this particular bit follows at some several months’ distance on the third scene in this post.
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Myerzo kneels on the cold stone floor of the chapel, hands bound behind his back so tightly that the cords cut harshly into his skin. There's a gag in his mouth, clean cloth from his own saddlebags. A precaution mostly used for casters, but he supposes that none of them wanted to risk hearing him plead. Not that he would have. He has more pride than that. He's been caught by the Iron Shields, fair and square, and Myerzo of all people know that their hearts are closed to the pleas of the condemned.
Though his heart hadn't been, not enough. If it was, he might not be here. Or maybe he would. Sir Falko had never liked Myerzo even before he roused suspicions by 'losing' Cirion's trail, over and over again. He'd thought that suspicion would get him taken off the case, first, for it had been foolish in the first place to leave him responsible for catching his lord's son, the man that most of the country thinks his half-brother. But his superiors had left him on it, even as he allowed Cirion to get away and, worse yet, take those he thought he'd saved from the Blackthorn with him. And in the meantime, Sir Falko had been digging, back and back, into his past.
Here he is now, coming through the chapel door, his step light against the stone, another, heavier-footed knight at his heel. He comes up beside Myerzo and stands there, studying him, the long white-paneled, black-trimmed coat of a Knight-Captain falling down to his calves. Myerzo doesn't look up at him. He keeps his eye fixed on the symbol on the wall above the altar, white sword driven into black shield, upon a field of red. His knees have gone beyond aching after hours on the chill stone, but this is no worse than his last such vigil. Even if he hadn't done that one bound and gagged.
"Praying, ni Hannieth?" Sir Falko asks, in a faintly mocking tone. The address, surname instead of knightly title, is an insult.
Sir Falko steps around to stand in front of Myerzo, hands folded in front of his back, and looks down. Myerzo refuses to tilt his head up the extra few inches needed to meet the man's eyes. He does his best to stare through Sir Falko's chest, to envision the symbol that it hides.
"Not much point to that," Sir Falko's subordinate adds, with the eagerness of a dog trying to please its master. Sir Lenwin, Myerzo recognizes, from the eagerness and the voice and the anxious way he fidgets. "The Lady won't listen to demonspawn. It probably burns to be in here, doesn't it?"
Myerzo ignores that, too. Sir Lenwin is an idiot. If it hurt him so badly to be on holy ground, he would never have made it through his vigil when he joined the Iron Shields, or the services he attended as a knight, nevermind lasted through the long hours he's spent here since he was captured. And he's wrong about the Lady's attention, too. Myerzo had his vision, during his vigil. No one else will believe that, he knows, now that they know what he is.
It's difficult for even him to believe, sometimes. The Lady is the bloody sword as well as the iron shield; the latter may defend people from the threats of the fey, the Blackthorn and what dwells in and beyond it, but the former is meant to drive back more fiendish threats. By all rights, he *shouldn't* have survived his vigil. But he still remembers the Lady standing over him, clad in black and red and white, drawing from him the words of the Iron Shields' oath. Even if he's broken it now, he still will treasure that memory.
"Ni Hannieth isn't feeling very talkative, is he?" Sir Falko remarks. He moves now, bringing one hand around from behind his back, catching Myerzo's chin with it and forcing his head up until Myerzo has no choice but to meet his eyes. "Well, the gag would do that. It should be a muzzle, for a creature like him, but without one on hand, I had to make do. I'll change that when we get back to the Citadel."
"We're going to burn him, aren't we?"
"Eventually. But I still have questions I want answered. We don't know which side of the family his taint came from. If Duke orn Hannieth was seduced unknowing by a fiend, or the descendant of one, then there is no fault to the Hannieth blood. But if it was otherwise, then... it would explain much about young Lord orn Hannieth's actions the past few months, wouldn't it? We might as well find out, so that if it's necessary, we can burn both of them at once."
At *that*, Myerzo growls, a deep chest-rumble that would have confirmed all of Sir Falko's suspicions in an instant if he hadn't already found the horn-stubs hidden under Myerzo's hair, the scar where his tail was cut away. The thought of Cirion, reckless idiot that he is, brother that he isn't, screaming in agony, as Myerzo's mother had screamed.... He yanks his mind away from that thought before it can go any further into dreadful memory, but he can't help but think next of his lord's face, grim with anger, as he pronounced judgement upon the villagers who had condemned her.
Duke orn Hannieth will not tolerate his son, his only child, to be bundled into a wooden frame and burnt alive like a common witch-woman or her demonspawn. He will ride to war against the Iron Shields, his own order, before he will see it happen. And his knights will follow him, and vast sweeps of the country, for the Duke and his wife saved many from the Black Legions all those years ago. Cirion is a holy figure to many of them. Myerzo can see it too easily, the way this land could become embroiled in bitter civil war from that one attempted execution. He'd think Sir Falko would see it too.
