II: The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

"Master! This…is it the twentieth already?"

He'd been leaning on the bar for a good ten minutes before Majic trundled up the stairs from the cellar into the warm tawny glow of the tavern, cleaning his hands on a sooty rag, looking utterly nothing like the continent's next powerful sorcerer. Just a kid, not yet eighteen, in a water spotted apron and sweat flattening his corn colored hair from stoking the furnace below. Ten minutes was a perfectly adequate amount of time for someone to sink into a thoroughly spiteful temper, and he'd taken full advantage of the opportunity.

"Let me guess," he scoffed. "Lost track of the calendar?"

"No, just…I'm sorry…" Majic jerked a hand through his damp hair, raking it back in an aggravated gesture that definitely looked familiar. It was funny how different someone could look, not seeing them for awhile. Majic, for his part of it, didn't appear to have slept for most of the time he'd been away. To be honest, he hadn't either. He'd been up late, hours into the predawn, squinting at bas-reliefs, frescoes and carved simulacrums in the cool, humid underground; paging through reference texts, matching obscure contexts and combinations. He'd hated runes in school, but happened to be good at it, like most things when it came to academics. He was all about practical application, theory made his brain switch off. But when Stephanie had first asked, he'd refused. Laughed, even.

But, she knew him. Appealing to some deeper interests, the value of Nornir lore, she'd pushed the envelope. She'd parroted old tropes, those who cannot learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, and other banal bullshit that had landed on deaf ears before she'd aimed below the belt. Aiming for sore spots as she was wont to do in an argument, she'd argued finally that if more research had been funded in Nornir ruin sites, perhaps there would never have been that tragic accident involving the relics taken from Baltander's Island.

Which, really, thinking back on it, was a downright shitty, absolutely fucking nasty thing to do.

Perhaps—no, decidedly—his life would have been radically different without the disaster that had derailed it into a smoking heap of wreckage. By the time that the accident, or rather whatever had not been completely destroyed by it, had been resolved, both he and Azalie were a good six years older. Childman was dead, the family he'd had at the tower half-dead and half-strangers after so long. Everything that had been before was gone, unsalvageable. Time and life that could not be regained. There was no going back to anything. Not for any of them.

It had taken almost six years to realize that he'd been doing what he had, after leaving the Tower, almost entirely on principle. And that in the end, principle wasn't worth a flying fuck. Principle still left you feeling black and hollow, nursing a bottomless hunger for something intangible.

So she'd manipulated him into accepting her proposal. That was the truth of it. The money had helped soothe his slightly stung sense of pride at being swayed by pathetic, lingering guilt. The money wasn't bad. But none of that had made it any easier getting to sleep, particularly on the camp nights underground.

He watched Majic go behind the bar for a towel, an anxious crease carved between his eyebrows.

"How's the old man?"

Majic looked up with an exhausted smile that didn't reach his eyes, "Oh, you…how did you know? I…I've been so busy, I didn't—."

"So he's alright?" Orphen wasn't much of a tolerant person by nature, but all the same, it was a particular challenge being patient with Majic Lin, even after almost three years of apprenticing him. He'd rejected the Tower's full scholarship in favor of his continued sporadic and disorganized tutelage as though he could really learn more that way, which was frustrating more than it was flattering. But as always, ask the boy a question and he'd stammer all over instead of just answering. His focus and confidence was an ongoing weak point in his studies and his applied exercise. Teaching him sorcery felt like building a fortress on quicksand.

The boy gave an unsure nod, still looking nervous. "He's doing okay. Still weak, you know. He's still coughing, but he can breathe better now, and the fever broke yesterday morning. The doctor said, we caught it soon enough that there shouldn't be too much scarring. Want something to drink?"

