Limp and unmoving, the child dangled by his arms in the center of the bedroom. At first glance Ennis judged it probable he was dead. Surprise held her motionless for a few seconds. The corpse of a small boy was not what she had expected to find when she broke into the isolated farmhouse.
A thick painful gasp broke the stillness as she watched, far too reminiscent of hours Ennis had endured herself in Master Szilard's training. The thin form twisted against the heavy ropes that held him, straining for breath, his feet kicking far above the ground and gaining no traction.
Five houses and a warehouse in the area might have belonged to the immortal Master Szilard was presently hunting. Ennis's task was to investigate them all and report back. Investigating the child who hung imprisoned here was within the scope of her orders.
The intensity of her desire to do so caught her off guard. What Ennis wanted had never mattered; Master Szilard hadn't quite forbidden her to want anything, but only, she sometimes suspected, because he believed she ought to be incapable of the feeling.
She drew a knife from her wrist sheath almost before the decision to do so registered, crossing the dim room in a single step. Her left arm lifted to wrap around the boy's thrashing legs in support.
At her touch his eyes snapped open. "Am I done, Fermet?" he panted, voice rising into a high pleading wail that sounded involuntary against the matter-of-fact words.
For more reasons than one Ennis had no idea how to answer. Much too late to make a difference, she matched the gasping boy to the shy young face of another's memory.
Czeslaw Meyer, youngest to board the Advenna Avis. Older than Ennis herself by now. The immortal child was a target. Her master wanted him eliminated.
Was it the old memories or her own dim flicker of sympathy that drove her to aid him anyway? Ennis only knew that she could not bear to leave him in pain. She stretched upward and sawed her knife across the rope just above the boy's wrist.
His full weight was no burden at all. The floor seemed like the best option; even as an immortal, he would not be able to walk for some time. She tried to set him down gently, mindful of the arms that had to have been dislocated. The ropes had cut deep enough into his wrists that there was a small but visible cycle of blood and immortal healing, the skin that pressure continually tore open unable to mend itself.
It was just as well that she had lowered him to the ground before he blinked clear enough of the pain to squint at her face. Bewildered shock widened his eyes; he flung himself away from her touch with a clumsy roll, still bound at the wrists and less than half his nerves reporting for duty at all if Ennis had any experience in the matter.
She would have liked to finish cutting him free first, but she did not want to panic him. No point keeping him immobile when he couldn't even stand up.
The boy was a low priority compared to Lebreau, she argued in silence against her master's long-standing orders. Czeslaw Meyer was of very little interest either as a threat or as a source of information. Lebreau Fermet Viralesque was the one who had inherited the alchemical knowledge of the Meyer family, the one with opportunity and intelligence and motive to make long-range plans that might interfere with Master Szilard.
It would be appropriate to report back first before she took any irreversible action.
Relief stole into Ennis's mind like a fog; she did not want to harm this child.
Master Szilard would not be pleased that she had allowed any target to see her. Ennis blinked away the knowledge of punishment to come. She earned that often enough no matter how hard she worked.
Nothing she could do would prevent her master from attempting to seek out and devour the immortal who had gone with the boy so long ago. Looking at the evidence of Lebreau's handiwork, Ennis found it remarkably easy to contemplate his death.
Czeslaw stared at her with a growing frown. "What—what are you doing here?" he demanded in halting dismay, and cringed back against the wall.
The full explanation would be very awkward indeed. "Helping you. If I can." Ennis knelt where she was and offered the sharp edge of her knife. At the least maybe she could get him unbound before he realized too much.
He flinched as though expecting a stab, and scowled at her when she only held the knife still. "I don't want your help," he muttered. "You're going to make everything worse." Fear flickered stark and hopeless across his face. But after a long pause he did extend a wary hand to hook her knife point under the outer coil of the rope.
Ennis accepted the gesture, twisting with care to part the rough strands of rope without catching his skin. He examined the swollen wrist and flexed his fingers, winced, and pushed his other wrist in her direction with a skeptical look, bracing for pain.
One upward cut was enough to loosen the bond. Czeslaw unraveled the rest of the loops with stiff fingers and an occasional quick tug with his teeth, deft enough to make Ennis wonder how much practice the decades with Lebreau had given him.