Though perhaps he can. There's a thin smile on his face, satisfaction alongside the mockery. He was never a friend of the Duke, same order or not, and his political allies are not the Duke's friends either. Not all of them would care about the cost to the nation if it brought the Duke orn Hannieth to his knees for once.
"As I said," Sir Falko says, stroking his thumb against Myerzo's cheek in a parody of a caress. "I will have to arrange a muzzle. The way you're looking at me right now, ni Hannieth, I have no doubt that you'd bite."
Myerzo doesn't bother to protest that. Right now, he can think of nothing more satisfying than sinking his teeth into the meat of that impertinent thumb and tasting Sir Falko's coppery blood. He glares harder, tries to make that clear in his gaze, snarls this time higher in his throat. They already know what he is. Why bother hide it any longer?
And I recall saying something about doing a masterpost when I was done for all the Myerzo and Cirion stuff from this Whumptober, so, in chronological order:
Catching up on Whumptober! This is from yesterday’s prompts, and “demon” seemed like the obvious one, since I’m on Cirion and Myerzo again.
---
"So the Iron Shield who's been chasing us all this time, who you thought was your illegitimate half-brother, is actually a demonspawn who's not related to you at all. And now he's been caught by his own order, and they've got him locked up in the Citadel," Jinya says. "Cirion, I don't see why any of this is a *bad* thing. He's not your brother after all, so you don't have to be beholden to him, and now he's not on our tail."
"He hasn't been on *your* tail for a couple months now," Cirion insists. "I got him to compromise on that, remember? He's just been on mine."
"I'm not convinced that he wouldn't have circled back once he'd caught up with you. I know you think he wasn't trying to actually catch up with you, but... he got real close a couple times, Cirion."
"He wouldn't," Cirion says, then shakes his head. "It doesn't matter. Whether he's my brother or not, they're going to burn him, Jinya. And I can't let that happen."
"Why not? He's *demonspawn*, Cirion."
"And you were fey-touched, until I restored you." Cirion's hands are clenching into fists in his lap. He forces them flat again. "What makes his circumstances worse?"
"Besides what he did to Kessia, right? She'd be dead right now if Margren wasn't a healer. Why do I have any reason to help him?"
Jinya's face is hard, her jaw set. She's not quite glaring at him, but he can tell she would be if he was anyone else, if he wasn't leaning on what he'd done for her and her troop. Cirion looks past her, at the other faces around the fire. Margren looks similarly unimpressed by his argument, his arm around Kessia, who seems more conflicted but won't gainsay either Jinya or Margren. The teamsters have all retreated away from the conversation, which is a rebuff on its own; none of them like to get involved with anything that might risk their animals, anyway. Alceret is, as usual, unreadable.
Cirion sighs, his shoulders slumping. "All right. It would've been easier with your help, but I understand why you don't want to give it. Do you mind if I stay here for the night? I'll be out of your hair in the morning."
"You're always welcome with us, Cirion," Margren says quietly. "Though I don't think you should bring this knight of yours back here."
"I won't," Cirion says. He wouldn't risk bringing Myerzo too close to Jinya, the way she seems to feel about him. The way she may not be wrong to feel about him. What he'd done to Kessia....
That's something to discuss with him later. After he's safe.
Cirion eats in a silence that pervades the entire camp, no one willing to bring the subject up again, no one able to think of another. He retires to the supply wagon, instead of spreading his bedroll in Jinya's caravan as he's done so often before. She won't want him beside her in this mood, and he'd rather not have that rubbed in by having to sleep so close, hearing her breathe in the dark but unable to touch.
As he finishes settling down, someone clears their throat. Cirion jumps and swallows a yelp. It's dark here under the wagon's canvas, barely enough starlight filtering in to make out shapes, but his sword is lying sheathed beside his bedroll. A hand catches his wrist as he reaches for it.
"Sshhhh. It's me. So jumpy," Alceret says, gently chiding. "As if it was going to be anyone else."
Cirion struggles to sit up, shaking their hand off his arm. "What are you doing in here?"
"Making you an offer." There's a pause, a rustling of cloth, and he knows without having to see it that Alceret has just sat back on some of the boxes, folding one leg over another in the prim way they always do when getting comfortable. "I have contacts in the Citadel that may be useful for this mission of yours."
"You want to help?" The cool burst of relief in his chest is leavened with confusion. "I didn't think you would, after Jinya refused."
"Jinya is my friend, not my master. I'm not saying I'm any happier with your Sir Myerzo than she is. But I do understand that brotherhood is... more than blood. You were raised with this man. If you believe he is salvageable, as you believed we were salvageable, then you deserve at least a chance to see if that's true."
"Thank you," Cirion whispers, his throat tightening with emotion. "I owe you for this."
"You saved our lives. Fair is fair. I'll warn you, I won't put myself too deeply in danger for this brother of yours. The actual rescuing from the Iron Shields is up to you. But I can get you into the Citadel, and help you secure a way out."
"That's enough," Cirion assures them. "That's more than enough. And I promise you, whatever he's done, he is worth it."