Orphen nodded vaguely, still leaning on the bar, wrapped in his cloak, only half listening. The tavern was empty, though a low fire still burned in the yawning stone hearth, all the polished wooden tables vacant and neatly aligned on the polished oak floor, shadowed in the dim gaslight and surrounded by brass framed casement windows still bright with what was left of the bleary red sunset over the eastern mountains. No customers tonight. No patrons, but still the Lins had had enough to pay for the expensive treatment. According to Majic, Iris hadn't left much behind when she'd died, and between the Tavern and the Inn, it was enough to keep Bagup and his son from starving.

Majic worked up a sunny imitation of his usual smile, "Pick your poison, Master. We've been pretty quiet lately, it's nice to have someone in here."

"Quiet because everyone's got this same, what is it, fever?"

"Well, not everyone…" Majic offered up a decanter. "Benedictine?"

"Brandy." Christ. He'd just said it without thinking. Obviously, Majic wouldn't know why he'd asked for it. He knew. It was all he could do not to look embarrassed at what was really a slightly perverted request.

The kid shot him a dubious glance, pouring a tumbler full and sliding it over without further comment on it. "I heard that a lot of children around here have it," he continued.

"Any idea how he got it?"

Majic leaned on his elbows, closing his eyes with obvious exhaustion. "Oh sure. There was a fight in here, about three weeks ago. Dad went to break it up, and one of the fighters, actually the guy who started it, he had it bad. He was drooling all over, his shirt was all wet with it. Just…crazy and…furious for no reason at all, he could barely talk, just like…grunt and spit. That's how they act, when it gets bad. So, Dad's throwing him out, and he bites him."

He took a mouthful of the brandy, flinched. He didn't make a habit of drinking it. It tasted like it smelled, caustic and sweet, like that gust of warm breath he'd been thinking too much about. Three months away, it turned out, was longer than he'd thought. "He bit him? You serious?"

"Yeah. Right here. Dad had his arm around his neck." He pantomimed a fake headlock before pointing out the soft underbelly of his forearm, shaking his blond head with a slow, tired sway. "Somebody ended up shooting him outside a few minutes later, after he bit a couple other guys…which I guess was, you know…probably better than what he was going to go through. But we've been pretty quiet since then."

Orphen let out a long breath that his words rode out on. "Fuck, man. What the hell kind of…disease makes you bite people?"

"Don't you know about it? Rhinehold Fever? It's a kind of infection. It affects the brain when it goes untreated, damages the nervous system and stuff, that's why they bite and attack, like scared animals. You really…" Majic's eyebrows came together on his forehead, his eyes squinting at him like he was too bright to look at, which meant he was gauging him for bullshit. "You really haven't heard about it?"

Orphen rose an eyebrow, eyeing his pale apprentice over the rim of his glass. "I've heard about as much as you've told me. So, what, this all just came out of nowhere since I've been gone? And there's already a treatment available?"

"I'm sure it's been around before this. These things don't just come out of nowhere. I just hadn't heard about it until recently, with it everywhere, you know. But it's getting real bad. Last week, a crowd set fire to the clinic on 17th Street after they turned people away."

"Yeah. Turned away people because they couldn't afford the medicine, huh?"

Majic toweled the bar instead of looking at him while he agreed before assertively changing the subject. "So what's it like in Bazilkok?"

"It's…" Another hit of the sweet brandy went down hard. "Interesting. If you like, you know…if you're not claustrophobic and the whole cycle of night and day doesn't mean much to you."

"You do look tired, Master. Have there been protestors?"

"What for? The site is in middle the deadlands."

"I know, but the Dragon Believers…"

"Oh," He wove a hand dismissively, then used it to shepherd back an untamed handful of hair from his eyes. "You of all people should remember just what level of crazy you're dealing with when it comes to those guys."

Majic leaned on his arm again, blinking those heavy eyelids. "I remember."

"Batshit insane, kid."

"I remember."

