On the morning of the third day when the soldiers brought my meal - colourless, tasteless hot mush, as usual, filling and likely nutritious but not exactly a joy to eat - I drank only a little water and refused the food, giving the troops only my desolate profile, striving to appear distant and sick at heart. It was less because I was ill and more because I wished to see what the gyre would do; my Elyos guards talked among themselves agitatedly as I feigned weakness, cursing with frequence (what little I knew of Elyan was mainly fluent swearing and improbable acts committed upon the self with a spoon), and one was even brazen enough to get down on his knees and yell in syllables at me. I blinked then, staring as he pantomimed eating the mush, pondering why he thought that saying the words louder and slower would suddenly allow me to comprehend.
In the end, I blanked my face, pointed to the door with a faux-trembling arm, and turned my head away. Though the soldier had unwittingly helped me along in my pursuit to covertly learn Elyan, it was not to be without its consequences. When the gyre came that day, it was an hour or so early (I was also learning to judge time against the intractable sun) and in the company of a graceful and tall figure I recognized dimly, but only by his outline. The swan-winged Daeva, it seemed, was in fact a male, pale and lanky where Nicolette had been dark and graceful, and he bustled into my cell with all the businesslike mien of a cook who has scented a flawed meal in his kitchen. I saw Oros's mouth twitch at the corner when the swan beelined for me, made a knee uncomfortably close to my corner, and moved swiftly in an attempt to lay hands on my bandaged leg.
I realized his intent and yanked it away, curling it beneath me, and made a swipe with my claws, hissing furiously. He abruptly jerked himself back and stand, just out of my reach, his thick blonde plait whirling like a cracked whip, expression filled to brimming with mute, arrogant rage for this creature who would dare to attack him. If I had been able to I would have lunged for him for his discourtesy; instead I made do with baring my fangteeth, an almost feline expression of wrath. He harangued me in Elyan, levelly but clearly maddened, and turned to glare at Oros and share the wealth of his displeasure. Oros, Aion help him, was attempting his best to resist the need to burst into peals of laughter, mouth twitching spasmodically as he held it inward. I scowled at him along with the swan.
When Oros dared to test the evenness of his voice, it was in Asmoth. "This is Kiert Fireheart, Jaya. He is our resident cleric. He's here to look at your leg."
"Lost a bet, did he?" I shot back, not about to lower my guard even though the gyre was on the edge of mirthful tears.
"You could say that." His mouth twitched again, and he visibly reined himself in. "Someone told him no one could stand us for more than a month's posting without losing their mind. Kiert has been here for nearly half a year. A personal best."
"Who is 'us'?" I asked, suspicious, narrowing my eyes somewhat. It was at this juncture, however, that Kiert chose to break in in clipped, brisk Elyan, the first sentence or two directed at Oros, and then another at me. I only caught a word here and there, eerie reflections of my native tongue, but the venom with which he spat his intonations needed absolutely no translation.
I did not feel inclined to be manhandled, nor treated as a beast instead of an Asmodian. "I wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire," I snarled at Kiert, "and I'm sure as hell not letting you touch my leg! Get out!" I managed to half-stand, using the wall for support, and pointed at the door emphatically, mentally hoping, daring him to come within range of my hands.
Kiert opened his mouth to bellow at me, no doubt some offended epithet involving my heritage and his unwillingness to deal with a foul beast such as me, but at that moment Oros completely lost it. Both Kiert and I stared in utter befuddlement as the tall, lithe form of Ourobouros Stalks-By-Night, terror of the shadows, slid helplessly down the wall, knees weak, hands clutching his sides, eyes squeezed shut and his clear, resonant tenor belling out waves of pure joyous laughter. I had never heard an Elyos laugh; I was somewhat awestruck and somewhat suspicious, a reasonable reaction to the spectacle, while Kiert Fireheart stewed in his own juices, glaring such daggers of hate at Oros that his viridian gaze would have flattened a lesser man.
Eventually the gyrefalcon wiped the tears from his onyx eyes and regained his feet, a smirk still playing about his lips, and thus recalled to duty he made a flowery translation of a few more of Kiert's angry, terse words. "Madame Jaya, My Lord Daeva Kiert Fireheart asks if you would be inconvenienced by the examination of the lower shank of your left lower limb, in which he suspects an inflammation responsible for your lack of appetite this morningtide."