He hopes he's right. That Myerzo is salvageable, as Alceret put it. Because he's going to rescue him whether he is or not, and he'd much prefer not to be proven a liar to his friends.
Today’s Whumptober is back with Cirion and Myerzo, and today’s prompt is “aftermath.” It skips some time since the last few ones I did for them (there are some prompts that fit the interval, but they’re a week or more down the list, so I may go back for them), but the only real context needed is that Cirion rescues Myerzo from getting burned at the stake! And then runs off with him.
---
It's been three days since Cirion snuffed the fire around Myzero and dragged him from the pyre, and he still hasn't woken up. Three days of frantic flight, the rattling wagon-ride out of the Citadel, the boat as far down the river as the rapids would let him go, and now this tiny, hidden hut on the riverbank, so providential as to almost be suspicious. Cirion has no other choices for shelter, though. At least not until Myerzo wakes up.
Though perhaps it's better for him that he hasn't. The burns are bad. Cirion pours as much of his healing ability into them as he can, but that power, he knows on some deep level, is meant for purification and the treating of illness, not for restoration. They're healing faster under his ministrations, and he can keep infection at bay, but he can't simply wipe them away with his own strength.
What bothers him more than the burns is what *does* respond to the power he channels. Myerzo's fingernails, twisted into claws, unfold and retreat, though they remain thicker, stronger, than his own. His teeth, too, sharp-edged and jagged, smooth out again, with only the canines remaining unnaturally sharp. Though perhaps that is natural, is 'normal' for him, and Cirion has never noticed before. Like his eyes, not their father's amber but truly yellow, which Cirion had paid no attention to in his youth except to be glad that they weren't exactly like his father's. He wouldn't have paid attention to strong nails, either, or a natural variation in teeth, or a strength he only now really understands was unnatural, for their age and their size....
But there's no point in self-recriminations. It wasn't as if it was something he'd been meant to know. Cirion pushes down the ache of knowing that they hadn't trusted him with it, Myerzo and his father both. That won't help him now either.
The help he really needs is a healer, a proper healer, not his supposedly-blessed touch. Myerzo moans whenever Cirion touches him, jostles him, adjusts the blankets around him. Even if he wakes up, Cirion isn't sure how much he'll be able to do. Oh, he'll try, teeth gritted against the pain, because Myerzo thinks it's unacceptable weakness to admit that something hurts too much to do. Cirion remembers that very well. But if it actually comes to a fight, if they're tracked there, or whoever intermittently uses this place (smugglers, he thinks) comes upon them here-
Cirion isn't a better fighter than Myerzo is, but he's better than many he's encountered since he left the Hannieth lands. All the same, fighting multiple opponents, maybe multiple knights, while trying to defend his brother, who will be doing his damndest to fight as well, would be a disastrous mess.
But he can't leave Myerzo alone and unconscious, perhaps to be found and killed while Cirion is out searching for someone who might help in these hills. Even if he's weakened by his burns, Myerzo will still have a chance, at least, to escape or defend himself once he's wakened. So Cirion channels all the power he can grasp into his brother's unconscious form, and spoons water and broth into his mouth, and waits for him to wake.
***
He's asleep when it happens. Asleep and dreaming, in the vague, blurry colors he always does, like any light is coming through stained glass. There's a voice, as there often is, gentle and soothing, but with the ring of an authority that always gets Cirion's back up. He only catches portions of what it's saying, though he strains to listen, for it's lecturing him on demons right now.
*"Hunger,"* the voice says, *"is at the heart of the demonic condition. The taint is a craving, a need that cannot, by definition, be satisfied. Indulged, it only grows stronger, but resisted..."* The voice fades down low, too quiet to hear. Cirion leans forward as if that would help, though it's coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. *"...a deprivation that-"*
And then the voice cuts off as the space around him, dim and blurred and filled with light, shudders. Something loud, like a roar, echoes from far away. The image fractures, shatters, and then Cirion is awake, shaking with reaction to the sudden transition.
Myerzo groans again. The cot he's in, a flimsy wooden thing with a straw-stuffed mattress, judders and creaks, the bedposts scraping against the floor. Cirion, registering what's happening with a speed and suddenness that he can only rouse with when woken from one of those dreams, rolls up off his own pile of scratchy blankets. It's dark in here, the only illumination a few thin bars of moonlight seeping through cracks in the roof, but he can see the dim outline of Myerzo, twisting and heaving in the bed. And those yellow eyes, reflecting back the moonlight as if they themselves glow.
They're still slitted, though right now they're blown wide like a cat's. Cirion wonders why his nails and teeth changed back, and they didn't. Unless- but that isn't what he needs to focus on right now.
"Myerzo," he hisses, pressing a hand down on his brother's chest, wincing apologetically at the burns he knows he's rubbing the blanket against by doing so. "It's all right, it's me. You're still badly hurt, so don't get up."