"In any case, no. No protestors. They denounce sorcery and everything it touches. However that trickles down to protesting the unearthing of ruins, I'll never understand. If the remains of any dragon-family civilization are considered sacred, even if it is the Nornir, you would think they would support it being studied. Particularly something this well preserved. They were saying that the whole place looked like it must have been sealed off suddenly, with the way things were just left where they were. Everything's intact. There's nothing to desecrate, it's not a tomb. Just a lot of religious relics and art. And dust. A whole lot of sacred fuckin' dust."

"I think they want everything to do with the Nornir left buried forever," Majic said softly, looking a little far away now. Probably he was thinking about Fiena, the Dragon Believer girl they'd had to leave behind in Fenril those years ago. Even now, travelling with the kid was like being followed by a puppy, you had to keep a constant eye on him, and women fell over themselves for his attention. It was something about that everything-blond innocent charm, Orphen had always supposed. If he wasn't so sweet and unassuming, the kid would get more tail than he'd know what to do with. The older he got, the more shameless and vexing this problem became.

Not that he was bitter or anything. But for his part of almost three years, he'd barely gotten his clothes off around a woman without feeling like he was doing something wrong. But then, if he thought about it (which normally he didn't), things had been that way a long time. For years, anything that diverted his attention from his goal to find Azalie or the means he took to get there, anything that was for himself, even sleeping, eating, it all triggered an immense and bizarre guilt. Rarely, though, did it completely stop him from doing as he pleased. There had been more than a couple girls willing to follow him anywhere he went if only he'd been honest with them, which he hadn't. All of that had stopped when he'd come to Totokanta and felt the proximity of the sword in the city's masonry.

Strangely, following Azalie's restoration to humanity and his eventual and gradual focus on other things, that sense of guilt had only gotten stronger, less easily ignored or justified away. The last time any woman had been interested in him; it had already been months, hell, almost a year. And the next day, he'd felt hopelessly, inexplicably ashamed of himself. Maybe not inexplicably. Like anything, there was a reason for it.

Okay. Now it was seeming like he might have been a little bitter about it.

He drank some more, only distracted out of his thoughts by a shuffle of footsteps coming through the residential door that opened behind the bar, followed by a deep, rattling cough.

"Thought I heard…a familiar voice out here," Bagup wheezed in the doorway, wearing a thin smile, wrinkled gray nightclothes and a fresh bandage patched over the wound on his forearm. It didn't look right, not at all, and Orphen couldn't pull his eyes from it.

"Dad! Sheez, you shouldn't be up!"

"Hogswallop, boy. I'm feeling good today, and lying in bed ain't getting me anywhere." Majic's old man looked fragile. He'd been robust before, brawny even. Now he looked like a feeble old man in a nightgown with a horrific mess of black tracking along the arm veins, coming out from under that clean bandage. They crawled up past the crook of his elbow and over his bicep, disappearing under the sleeve of his nightshift.

"Just because you've taken the last dose doesn't mean you don't need your rest."

Bagup waved a big hand at his son. "I'm not doing jumping jacks. But I hear you out here talking, and all I've done for weeks is lie in bed and read the newspaper. You didn't tell him that the others that he bit didn't get sick."

"It didn't come to mind," Majic said irritably, turned his eyes. "The others didn't get it. Just Dad, probably because he was bit first."

"What would that matter?" Still, he couldn't pull his eyes off those shadowed veins stretching out from behind Bagup's bandages.

"Saliva," he wheezed tiredly, moving past them to sit at the bar. "Believe me, I've read all about it by now. That's all I've had to do, read the paper, read the pamphlets the doctor left. The infection's carried in body fluids: saliva, blood, you know. Doctor said the other two didn't get sick, that maybe the bites were too dry to be infectious. Not so sure about that, guy was slobbering those big syrupy strings of drool over everybody he touched."

"Goddamn," In a single motion, let the last of the brandy slide down his throat.

"You're telling me. Son, pour me something, huh? I've been in bed for about three weeks, poor Majic's been stuck handling the Lodge business and taking care of me. Tavern's been pretty much closed since all that went down. Where is it you been again?"

