And my running feet could fly
Each breath screaming
"We are all too young to die" ...
- Between Two Lungs - Florence and the Machine

~Chapter Ten~

~Perception~

When she was a little girl, she would go to her mother's room and open drawers and cabinets and place diadems on her head. She would drape herself in pearls and diamonds and twirl about in skirts of silk and velvet, feeling like a princess. Her mother would occasionally find her, but never reprimand with angry words. She would laugh and pile more jewels on, offering different fabrics, explaining differences between them. You could say she was destined for the needle as much as Eragon was destined for the sword.

Her mother's wintery, pretty face was so intent on her that Fabiola could hardly help but feel important. She spread her long, slender arms – wrapped in what Fabiola could then identify as silk spun from silkworms of Ceris and smiled warmly at her little daughter.

'One day, this shall all be yours, Fabiole,' she told her, her voice seeming far off. 'One day, you will inherit the title of your bloodline, but not in shame; in glory. I will see to it. These all shall be yours, with pride.'

She smiled at her youngest child, and told her to go and play. While Fabiola wandered through her home collecting a doll and a cloth to create her tea party, Delia gathered silks and satins, gifts from her husbands homeland and replaced them carefully, her face serious and thoughtful. What use would those luxurious rags be to them when the cause floundered and died?

Would they clothe her daughter when she must take up the mantle of the beacon of the people? Would diamonds, like tears drip from a headpiece as she heralded the new world, married to the new leader of this free land? Would that be the role her daughter would take up for her noble line? There would be no battle glory for Fabiola; if they succeeded, she would be a daughter of the revolution. Zachary and Arphenion would fight. Delia, bound by the role her marriage had cast her in, would heal and tend though impatience burned in her heart and made her sweet ties to her family and home chafe and burn. She turned the key in the cabinet containing her wedding dress, the lock clicking satisfying shut.

oOo

The foolish man gave him a glass of wine and bade him sit closer to the fire. It wasn't cold out, but in his anxious movements and frequent glances, he seemed intent on being the perfect host. Murtagh was suspicious, of course. He didn't see in himself what Dormnad clearly saw; a tense, hard-jawed young man capable of taking on the world but one who wouldn't reject some common human kindness.

'Can I offer you anything else?' Dormnad pressed him. Murtagh sniffed his wine glass and set it aside carefully.

'No, thank you,' he said, breezily, leaning forward and catching his cloak on his shoulder.

'Shall I hang it up for you?' the man proposed, his hands already outstretched, and peering out of the window. 'There was a shower earlier,' he said aloud, almost to himself. Murtagh gazed up at the distracted, semi-fearful man and found it within himself to be civil.

'Thank you,' he replied graciously, standing gracefully and releasing the simple silver clasp. The man hung it reverently before the fire, bending to stoke it further. Murtagh settled back in the chair, trying to seem at ease. If nothing else, this man would be an ally of Eragon's.

'You speak powerful phrases,' the man finally observed, as he fidgeted with a pipe. 'You don't mind?'

Murtagh shook his head, inhaling the smoke floating through the room and whispering memories to him. His eyes smarted (as they had always done from the tobacco smoke) and he blinked vigorously. Dormnad was pensive a moment.

'And you speak for the – Rider.'

'Yes,' Murtagh agreed. Dormnad raised his eyebrows in a gesture not entirely disbelieving.

'You've invoked the necessary phrases – I can't but believe you.'

'Indeed,' Murtagh said.

'It's still a rather unbelievable story. I can't believe that I must guide you – my family shall remain here, of course. I have a wife, two daughters, two sons.' He smiled fondly. 'Perhaps they can travel to Teirm, take a ship to Surda – well, it appears the tides have started to turn in this war already.'

'Yes.'

Dormnad gave him a speculative look, and the corners of his eyes crinkled.

'You're quiet.'

'I am. I don't like wasting time on words where words are unnecessary.'

Dormnad chuckled. 'I must seem an old windbag to you – well, in a house so full of people you have to persevere with your words to be heard above the rabble – Murtagh, isn't it?'

'Yes.'

'And you are a companion of the Rider. His only companion, I presume.'

'N – no.'

Murtagh, surely-worded, confident Murtagh hesitated. Dormnad zoomed in at once.

'No? You have more? How many?'

'Just one,' Murtagh grudgingly revealed.

'A girl. A Varden agent – by the name of Fabiola.'

'Fabiola?' He furrowed his brow, leaning forward. 'I haven't heard that name before … a Varden agent?'

'A Warder,' Murtagh confirmed.