"Cirion," Myerzo murmurs, falling still on the cot. "So it was you. I wasn't imagining it."
His voice is a heavy rumble in his chest, one that Cirion can feel through the blanket with his hand pressed there. Has Myerzo's voice always been that deep, that rumbling? Cirion hasn't seen him all that much since he went off to the Iron Shields. It could just be his brother continuing to mature. He can't assign *everything* to the demonic taint.
"No, you weren't. You did what you said you were trying to do. Everyone knows now that you aren't my father's son." Cirion can hear anger in his own voice, and it startles him. He hadn't realized that he was, isn't sure why. He does his best to rein it in and goes on. "So there wasn't a reason to stop me from rescuing you anymore."
"And you didn't notice the claws? The teeth? There was plenty of reason to let them commit my soul to the Lady before I grew into more of a danger to everyone else."
Oh. *That's* why Cirion is angry.
"The Lady doesn't require you to *burn*!" he bursts out, shaking with an outrage that he can't seem to stop now that he's voiced it. "If- if death is the *only* way to save your soul, and I don't believe it is, then there are kinder ways. You're not invulnerable, they could have executed you cleanly, not- not made a public spectacle of setting alight, as if you were a criminal for the way you were born!"
"It's supposed to make people fear what will happen to their children if they deal with demons, you soft idiot." Despite the words, and through his smoke-harshened voice, his tone is fond. He reaches up to settle his hand over Cirion's, pressing it down against his chest.
"That doesn't make it right." Cirion is still shaking. He can feel the bright glow in the back of his mind that makes him feel like something else, someone else, is seconding his convictions. Something to do with the power that flows through him to defend and heal. It, and the hand on his, bring something else to mind. "And the claws and teeth aren't a problem anymore. I think? I don't know, but when I tried to heal you, they changed. Like the people who were in the Blackthorn, when I healed them."
Probably he shouldn't have mentioned that, because Myerzo gives a dubious little hum. But he raises his hand again, eyes it--those slitted pupils must help him see in the dark, and now so many startling nighttime moments in their youth make sense--and prods at his teeth. He grunts, but gives no other response.
"I think some of my powers are... holy, somehow," Cirion says, his heart in his throat. The anger is subsiding now as fear takes its place. His father has tried so hard to keep him free of the weight of his mother's reputation, of the religious titles some people have given to both her and to him. He isn't sure what he's afraid of, but all he can think of is how arrogant to think that those people his father has always disapproved of were right about how special he is. Myerzo has always echoed his father so faithfully, Cirion can't help but imagine they'll share the same reactions.
"If not for this, I'd say you were buying into your own hype," Myerzo says in unwitting confirmation. He holds his hand up, flexing his fingers. "But this... one of the Lady's priests did something like this, too. Pushed the taint back, so that I had my own mind again, up until the burning. So there might be something to that."
His own mind. So he hadn't been in his right mind, at some point or another. Cirion swallows down the cold wash of dread that thought evokes. He can fix it, right? He's just proven that.
"So you aren't dangerous, as long as I'm with you. I don't know... I don't know enough about demonspawn, or my own powers, to know exactly how this works, but you're yourself now, aren't you? And you weren't when I rescued you. I remember that."
"So do I." Myerzo's voice is even harsher, twisted with self-loathing. "You don't know that won't happen again. The fire brought it back out. If that happens again-"
"Then we'll deal with it when it happens," Cirion says, trying to sound firm and not like he's just as doubtful. "I'm not *killing* you because of what you *might* do, Myerzo. I won't- I can't do that."
Myerzo snorts, then sighs, a low rough sound that turns almost into another groan. "So what is your plan? Now that you're wanted twice over, for freeing people from the Blackthorn and a demonspawn from the fire?"
"I don't know, but I know people I can contact around here. Friends who've helped me already." Cirion grabs Myerzo's hand again, squeezing it tight, hoping that his own uncertainty won't be transferred through it, somehow. "And you're awake now. Between the two of us, we can figure something out."
Unexpectedly, Myerzo squeezes back, so tight it almost hurts. The same forceful grip he's always had, the way he's always held on to Cirion, ever since they were children. And despite everything since, his brother's strength still makes Cirion feel safe.
"You've always been an optimist," Myerzo mutters, but it's resignation, not an argument. Cirion will take resignation right now. "But I don't see that we have much other choice."
Now that I’m caught up on Whumptober, to stay caught up on it.... So! October 6th includes “bruises” and “hunger,” and I used a little of both. Just a short bit this time, following again directly on the last piece, because it worked well enough for this. It cuts off kind of abruptly because it’s very late and I’m very tired, but I can check today off the list and that’s what’s important here.
---
After Cirion leaves, no one enters the chapel again until the prisoner transport arrives the next morning, wheels creaking and cage rattling so loudly that Myerzo can hear it even through the thick stone. From the clanking, it's got a metal cage rather than a wooden one. Wise of them. He's always been strong, stronger than the humans around him, stronger than he's been taught to ever let them know. Even a regular knight might break through wooden bars with enough effort, and he'd need far less.