I rolled my eyes, especially at the mispronunciations on 'inconvenienced' and 'responsible'. "Your Asmoth is horrific, Elyos. You sound as if you learnt it out of a book."
"I may have," he said playfully, but behind the laughter, his eyes were guarded. "Will you accede?"
"I did not eat because I wanted to see what you would do," I demurred, trying to hide the rising panic that, yes, I would be forced to let this Elyos cleric lay hands upon me, due to my little prank. The notion gave me an inordinate amount of unease, for no reason I could put to words.
"The wound must be cleaned nonetheless," pressed Oros, sensing that I was stalling and seizing upon that brief weakness, like the hunter-hawk whose wings he bore.
"It has been cleaned quite finely already," I returned, sliding down hard into my corner, my good leg no longer able to hold me. It was a concession that I could not recover from.
"Yesterday," said he. "It will do you good to have it seen by a healer. And besides," he added, flashing that falconer's smile, his hostility abandoned for a more sincere and disconcerting surety, "I would ask you a question about the Lay."
"I'm not allowing him to touch me if all he's going to do is pour salt in the wound," I said, heated, because I suspected Kiert of exactly that motive; as I said, a healthy dose of paranoia is the trait of any well-adjusted Asmodian child, and as said Elyos was watching me with hooded eyes and a pinscratch frown between his eyebrows.
"I could extract a promise," said Oros, formally. I looked at him and began to say, What weight is the word of an Elyos? But I bit back the words and thought, He was not forced to offer the coraline for my name.
No, said another piece of me in scorn, but he has an uncanny sense for what kind of carrot to dangle to achieve his goals. Or his master's goals.
I remembered the owl-winged Daeva with one shining gold eye peeking out from beneath a hood swept briefly aside, and thinking on that, I extended my throbbing leg and folded my arms across my chest. "If he treats me carelessly," I warned both of them, "I'll take off his face."
"He'll have earned it." He did not say with with his usual smirk. He spoke a few quiet words to Kiert, and the swan came forward almost reverently, gaze flicking between my face and my leg. I growled low in my throat, a warning shot across the metaphorical bow, and kneeling he began to very, very carefully peel the bandages back. As he did so, Oros stole my attention with a change of tone: "How is it known, at Carcarron, that the Lay is ill luck?"
I watched Kiert work out of the corner of my eye, ready to smack him away if I felt the slightest twinge above rank of the constant low-level pain from the wound, but answered. "It invites misfortune, wherever it is heard." The memory of indirectly causing the deaths of my escort stung, darkening my cheeks, despite Oros's skeptical look. "Evran Ice-Lance had it first performed at his daughter's wedding, and bride and groom were killed by a stone falling from the temple roof. Zechthy Snow-Shrouded tarried outside a hallway where a noblewoman was reciting it aloud, and the floor gave way beneath his feet, where he proceeded to land in the kitchen cookpot and take several kitchen workers with him several floors down, all the way to the secondary basement. Lumiel Lady of Wisdom decried the rumours of ill luck that surrounded the Lay, and had it sang for her." I paused, and not entirely for effect; the image of that particular story was quite vivid, and likely etched upon the insides of the eyelids of every child raised at Carcarron. That castle's bloodline did not believe in shielding children from history's terrible truths. "Suffice to say it was not a pleasant outcome."
"And yet it is taught to all, and touted as the greatest love tale of all time?" He arched one fine brow, and I flinched somewhat as Kiert lifted my leg to examine the wound from all angles. I sent the swan a bit of a stare.
"Yes. Because it is."
Oros snorted. "And if that doesn't speak to the Asmodian mindset, I don't know what does."
My glare shifted to the gyre, and turned glacially cold. "And what is that supposed to mean, Elyos?"
Oros was saved from speaking more of this monumentally stupid comment by Kiert, who made a sound of exclamation, my ankle held up in the air so that the back of my calf was somewhat exposed and my balance set back too far on my rump. As the Elyos huddled together and stared at the wound, I attempted to peer around my own leg, a process hopeless even under normal circumstances. Kiert pointed at places on my leg, likely where my stitches had popped, speaking in Elyan as he marked them, and Oros made comments every breath or so, he himself not daring to lay hand on my dusky skin. I stewed a bit and let them talk, but my patience was in short supply those days. "Well?"
"It's healing well," said Oros with a tight look about his eyes. "No infection present, but there may be some permanent damage to the leg."
"What kind of permanent damage?" I said, growling it to make the fear pounding in my heart distant and insignificant, shrouded in a thin veil of anger.