Dormnad's face collapsed. His mouth swung open to emit words, shocked, grieved or worried, Murtagh couldn't tell. The little boy burst into the room at that moment, effectively ending the conversation.

'We shall await you on the hilltop you specified,' Murtagh announced, swinging his cloak over his shoulder, remembering as he did the scene in that backwater jail and the feeling of her eyes wide and scared looking through his. Dormnad looked up from the seat where he clutched his youngest son, and Murtagh felt pity well like venom under his skin.

'Be safe,' Dormnad said; advice and blessing. Murtagh let himself out, beneath the watchful gaze of the blonde angel who held no charm for him.

oOo

He could berate himself for a lack of care, but if he was honest with himself that wasn't it. He had done all he could. His head was down – maybe he could have taken the long way through town rather than tramping back through the dodgy epicentre of crime in the town. But he was less likely to draw attention there where the people were as preoccupied as he was.

Besides, you couldn't hide a face except with a hood – which he had. He had never been to Gil'ead – who here could possibly know him?

The buildings cast shadows, long and forbidding, grey and midnight blue and he cut a fairly usual figure, tall and imposing. He heard the laugh – a bray like a donkey and looked up before he could check himself. A man dressed richly was sashaying up the street, clung to by three of the women Murtagh had earlier spurned, all snorting as jokes dripped from the man's over-pursed lips. It was for situations like this that Murtagh was on guard. His legs locked, his heart started pounding like a hummingbird's wings and his head snapped up like a deer caught before a hunter.

The fit of terror only lasted a moment, but it was enough. From what should have been too great a distance, the man glanced up and double-took. His bottom jaw grazed the fabric of his collar as he stared in abject surprise. He took a breath in preparation to shout Murtagh's name, but that was all it took for Murtagh to spin on the heel of his boots and take off at a dead sprint like he was being chased by the hounds of hell. Young and strong he might have been, but he was also toting a small arsenal of weaponry, and it was out of breath that he flung himself onto Tornac in the bruised were-light and viciously kicked the horse to jolt him into a gallop. Fear and danger shouted advice in Murtagh's mind, the only voices his training hadn't allowed him to block out. He looked over his shoulder, lines of sweat forming in every crevice of his skin, his black hair sticking in hanks to his forehead and face.

He showed his horse no mercy. Murtagh would protect himself and all he cared for at any cost, and exhaustion was a better price to pay than death.

oOo

'I saw someone I knew,' he told them, and tried to explain, briefly, what this meant. They didn't need to know the whole story. A sycophant of his fathers, who had passed his admiration to Morzan's son in the hope of continuing boons. Murtagh had put up with their yearly visits on the way to Uru'baen out of Tornac's insistence.

His name was Piltranus Henderswitchson, a mouthful to be sure. He travelled with fingers sticky for gossip and stories, passing them on every dinner as if Murtagh cared who slept with whom or what fights were happening in far distant Empire corners. He only listened because something Piltranus mentioned his mother, in a patronizing, disapproving way. It was more than he heard from anyone else.

And of course, his wife.

A long suffering, crushed rose of a woman, with sad eyes and a tremble in her voice. Limbs like glass rods, a colourless woman. It seemed as though the life had been sucked from her by the vampiric nature of her husband. But sometimes she smiled at Murtagh without fear and he could pretend in his sacred heart of hearts that this was his mother and she would smooth a hand across his forehead when he was sick as though she loved him. She was a dream to him. And that was why he suffered Piltranus, over etiquette or Tornac's threats – for his wife, the Lady Clarimond.

He roused himself to tell the story, and remind Eragon that they would part on the morrow. Fabiola scuffed the earth so as not to look either in the eye and said very little as Saphira took the first watch and they retired for bed. Her behaviour was a complete mystery to him. It was almost as though the closer they came to actually returning to the Varden, the more downcast she became.

When he woke her to take a watch, she opened her eyes so dreamily that he couldn't but wonder what had been playing in her head. It wasn't as bloody as previous nights, he presumed. She roused herself distractedly, pulling the blanket around her.

For once, Murtagh decided to seize the moment and sate his curiosity. He spoke softly aware of Eragon resting nearby.

'You're hesitant to return to the Varden.'

She looked down at him, where he lay, curled in his blankets, his face turned towards her, the embers of the fire casting strange highlights on his high cheekbones. It was a statement, but she caught the challenge and the truth of it – they would part tomorrow, never to meet again.

'Yes. I am.' She sneaked another glance at him. 'I've been away a long time.'

'But – it's your home.'