Myerzo isn't entirely sure how well the metal would hold him, if he tested it. But he doesn't intend to do so.
It's impossible for the knights to miss that he's unbound and ungagged when they enter to collect him. Their surprise is an extra reassurance--Cirion wasn't noticed coming or leaving, or they would have come in ready for a fight. Myerzo stands as Sir Falko approaches, mostly for the pleasure of seeing the shock and alarm flash across the Knight-Captain's face. But he leaves his hands at his sides, and sets his jaw, and doesn't move as the man cautiously approaches, his blade drawn, his detachment at the ready at his heel.
To give him credit, Sir Falko doesn't hide behind them, or show fear at the sight of Myerzo's slit-pupiled eyes. Myerzo doesn't know how to change them back. That had been his mother's casting, much of her energy spent to conceal the one thing she couldn't hide under heavy, shapeless clothing. It's slipped before, and slowly come back, but it takes a day or two. He doesn't know if it will take more time or less given that he forced it off deliberately this time.
He doesn't answer Falko's questions, which the man doesn't appreciate. The Knight-Captain allows his knights to demonstrate that displeasure once Myerzo is safely re-bound. When even that wrings nothing from Myerzo but growls--he won't give the man the pleasure of crying out in pain, not for something as simple as a beating--he has Myzero gagged again before he's bundled into the cage. The cart rolls off, the whole detachment around it.
Myerzo lies on the floor, the metal bars over the wooden floor, their cold hard lines pressing uncomfortably into his bruises. If he tried hard enough he could roll over, sit up, look out at the road they're trundling along, but there's not much point. Right now it's all trees. Once they're out of the forest it will be villages, and he doesn't care to be gawked at. Besides, it takes energy he should be saving. They haven't fed him since he was captured, nearly two days ago now, and he doubts Sir Falko will bother with the courtesy on the four days they'll spend on the road. It's not as if demonspawn can starve.
That particular bit of common wisdom Myerzo happens to know is true. He'd tested it himself, furtively, pretending to eat at meals while slipping his food to the dogs for nearly a month. He'd known that Duke orn Hannieth would mistake it for something self-destructive. But Myerzo had only wanted to *know*. So many bits of folk wisdom he'd tested; some of them laughable, in retrospect, some of them leaving scars. He thinks thirst might kill him if it took long enough, because that had been the worst part, the burning of his parched throat, the grittiness of his dry eyes. But even that would take more than a month. Hunger....
Already he can feel the inner gnawing. It will be worse, soon enough, a fire twisting through his innards, licking up his throat. When the bile subsides, the physical hunger will go with it, but that will only make what follows worse. Myerzo remembers all too clearly what that had been like, the sudden clearing of his thoughts, emotion and affection fading away as sharp-toothed predator instinct took its place. The fiend in his blood wouldn't *allow* him to starve, whatever he had to feed on to do it. He'd looked at the dogs with hunger, first, then the horses and hawks, then--near the end, the point where his will had broken and he'd started feeding himself again--the people around him. Even his lord. Even Cirion.
That had been almost the full month in. He won't descend into that mindset so quickly, he hopes. Though he's a far larger man now, who needs more feeding than the boy he was. He's also a man grown, with more willpower.
if we're treating that prompt list as an ask meme - 10, 20, and/or 30, but dealer's choice in categories
Soooo I may have done two of these a while back, been blocked on the third, and then rediscovered this ask and realized I never finished it like. Two days ago. >> Apologies for the delay! Not that it should surprise you at this point.
10. Fluff - “Stop moving and let me braid your hair.”
"Tiaaaaa," Phyrea said, her voice rising not quite to a whine. "Stop moving and let me braid your hair."
"I'm not moving," Tiaathque said, laughing, and turned back to look at Phyrea sitting behind her in the rocking cart. "Not that much. You're still drunk?"
"I'm not drunk, I'm just tipsy," Phyrea said, glowering back. "And you are moving. You moved just now. I'm not going to mess it up, I promise. I braided my siblings' hair all the time back home."
Tiaathque leaned in, intrigued. Phyrea spoke rarely about her family--she'd admitted that she was afraid of them being held accountable for her misadventures, despite how far away they dwelled. She didn't even use her real name, to avoid that. Tiaathque knew it, by now, but she held it secret, to honor the trust that Phyrea had showed her in giving it in the first place. All she really knew was that Phyrea hadn't been raised by her birth father, and that she had very many siblings, most adopted.
"Do some of them have hair like yours? It must braid very differently when it's long."
Phyrea reached up and touched her tight, springy white curls, her hand passing harmlessly through the flames that flickered above them, making them look like white ashes at the foot of a fire. She kept her hair trimmed very close, saying it helped control the flames. When it grew longer, apparently, the flames grew too, despite not actually using it as fuel.
