Jeb Cain had, hitherto, considered himself a patient man.
One that could wait, without fidgeting, for a patrol to walk right into an ambush, even if that meant to keep still for hours in an icy, drizzling rain. Also, the top of the large elevator cage was far from the most uncomfortable place where he'd ever been forced to lie low for a while. The tightly woven grids of the safety cage and, especially, the battery of blindingly bright lights attached to it, hid him from onlookers; and with the constant chug-chug-chug of a heavy engine running nearby – a pump that kept the mineshaft from flooding, or possibly even the machine that moved the elevator, currently idling on standby – he could have even moved around a bit, or spoken normally, without anyone hearing him.
It was therefore, without a doubt, the fault of the other person he had to share the cramped space with, that this wait was driving Jeb up the walls. Quite literally. The young captain turned over on his back, to stare past the hoist cables snaking up into the darkness towards the tiny spark of light at the top of the quarter-mile deep shaft, feeling a growing urge to scale the walls without the aid of the elevator.
It was the smirk, mostly. Jeb had come to the conclusion that it was simply the other man's default facial expression, and – as much as the thought disturbed him – had even begun to recognize several different ones. There was an aggressive smirk, a satisfied smirk – at least as dangerous as the first – even the faint smirk Zero would eventually fall back into when halfway relaxed, and which was possibly not even consciously meant to express a feeling of innate superiority to anyone else around. It still drove the younger man crazy.
He debated saying something, anything, to break the tension crawling up his nerves, but quickly dismissed the idea. It wasn't like they shared any common interests that could be used to strike up an idle conversation. So, stuffed anyone into an iron suit, lately? Oh no, not recently, I'm trying to break that habit, but thanks for asking, anyway. What about you? Yeah, that would go over really well.
But speaking of iron suits ….
"How long did it take for your men to find you?" It had taken a bit over a week until the situation was secure enough to spare a few men for retrieval. By then, to Jeb's enormous frustration, the suit had already been empty.
The former Longcoat turned to him with a grin that was mainly teeth. "Oh, they weren't any of mine," he purred, softly, "they were yours."
Hairs rising at the back of his neck, the young captain turned fully towards the other man. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Exactly what I said. They knew where to find me and they strongly believed that a hanging was way too good for me." The grin receded until only the teeth remained. "Word of advice, boy: just because a prisoner isn't able to stand on his own, it doesn't mean he's secured. And you always make sure your prisoners are secured before you tell them what you have in mind for them. Anything else is just asking for trouble."
The ex-general was holding eye contact with a predatory stare, daring the younger man to look away first, but Jeb felt no need to back down just because some of his former compatriots had taken retribution to a drastic – and, obviously, deadly for them – level. Zero had, after all, come by their hatred honestly.
Faced with his unyielding demeanor, the former Longcoat let the grin resurface. "Well, of course, the curse came handy, too."
Huh? "What curse?"
The ex-general opened his mouth to reply, did a double take and started laughing. "You have no real idea how the suits work, do you, boy?"
"Oh, excuse me for not being an Alchemist," the young captain snapped back, stung by the implied lack of education. "Or an engineer, or whatever it takes to make the damned things!"
"A Sorceress," the former Longcoat said softly, caught himself and went back to his insufferably superior tone. "Or rather, all of the above. An Alchemist for the preservative vapors, an engineer for the mechanics of the suit, and the Sorceress to seal the curse. The one set into the suit, that says 'You must not die!'"
Jeb stared at the older man in clear disbelief, causing the latter to roll his eyes. "Oh, come on! You didn't think it was just the mechanics of the suit that keeps people alive for years, did you? The vapors need a few days to put the body into stasis, …"
Oh yeah, Jeb remembered those days, vividly. Suffocating, parched with thirst, starving – he pushed the memories away, forcefully, just in time to catch up with the rest of the speech.
"But even that isn't perfect and then there's still hypothermia, heatstroke or all the other things that ought to kill a man if you put him into a sealed iron coffin exposed to the elements. So, that's where the curse comes in, nothing can kill you inside the suits, and once outside, you're damn hard to kill, too, for a while, depending on how long the curse has had time to soak into your bones."
The former Longcoat looked pensive for a moment. "I've heard some pretty wild stories about the adventures the younger Princess had to go through before … the Eclipse."
Jeb filed the minute pause before the Eclipse away for further reference but decided to ignore it for the moment.
"But some rather unlikely details about your old man's exploits actually make more sense than the rest," Zero went on. "Running after taking a Papay bite to the leg, for example, that shouldn't have worked, normally, and you know that. Or taking a fall down the Northern Palace, through the ice of the lake, and still making it to the shore afterwards."
Some curse, Jeb thought, feeling stunned, but he didn't question the choice of words. Not being able to die was not a blessing.
The ex-general gave him a look that was entirely too knowing for the young captain's tastes, but didn't comment. Instead he added, in a very dry tone, "A bullet through the heart still would have killed him, though, if not for that lucky charm in his pocket, whatever that was, which caught the bullet."
Jeb felt no need to elaborate, and Zero shrugged it off. He gave the younger man a once-over that made the captain's skin crawl. "Anyway, if you broke into more than a couple of suits, you'd better talk with the Crown Princess, about what happens to a cursebreaker who has no idea what he's doing."
"What happens to a cursebreaker?" Jeb ground out, despite himself.
The former Longcoat smirked and shrugged.
"Do I look like a Light-user to you?" he asked rhetorically, then gave a vague wave. "Something really nasty, that's all I know."