"Bazilkok."

"The desert?" Bagup squinted while his son testily clanked a teacup in front of him. "Not quite what I had in mind, Maj."

"I know what you had in mind. But you're getting chamomile. Another, Master?"

Orphen moved his empty glass toward the boy. "About two furlongs past the old ruins, a team from the University in Alenhaten uncovered an underground structure about, oh, six months ago. It's a previously buried arm of the temple structure, a large section that was sealed up. They contracted out for some assistance with the Nornir rune texts in the art once they had it mostly excavated."

"Ah. I knew Majic had mentioned it but…" Bagup shook his head, watching the steaming kettle fill his cup with a weary eye. "My memory's been a little fuzzy from the medication."

"You've got a good son, old man. Taking care of you like this." For some reason, maybe that festering dark wound, he was almost feeling nervous, anxiously compelled to keep speaking to fill up the silence while Bagup unenthusiastically swished around his tea sachet. "Today is the day I'd said I'd come bring him back with me to the dig. They've stabilized the structure enough so no cave-ins are likely, not that any were much in the first place. Majic's been a natural at runes since day one; he could really be part of something important."

What he didn't say was that runes were about the only thing he'd been a natural at since day one. He'd practically had to beat every inch of progress he'd gotten out of the kid. If only his focus wasn't such shit, if he had some damn confidence in the things he knew. He had to talk him up almost every time. It was like having to remind someone that they knew how to walk every morning before they could get out of bed.

"Well, now, Majic, you hear that? When you got mixed up in all this, who knew you'd be involved in some history making?"

"Dad, I'm not sure I should go just yet."

"No, no. I'm mending, son. You go with your teacher. And your pretty friend too, right?" Bagup picked up the teacup in his big, thick fingered hand, brought it up under his graying moustache for a slurp. Even as weak and lessened as he was, it looked laughably like a child's toy in his careful grip. "I don't know what you did to deserve generosity like that, but remember to assure her that we're going to pay her back, boy. If it takes the rest of whatever life I got left in me."

The flushed, pinched expression on Majic's averted face, it said a lot that he didn't. While he was dragging his eyes on the polished bar counter, there was a lot to recognize in that face. It was a face that plainly said that he hadn't wanted Orphen to know that his friend had paid for Bagup's medicine and they were going to pay her back. For whatever reason, the news set him back on that edge he'd been on when he'd arrived. Having information willfully kept from him was something he loathed with a particular intensity. When Majic finally flicked a glance his way, he was sure to silently let him know how he felt about it with a hard, sidelong stare.

Three months away and Cleo had turned into a humanitarian betrothed to some Lord with a ridiculous blueblood crazy bullshit name, and sweetfaced Majic had developed a penchant for quick irritation and secretiveness. He wasn't too sure which of those bothered him the most.

Finally shaking off his indolent embarrassment, Majic replied quietly to his father. "She doesn't want to be paid back, Dad."

"Horsepucky. That's just something people say, son. To make you feel less guilty about having to take a handout, make you feel like they don't got you between the devil and the deep blue sea. S'not something they really mean."

Another drink of brandy; he was getting used to it now. Normally he'd agree that if this was indeed Cleo they were talking about, and really there was no question, that she wouldn't have really meant such a thing, coming from the family she did. But it was just hard to swallow that she'd said it at all. Since when did Cleo care how she made anybody feel? If given a choice between the devil, the deep blue sea, and owing something to Cleo Everlasting, he'd gladly take a chance on whatever the first two had to offer.

Majic was making a face, his eyes still carefully averted, "I don't even know what that means, Dad, but she can tell you herself..."

"Not until midnight she can't," Orphen interjected, his voice caught in the brandy glass, watching for Majic to look over before continuing. "She's got something tonight she can't get out of, so she'll meet us, here, at midnight. Unless you're going to stay?"

