Niall's friends made no attempts to whisper and the door did a poor job of muffling their voices. From where he sat curled in on himself at the end of his bed, he could hear them bickering over what to do. Niall's finger traced the grooves that spiralled around the bedpost, up as high as he could reach without moving and then back down to the bed frame. His friends were bickering about him. He stilled his hand, then started to move his finger back and forth, over the peaks and troughs of the bedpost carving, feeling every tiny bump across the pad of his fingertip.
"We could ask someone to break the door?" Leorah said. Anders scoffed.
"Oh sure, get a templar to burst in sword first, exactly what he needs."
"This is ridiculous." Petra said, followed by a less-than-gentle knock on Niall's door, "I know you can hear us and this is ridiculous."
"Dazzling display of compassion, Petra." Anders retorted.
"He's been in there for two days."
"Well he's new to the whole Tower of Tortures thing."
"He's lived here practically his whole life. If the other night was his first run in with a sadist, it's kind of a miracle."
At the end of the corridor, the templar-recruit on duty shifted her weight from foot-to-foot, pretending not to hear them.
"You two need to watch what you say." Leorah said sharply, or as sharply as her naturally subdue demeanour allowed.
"A miracle?" Anders' continued, his tone just as flippant but his voice lowered to heed Leroah's warning, "In that case, maybe he's shut up in his quarters giving thanks to the Maker. That's always my first feeling after a trip to the dungeons – gratitude."
Niall could hear them but their words weren't registering as anything but white noise. The only think that broke through to his conscious awareness was the absence of Torrin's voice in the mix. Whether he was there and just quiet, or not there at all Niall didn't know.
Eventually, they left - Leorah promising to come back later with a plate of food Niall already knew he wouldn't eat. They'd spent a lot of time lingering outside his door over the last two days, Leorah fussing over him like he was a little boy, and Anders –
The story had come through the door muffled as Anders had told it barely above a whisper. They templars had taken him too that night. They'd search him too – for any signs either of them had been involved in the escape plan. Jowan's escape plan – that had gone so drastically wrong.
-o0o-
-knock, knock, knock-
The sounds startled him awake with a jolt as the door swung open – but where Niall had expected to see Petra, her patience having worn out – instead he saw the unmistakable silhouette of the First Enchanter.
Irving seemed so out of place out of the context of his office. He wrinkled his nose as he stepped forward into the room and glanced around. He ran his finger over the surface of the dresser and frowned at the line it left in a layer of dust.
"The fetid stench in here confirms the report from the tranquil that you have not allowed the cleaners in for several days."
Niall stayed still – clutching his knees to his chest and pulling the top bedsheet over himself – a position that had varied little during his few waking hours over the past several days.
"You have been remiss in your teaching duties, Enchanter." Irving spoke as they were in his office which only piled on to the absurdity of the situation. Niall tightened his grip on the sheet.
"Senior Enchanter Torrin was gracious enough to cover for you yesterday, though with his heavy workload, you know that cannot continue indefinitely."
Niall continued his silence so Irving added,
"Though I suppose he has freed up some time now, with one less apprentice."
At that, all the anxiety that had kept him silent, the fear that had stopped him leaving his bed, the nausea that had stopped him eating – all of it was subsumed by indignation at Irving's casual acknowledgment of such a heinous circumstance.
"Don't you dare," Niall spat, "Don't you dare be glib about -,"
"About what?" Irving's manner remained infuriatingly casual, "The demise of a blood mage. Surely, Enchanter, you would not have us mourn a maleficar?"
Niall stood and met Irving's eye,
"Jowan wasn't a maleficar."
"You didn't see his stunt when he was caught leaving the Tower's basement with his phylactery. Half a dozen templars did not collectively hallucinate the apprentice pull out a knife and use his own blood to attempt to flee."