"It does. And some of them do. I have three half-siblings by blood, with the same hair, and some of the other human-blooded kids have it too. This is just how human hair is, up north where I come from. But some of my siblings are elf-blooded, and my party dad has straight elfy hair, like yours. So I know how to braid both kinds, and he showed me some fancy braids. I could make your hair so pretty."
"We're heading back to the inn for bed," Tiaathque reminded her. "I don't need fancy, I just need to keep it straight until morning. You've said your blood father was an efrit. Is your elven father married to your mother?"
"Nah. Well, yes, he's married to my blood mom, and also to my dragon mom, and my axe dad, and some people get weird about that- you're not going to get weird about it, are you?"
She looked so anxious that, even though Tiaathque was still trying to wrap her head around that description, she only said, "Of course not. Your... dragon mom?"
"Yeah! She's a dragonborn, sorry, I know that's confusing. Just, you know, you can't just say 'Mom,' and I guess they tried, like, Papa and Dad, but it just didn't work. So, dragon mom." Phyrea shrugged, then reached out, snatching at Tiaathque's hair. "I'll braid it not fancy, then. Please?"
It probably wasn't fair to pry more information out of her while she was drunk, anyway. Smiling, Tiaathque turned around, scooting back so that Phyrea could reach her hair more easily. "Go ahead. We'll get to bed faster that way when we get to the inn."
"Oh, good, if we get to bed faster, I can-"
Quickly calculating her chances of successfully managing to turn around and physically muffle Phyrea before the cart-driver got an earful, Tiaathque elected to drop a Silence spell around them instead. Even with the spell, she could feel Phyrea's laughter behind her, making her hands shake in Tiaathque's hair. Tiaathque drew herself up, gathered as much composure as she could manage, and kept the Silence spell up all the way to the inn, despite the distraction of Phyrea's surprisingly gentle fingers in her hair.
---
20. General - “Is that vodka? At 7 in the morning?”
"Is that vodka? At seven in the morning?"
Melivaris' voice was gentle, not the harsh disapproval that Eva couldn't help but brace herself for. She'd known he wasn't the Marquess, whose step was heavy and dragged with his limp, but it was habit, at this point, to tense for the old man's disapproval.
Instead of answering aloud, she held up the bottle, turning it so he could see the label.
He took it deftly from her grip, slipping it loose from her hand even though she'd had no intention of giving it up. Eva looked up from where she was hunched over the table. He was examining it closely, his ears pricked, his brow faintly furrowed. He frowned more deeply when he set it down on the table it looked up. Still no disapproval, though, only concern.
That made her feel more guilty than the Marquess' disapproval would have. She was used to pushing back against that. Melivaris seemed to be sincerely worried about her untimely drinking.
"I got a letter," she said, because she couldn't stay silent in the face of his penetrating concern.
"A troublesome one?" Melivaris pulled out the chair across from her and sat down. "If it's from anyone you've dealt with, you know that the Marquess will deal with it. You're his best agent."
She could try rebuffing him, but it was obvious that he wouldn't go away. And Eva didn't really want him to. Whatever services she might do for the family, Melivaris was her only true ally here. The Marquess' daughter believed very sincerely that she was indeed a bastard half-sister, and treated her accordingly, as a tolerated but inferior relative; the Marquess himself had made it clear that he would never entirely forgive her deception. Only Melivaris, with his elven sensibilities and his lack of association with the family, seemed to feel any affection for her. He might even sympathize.
"No." She shook her head. "It was from my father- well, there was a letter from my father enclosed. But it was from the jail he'd landed in."
"I hadn't been aware that he'd been jailed," Melivaris said, with his customary delicacy around the subject of either of her parents. "Not that I was entitled to know."
"I didn't know either," Eva said. "Not until the letter arrived. He hasn't contacted me since he sent me here. I think he got well out of dodge once it went public that the Marquess had accepted me as his grandchild. He was trying not to fuck it up for me."
She sighed. Everything had gone wrong, sure, but it hadn't been his fault. And even if he had been around, he wouldn't have been able to rescue her. Eva had saved herself, with her own talents, and he'd helped her hone those. It wasn't fair to hold any of that against him.
Melivaris only nodded. He had always seemed to approve, in a quiet way that wouldn't attract the Marquess' wrath, of her father's plot to give her a better life. It was one of the things she appreciated about him. Along with the music lessons, of course.
"Anyway, I can tell when a letter's written under duress. It was addressed to me as the heir, so he has no idea I got disowned, which is the only silver lining. And the jailors didn't even try to dissemble. They want money for his upkeep, and they want to squeeze it out of me. Instead he goes into 'the Pit,' and I guess the jailors assume I know what that means."
"It's an evocative name."
"Yeah." Eva poured herself another shot of vodka and tossed it back. "And he wouldn't ever have given up where I was willingly. So either torture, or magic, and I doubt it's magic as nice as what you're teaching me. Not if they have someplace called the Pit. But it's not like I can pay them off."