"You've seen her already?"

"Yeah." Something wrong with that? He didn't say that part out loud. Just with his face. "You're not staying?"

"Of…of course not." If was like he'd forgotten even suggesting it suddenly. "Not if you want me to go, Dad."

"I'll be fine! I've had my last bit of the medicine. A week ago I couldn't even stand, and look at me now. At this rate, I'll be back at work in a few days."

"Dad! Please…at least…"

Bagup was already sliding off the bar stool he'd occupied, clapping one of those big hands on one of Majic's thin, rounded shoulders. "I'm getting back in bed, don't fret, Mother Hen. But come say goodbye before you go, huh?" He stuck out a hand toward Orphen, the universal invitation for a handshake which, despite reservations that had arisen in seeing the old man's half necrotic arm, he uncomfortably supplied. After which, he received a similar clap on his own, less-scrawny shoulder before vanishing back through the door through which he'd entering, leaving what felt like a peculiar, almost awkward silence behind him in the tavern.

The boy, surprisingly or unsurprisingly, piped up first with exactly the subject he'd hope to avoid. "You went to see Cleo before you came?"

"Said I did, didn't I?"

"So…you know about the—uh…"

He threw back the rest of the brandy in his glass, stone faced while Majic watched him. "Engagement?"

"Uh. Yeah."

"She told me. Both of you seem to have forgotten what we agreed on. Interesting that if I'd been the one to forget I'd be hearing no end of it. Been seeing a lot of her, have you?"

"Master. She…" Majic cut himself off, that furrow appearing between his eyebrows again before he looked away, letting out a gust of breath he presumably had been holding. He shook his head. "If we've got until midnight, you want to use a room? You could take a shower, maybe get some rest?"

Orphen blinked at his apprentice. And now Majic was changing the subject mid-sentence like he wouldn't fucking notice. Like he was stupid. Firing him a warning glare on reflex, he nodded at him, closing his eyes and rubbing a gloved hand over his face in a single rough motion. Taking his mood out on the kid was something he routinely regretted later, and Majic hadn't had the easiest time of things while he'd been gone. He wasn't trying to rile him up. Not that it was that hard to begin with, like poking a tired, hungry animal with a stick.

"Tell me something," he said. "Why didn't you mention Cleo'd gotten the medicine for your old man? It's nothing to be embarrassed about. You should be thankful she came through for you both. She's not normally that reliable."

Majic turned around, his eyes once again downcast in the low, oily gaslight. "I didn't bring it up because of how she got it, Master. Her…fiancé, his father is the doctor who brought the Rhinehold treatment into town; someone her family knows from way back. And…I wouldn't have thought you already knew about the marriage so...I thought it would upset you."

Suddenly, another drink sounded like a good idea. Pushing the empty glass out in front of him, he replied. "Why would it upset me?"

"I don't know," the kid shrugged uncomfortably, his shoulders coming up in miserable slow motion toward his ears while he uncorked the decanter again. "Just…it seemed like the kind of thing that would. I'm not…I'm not that happy about it myself. She's not happy about it."

"Is she ever happy about anything that isn't her own idea?"

"That's not it…" Majic finally refilled his tumbler with a cagey glance. "Master, she's been here almost every day since…she's…she can't…she doesn't know what she's going to do. How can they make her marry somebody?"

"She said as much," he said brusquely, his always thin patience whittled down to its skeleton. "Don't know why either of you seem to think I've got the answer for her."

Majic was silent again, saying more with his shifting eyes than his mouth again, but nothing Orphen's mildly inebriated brain could translate. He was going to offer to go out back and fire off a few practice shots with the kid, blow up a few barrels, charge up some bolts, but he didn't get a chance. Without another word, Majic with his exhaustion shadowed eyes and a bizarre but plainly angry grimace, turned briefly to the wall, then slapped a room key on the bar in front of him with heavy hand that had all the finality and closure of a punctuation mark.