Despite the necessary attention to the ropes Czeslaw never took his sharp gaze off her, relaxing a fraction as she sheathed her knife. "Did—did Fermet send you?" he asked.
"No." Ennis took careful stock of Czeslaw's reactions, added their sum to the way she'd found him in the first place, and felt a first strange flutter of something she thought was anger. She did not let it touch her face. Czeslaw didn't deserve any more fear than she could help.
Her denial froze him into utter stillness, little to give his thoughts away except for the frantic flick of his eyes. Ennis didn't think anything she could tell him would help.
At last he summoned breath to prod a little more. "Who are you?"
The question hadn't become any easier to answer. How much of an information leak would her master forgive? If he killed her when she reported back for what she had already done, did it matter?
Ennis leaned back on her heels, sorting her options. "When is Fermet coming back?" she asked in return. The chances of a useful response were low, but he would never share the information if she waited until he learned any part of who she was.
"I don't know." Quick, defensive, as likely to be true as not considering the circumstances. Lebreau might not have bothered mentioning his plans. The young face tensed in calculation, then lit with an innocence it was a little too late to attempt. "Listen, miss...please don't tell him the trouble I got myself into." His voice cracked with an urgency that belied the light expression. "Don't—don't tell anyone? It's a good thing you came when you did, before I got hurt." He held up now-unmarked wrists as though in evidence, with a shy smile. "Should I know you?" he added. "My name is Czeslaw Meyer—"
From the abrupt choke as the false smile faded, it wasn't what he'd meant to say at all. His eyes darted to the doorway as though expecting Lebreau to be watching, then back to her with hard accusation. Ennis let out a quiet sigh. The rules of immortality were designed to cause trouble, she suspected.
No denying it now. "I'm Ennis," she told him. "We've never met."
If she left at once, or if she restrained the child with the convenient rope and took him to Master Szilard, she could still survive this. Telling him anything more when her master would inevitably consume his memories was inviting her own death, as slow as Master Szilard chose to make it, every particle of self she thought she had gained absorbed back into his memories to be used or discarded.
Terror at the thought gripped her chest, despair flooding her again. But there was terror in the child's eyes too.
The man she had devoured had hunted down her master in hope of giving this boy some small chance of living in peace. Maybe she owed that to them both. One chance, even if it would inevitably fail.
Of course, telling Czeslaw the truth would give him more cause for fear. Ennis closed her eyes in preparation, looked up again, and pressed her right hand flat against the floor. "Master Szilard created me to help him hunt all of you down," she admitted.
He made a faint squeak, going pale. A definite increase in dread. She held onto the dim hope it would push him the right direction.
"My master wants Lebreau," Ennis went on, trying to meet that horrified gaze and having some difficulty holding it. "He might overlook you. If you run. Far, fast, and starting now. He might...be distracted." By the need to punish, kill, and replace his homunculus, perhaps.
Czeslaw had begun to pant again, with only fear compressing his lungs this time. "I—I can't," he whispered, and shook his head to focus on Ennis with razor-sharp ferocity. "You're lying—why should you even care?"
He always chose difficult questions. Ennis was well aware that she should not, with no idea how to explain the fact that she somehow did. "Master Szilard never trained me to lie," she said, which was true enough.
Rising panic had pressed his small form back against the wall. "I can't leave Fermet," Czeslaw yelped. She wasn't sure if he'd even heard the poor attempt at reassurance. His arms hugged his chest as though to keep his heart in its place. "I can't even help him, I'm weak, I'm just a child and I can't—" He tried to take a deeper breath, bared his teeth at Ennis. "You think so too." He flung the words at her like a knife, except that she knew what to do with knives.
"I don't think that," she said, and found that it was true. There was no contempt in her heart for Czeslaw. Only a deepening regretful sense that they could have understood one another. Ennis tilted her head. "I can't run either."
Czeslaw blinked at her, startled into silence.
Ennis pulled a faint weary smile to her lips. "That's probably why," she added, in case he still wanted to know. "Good luck, Czeslaw Meyer, whatever you choose." She rose to her feet and retreated.
Staying to argue wouldn't help either of them. Master Szilard would come to find her if she failed to report, and Lebreau could return at any moment.
For Czeslaw Meyer's freedom she might not mind death, but her heart rebelled at the thought of giving her life and betraying her master for the sake of the man who had tied those knots and left Czeslaw to die alone.