She smiled wanly, flipping strands of long, straight hair off her face in an unconsciously graceful motion. An awkward chuckle bubbled over her lips.

'Yes … a home that – in a way – exiled me.' She continued pulling her hair off her face, distractedly.

'You don't send a child out of your ranks unless you're trying to get rid of her – especially not a child like me. I was in the way. '

'You have family there, do you not?'

She smiled, nodding her head.

'Yes … two brothers. I – I'm looking forward to seeing them.'

There was silence for a moment.

'You're a fairly mysterious fellow, Murtagh,' Fabiola announced, seemingly out of the blue. He twitched uncomfortably in his covers, but other than that didn't try to escape the inquisition. She fixed her dark eyes – like rich honey, he thought … it reminded him of the stuff he had gorged on as a child – onto his, and he could almost read her thoughts.

'I have cause to be secretive.'

'Don't we all? Everyone is a judge; everyone thinks they know something about people … But as for you – hmm, I guess … wanted criminal?'

The swerve in thoughts was sharper than he was expecting, something he probably should have been anticipating. She didn't look fazed; her mind didn't seem to follow the constraints his did. She merely seemed … curious.

'Wanted man. But not a criminal,' he hastened to amend. She stared penetratingly at him, and he had the oddest feeling. He was usually the immovable force; the hunter. She should be the prey – but she wasn't. He was, and she not the hunter – something more powerful, and yet benign.

She nodded, appeased. Never so relaxed, before.

'I'd ask you what you're wanted for, but …' She trailed off, and they both laughed awkwardly. The quiet noise of their mirth faded gently with a whispering of a breeze.

'Do you want to go back to the Varden?' he asked her in a low voice. It was a question he had pondering with regard to her for a long time. She took her time thinking, running her hands over the rough earth beside her, her mind miles away.

'I don't know,' she said, carefully, at last, before a smile, mirthless and grim curved her lips.

'If you were me … would you?'

oOo

They were attacked before the sun rose. Eragon shook her gently to rouse her, but unused as she was to such a method of waking, she started with a small cry. He silenced her with a finger to his lips, and she followed his lead, her heart thumping in the roof of her mouth.

There are no words in a language of lies and excuses to adequately describe the fear of a young girl who knows this will be the first battle she will face, and who also knows that whatever may happen in this combat, if throw herself before danger she must, she will. Words for that sung in her blood, stirred with every shallow breath she took. There was a fluttering in her limbs, a gasp in her breath, something woolly and expanding in her stomach. Her skin tingled, her pupils dilated, and a fear of death clutched her heart. She pulled her strung bow out, with hands that were sweaty under her gloves, and felt the fight flash around her, as Eragon cried out the words, 'It's a trap!'

She loosed one arrow towards an Urgal, and it was sheer chance and good luck that it made contact. A roar of pain shattered her trance of panic and suddenly she was all that she was – seventeen, untrained and scared out of her wits.

She dodged behind Murtagh's right shoulder as he was closest to her, and reached a trembling hand back into her quiver, pulling with anguished fingers a new arrow. She fired quickly, accurately, hit one Urgal and didn't celebrate. She had shot with such bad posture and lack of care that she had completely fumbled the bow and it twanged painfully out of her hands, launching itself a little way away. Murtagh was cutting through foes before her, she was on her knees crawling towards her bow to avoid the fray when she heard Eragon scream for his dragon to fly, and wheeled around, snatching the bow and leaping up with the grace of the Elder race, sprinting for the boy a way away; no plan, just desperation.

Eragon! The name leapt in frantically from her mind, her heart doing triple time.

'No!' she heard Murtagh roar, as an Urgal jumped from where no Urgal had been a moment before. She stumbled for a moment, unsure what to do. Her heart thundered like the hooves of a horse in pursuit and it forced her to duck when the club swung at her. She dodged neatly, but didn't expect the simple back-hander across her face, which sent her into the air and sprawling stupidly in the dust. She wasn't noticing much when Murtagh sprang and killed the Urgal. Things weren't making sense, even when he pulled her forcefully onto his horse moments later, with a feat of strength she couldn't understand, and as he clutched her arms vicelike around his waist, as he leaned them forward into the horses mane to keep them stable. She just sat dazedly and in a small, magically alive part of her mind linked to Eragon's wellbeing, she felt him fade from her further away. The thundering hooves were loud enough to drown out the small sob that came from nowhere she could control, and Murtagh's back was broad enough to hide the two tears she couldn't manage – the searing pain of part-failing an oath.

xXx