"Why not?" Melivaris raised an eyebrow. "I can understand why you wouldn't want to tell the Marquess about this, but you do get paid your own salary, don't you?"
"They want two thousand gold. For a year."
"Ah." Melivaris was already very pale, all blue-tinged--'winter-hued,' he called it--but he went paler. A little ashy. "Perhaps... you should apply to the Marquess, after all."
"No," Eva said firmly. "That's blatant extortion, and the d'Arqua business doesn't pay extortioners. Better twice as much for security to make our position clear then half as much as a pay-off, because once they know they can shake you down, they'll just keep upping the price. That's the principle the old man taught me. I can't ask him to break it, and I wouldn't if I could."
"Evangeline." Melivaris reached out across the table, laying a hand gently over hers as she reached for the bottle. "I understand that you're reluctant to ask him for help. But the worst that can happen is that he'll say no."
"The worst that can happen is that he'll realize I'm exposing a weakness, and doubt my integrity as an investigator," Eva countered. "Or tell me to forget my father, and if he says that to my face, it's not going to go well. Besides, all that aside, he's right. I pay them two thousand gold this year, it'll be three thousand the next."
"But you can't do nothing," Melivaris said. Gentle, not shocked; she was sure that between the vodka and his innate perceptiveness, he'd already read it in her face.
"I can't," Eva agreed. "He's my father. He did everything he could do to make my life better, and walking away, off to wherever he landed in jail, is part of it. So I need a favor from you."
"Whatever you need."
"Tell the old man I need to go on a leave of absence, for my bardic training. Call it... a journeyman period, or something like that. He knows what you've been teaching me makes me more useful to him. Convince him I need it to hone my skills, and he'll give me as much time as I say I need."
Melivaris nodded, and he gently squeezed her hand. "Of course. Something like that would actually have come up sooner rather than later. I meant to wait a few more years, but my timeline was based on elven training, in any case, so this isn't too soon. I can even draw you up the training plan I would have sent you with. Though I assume that's not all you'll be doing?"
"Nope." Eva summoned a smile for him, trying to pack as much genuine gratitude into it as possible, alongside the weariness and the fear. "I'm going to break my father out."
---
30. Angst - “I risked my life for you.”
"I risked my life for you!" Myerzo didn't mean to say it, but that agonized cry tore itself unbidden from his throat, and once it was loose, he couldn't take it back. "My life, my reputation, my place in the Order, to get you out of there, and you turned around and went back?!"
He saw Cirion stumble back along the narrow bridge he was guarding, eyes going wide, lowering his sword. Myerzo wanted to shout at him for that, too, actually had to bite back the instinct. It wasn't as if it would be any use; Cirion had always treated that light little rapier like a toy, waved it around without any care for his stance or his guard. He'd always assumed Myerzo would be there to fill in any holes in his defense.
Not that he was wrong. Myerzo felt fresh ire bubble up in his chest, and had to swallow hard to hold it back. He'd done just that, hadn't he? Jumped in to hide Cirion's crimes and protect him from punishment, regardless of what consequences he might face? And Cirion hadn't even thought about trying to undo it all and plunge himself into danger again.
"There were still people in there," Cirion said, eyes wide, painfully earnest. "Innocent people. They hadn't meant any harm, they just didn't know how the Blackthorn worked when they went into it. I couldn't just leave them there!"
"Yes," Myzero said, leveling out his tone. The rage bubbling through him, denied further voice, felt like it was spreading out through his chest, settling like hot metal into his bones. "You could have. You should have. You were only in the Blackthorn for less than a day, and I still took a risk bringing you out. For all you knew, they slept in there."
"We did," said a woman on the far side of the ravine, one of the ragged group of travellers huddled around the tiny fire that they'd started.
He glanced back at her, distressed and pleading. "Don't tell him that! Just don't- let me handle him, okay?"
Myerzo took a step forward, shifting into an offensive stance, raising his sword high. "Cirion-"
"You're right!" Cirion swung back towards him, sword half-raised, though he wasn't situated right for a proper parry even if his rapier wasn't far too light to deflect Myzero's heavy blade. "You're right, you took a risk bringing me out. For all you know, I'm corrupted. And for all you know, they aren't. If you're so determined that they should die just on the chance of it, then you should kill me too!"
"This is the law!" Myerzo burst out, not quite a shout this time, but still too loudly to sound as implacable and even-toned as he'd wanted. "No one who has passed through the Blackthorn is safe, and it's a knight's duty to put down any who escapes. I shouldn't spare you, no, but I am going to, for your father's sake."
Because it was his duty to protect Cirion, no matter what the lute-strumming idiot did. He didn't regret that, couldn't regret it, even knowing that he was betraying his own oaths of knighthood to do it. That didn't make him any less furious that Cirion had forced him into that betrayal. And was forcing him now into another--because he had sworn, in his heart and to his lord, to serve Cirion as faithfully as he served his lord and his order.