"You'll likely have a limp for the rest of your life." He paused, grim and sober, as Kiert waxed eloquent in Elyan, his attitude all business as he lowered my leg and began to pull rolls of gauze from his pockets. My heart practically fell out of my chest at the next sentence. "You'll be able to walk, with therapy. There should be very little necrosis of tissue."
"Very little necrosis of tissue?" I'd meant to say it mockingly, but it came out sounding far more pathetic and small than I had ever intended, the voice of a child hearing the bogeyman. Both of the Elyos stopped, Kiert a little open-mouthed as he cut himself short, and I turned away from them and hid my face in my hands, the black pit of shame rearing its ugly head to claim me once more. Daevas. How could they understand? I was a mere mortal; I was not one of Aion's chosen, practically immune to every malady on Atreia other than complete and utter destruction. What was one Asmodian mortal to Elyos Daevas? A pebble on the Long Road, quickly trod over and forgotten?
I gathered myself as quickly and effectively as I could, dropping my hands, jew set in determination, and though it seemed an eternity, it was in truth no more than a brief span of heartbeats. I had already chosen to live in exile; I would not live in despair as well. Gyre and swan stared at me a bit, not sure what to make of this, but I spoke first. "Do the magics of a Daeva cleric work on mortals?"
Oros paused, caught off guard, but recovered quickly enough for my tastes. "Somewhat, but only enough to speed the process. It's something about how much aether a mortal can absorb versus a Daeva." He hesitated again, clearly thinking over speaking the next piece. "Nothing can be undone that has already been done. For a mortal, anyway."
I nodded, curt, and tapped the ball of my bad foot against the flagstones. It hurt, but not as much as not walking would. "Tie it up." Beat. "Please." I supposed that, after all, there were not many purposes for which a captive Asmodian could be turned toward that allowed the Elyos to ignore their victims' injuries, and frankly, I was curious to see in the coming days for what plan I was being kept secreted away. Oros, eyebrows high, simply nodded to Kiert, and the swan began to roll the gauze around my leg, from the arch of my foot clear over the knee, tying deft, tucked knots that would not come undone easily. When finished, the wrapping was a bit tighter than usual and also felt immediately better, and I wondered if he hadn't sneaked a bit of aether into my wound without my noticing. I managed to thank him civilly in Asmoth, and though he didn't understand the words, he must have known their intent; he nodded to me and rose, taking the previous round of filthy bloodied bandages with him.
Oros tarried a moment more, watching me with care, as though he expected me to transform into a raging beast, or perhaps faint like a delicate Elyos sun-maiden. I flicked my eyes to the door and waved him on. Though he took a breath as if to comment, he decided against it once again, and slipped through the white portal, leaving me alone at last.
Therapy, they said.
I waited exactly five heartbeats before I forced myself up off the floor, a frown etched on my features. Painstakingly, using the wall as both guide and crutch, I began to pace around the room on both feet.
The first step was pure agony. My entire leg shook, harder and faster as I forced more weight upon it, and when I managed a halting step it did not entirely dissipate; but nothing snapped, nothing broke, and that heartened my morbid determination. I rested for one ragged breath against the wall, three limbs braced against it for strength, and then I tried again. It didn't get any easier with practice, as I had hoped it would, but my leg responded to my cues, however excruciatingly. I grew overconfident then, and let go of the wall for the last step into the corner parallel my normal one.
The knee gave. I went down with a squawking yelp, and all of my weight landed on exactly the wrong place on my leg. Stars exploded behind my eyes, and the white-walled stone of the cell suddenly went black, air leaving my lungs in what may have been a scream. I curled in on myself, whimpering, and remained like that for only Aion knew how long. When Atreia ceased spinning in my vision and the white bursts of pain had somewhat dissipated, I struggled for even breath.
It was too long coming before I could flop onto my belly and eye the door, panting. No sign of the Elyos reentering, and though my pride took a blow, I had no other way to hide my excursion other than belly-crawling back to my corner, claws scrabbling at the floor, unable to help my efforts with either my injured leg or my fatigued one. I inched across that expanse until my hand touched the cleft of the corner, and there I lay, exhausted, I scarce had the will to life my head and check the wall.
No telltale bloodstains, although the back of my bandage was patchy with disconcerting scarlet.
Ah well, good enough for a start, I thought, and lay my head on the wonderfully cold stone to sleep.