This was the only compromise Myzero could make for himself. Spare Cirion, against the laws of the land; kill the rest of them, against Cirion's wishes. He would not choose one oath over the other, and so he would break both of them.
"The law isn't fair!" Cirion protested. "You know that, or you wouldn't try to say I'm exempt from it. Either you don't believe in it, and you should spare them, or you do believe in it, and you should kill me too. I'm not any more important then they are."
Myerzo ground his teeth at that. It was a foolish thing to say, even for someone as prone to foolishness as Cirion--whatever he might want, he knew better. He was his mother's son, to the public who adored his mother's memory, and his father's son, to those loyal to his father. He could say whatever humble things he liked, but he was an important man by any measure. And Myerzo would trade every one of that travelling band he'd rescued to keep him alive.
"It doesn't matter if I believe in the law or not," Myerzo said. "I'm a knight of the Iron Shield, and my duty is to obey it."
"The Order of the Iron Shield is supposed to protect the weak, not kill them!" Cirion protested. "That's why Father gave you to it!"
It took effort not to flinch. He was right, and Myerzo knew it. The first time he'd ever seen that emblem emblazoned on a shield, it had been his lord's, sweeping towards him as the man used his shield-arm to scoop him protectively up out of the flames around him and into his saddle.
But his shield was meant to protect one person among all others. "I'm protecting all the innocents of this land who might be hurt, if these friends of yours have brought poison out of the Blackthorn with them. If I let them go, they'll only run into another knight, and they'll kill you with them."
As he advanced across the bridge, Cirion took another step back, his sword coming up higher. He started to reach back for his lute, then caught himself, his hands twitching in the air. Preparing magic, then. At least he had enough sense to know he couldn't hold Myerzo off with sword alone.
While he was still twitching his fingers, Myerzo lunged forward, catching Cirion's blade with his own and turning it roughly aside. He'd hoped to knock it from his fingers, but he couldn't manage that, not without the risk of putting Cirion entirely off-balance. The last thing he wanted was to dumb his lord's son into the ravine.
Cirion knew that, he could tell, because his eyes narrowed in thought as he stumbled back. Then he whipped his free hand forward and snapped his fingers. "I'm sorry, Myerzo, but I need you to stop there."
There was a hum to the last two words, almost melodic, and it grew to fill Myerzo's ears as he fought against the magic dragging at his limbs. He could feel all his muscles stiffen, his arm locking tight with his sword only half-extended. When he tried to open his mouth to shout, his jaw was tight, and a second later he couldn't even blink his eyelids.
"Run," Cirion called over his shoulder. "I can't hold him forever. Go now, into the trees, and I'll catch up!"
Heeding his warning, the ragged band snatched up the few camp goods they'd already unpacked and rushed away into the forest. Myerzo tried desperately to move a foot, a finger, anything, but his own body resisted him, bound still by Cirion's magic. Not even his voice was free, so he couldn't tell Cirion how stupid, how suicidal, he was being.
Stepping forward into the range of his now-useless sword, Cirion reached out and put a hand on his stiff shoulder. "I know you don't really want to hurt anyone. Now you can tell them I bespelled you, and you won't be held to account for your failure."
That wasn't what mattered, Myerzo would have told him, if he could have. What mattered was that Cirion still would be. He couldn't feel any relief for his own absolution, couldn't even be warmed by the realization that Cirion was concerned, a little. Not when Cirion was, in the same moment, making himself an outlaw. The taint of the Blackthorn would be on that band he had taken under his protection, if they'd slept there, and he was signing his own warrant by staying with them.
"It's all right," Cirion added. "I- there's no easy way to explain this, and you wouldn't believe me if I tried to tell it quick. But it is all right, and they are untainted, and I swear to you, I made sure of that in a way that can't be fooled. I'll show you someday, I promise. I'm not as frivolous as you think, and I'll prove it to you, and to Father. But I have to do this first, and I can't explain it to you now, but it really does matter."
While Myerzo was still trying to unwind that confusing little speech, Cirion stepped away, backing up steadily, rapier at the ready even though Myerzo still couldn't shake off his magic. He was across the bridge and vanishing among the bushes when the spell finally broke. Pins and needles rushed through Myerzo's limbs all at once, and he shuddered, then had to catch his balance.
Cirion spun about and bolted into the bushes at a run. Myerzo growled and drew himself up to run after him. He'd run straight to those travelers, and then-
And then another long chase, because Cirion wouldn't just stand back and let Myerzo do his duty, that much was clear. And at last, once he'd exhausted enough of Cirion's magic that he couldn't play tricks anymore, a slaughter.
Myerzo let the rage bubble through him a moment more, searing his throat, making his throat ache. Then he forced it back down into his belly, put a lid on it and set it to simmer. He sheathed his sword, and turned his back, and started back across the bridge to the edge of the ravine, where he'd left his horse. He'd let Cirion go for now. The Order would put him on their trail again soon enough, anyway. For now he'd let him have his petty victory.
It was easier to only break one oath at a time, after all.