Anders had left some details out then when he'd told Niall what had happened. He hadn't mentioned anything about the basement or a phylactery – only that Jowan had tried to escape, and when it had gone wrong had resorted to blood magic. But still – maleficarum were living nightmares, less than human, conduits for demons that every sane mage feared, the accursed ones. That didn't describe Jowan. He may not have been Niall's closest friend but still,
"One spell in a desperate moment doesn't eclipse a whole life. Jowan was a good man."
"Maleficarum are slain on sight, Niall, you know that."
Then a thought crossed Niall's mind and escaped his mouth before it had fully formed,
"What will Uldred think – when he returns to find his apprentice slain?"
Irving laughed, "I am afraid it was Senior Enchanter Uldred who raised the alarm about young Jowan. He had had suspicions for some time, it seems."
"It can't have been -," he started, but even before the end of his sentence the protest died in his mouth. Because, of course. Of course, it had been Uldred's doing, wasn't everything? The way Jowan tensed at the mention of the man, he must have known he wouldn't be allowed to leave Uldred's inner circle quietly.
"Now back to the matter at hand – you missed your class yesterday. Can your students expect you tomorrow?"
Niall gawked at him "How can you expect me to teach after –"
Irving didn't offer any help when Niall couldn't find the words. Instead, he waited as the silence forced Niall to find the words that alluded him.
"After the Templars dragged me from my room. Tortured me. Left me in cell. After they killed Jowan."
The hint of a smirk tugged at the First Enchanter's mouth.
"There have been Templars stationed in every doorway of this Tower every day for the decades that you've lived him – for as long as any of us have lived there. Where you under the impression that their swords were for show?"
"Don't mock me."
"Why shouldn't I? You act to be so naïve about the workings of the Tower but no harrowed mage can truly claim not to understand. There are aspects of existing as mages that are, by necessity, unpleasant. But rest assured, they are necessary. That you hadn't experienced the brutality of our existence first-hand until two nights ago was nothing more than dumb luck."
He paused to take in the expression of pure hatred on Niall's face, his jaw clenched as he stood there with no choice but to let Irving's diatribe wash over him and make his skin crawl. There was something cold and determined behind Irving's eyes as he spoke – it put Niall in mind of one of Uldred's speeches.
"Thank the Maker that you've lived such a quiet life that the events of two nights ago seemed so awful. I believe your friend Anders has undergone that and so much worse so frequently that to him it would barely have registered as an inconvenience."
At that, Niall saw red. Without thinking he clenched his fist and summoned the dregs of any mana he still had after almost three days without food. Raising his arm above his head he hurled a shard of ice across the room toward the First Enchanter.
But the spell was as weak as Niall was and Irving's reflexes were sharp. The First Enchanter cast a shielding spell with minimal effort and deflected the attack by which time the relative of what he'd done dawned on Niall.
Attacking the First Enchanter was probably enough to justify the templars being called in and Niall meeting the same fate as Jowan. Expect nothing happened, no templars burst in and Irving was smiling, having succeeded in provoking exactly the reaction he had intended.
"You see," Irving's tone was as calm as it ever was as he stepped closer and rested a hand on Niall's shoulder, "You were not destroyed by what happened – it just made you angry. You're a promising mage, Niall. Your friend the maleficar was not killed by the templars – he drowned trying to flee them. Our world inside this tower is harsh and despite what young Jowan wanted to believe, there is no escape from it that doesn't involve drowning. The only choice we have, is to choose not to let it break us."
After a moment, all Niall could do was mutter, "Get out."
Irving nodded and complied without another word.
As soon as the door closed behind him Niall realised he was trembling.
The next morning, he got dressed and made his way down to the breakfast hall.
-o0o-
For the whole day Niall followed the same schedule as he always did, teaching, eating, researching, clinging so hard to normality that he almost began to believe he was fine. Fine, so long as he didn't meet the gaze of the templar always posted by the entrance to the dining hall who always lingered a moment too long on Niall with unsettling interest. Or the one on the second floor who had taken to watching him with pity in her eyes whenever he walked by her.
When he made it to the dining room for his evening meal he has managed to avoid people all day. He found a table against the back wall, where hopefully none of them would spot him if they came in. The allusion of normality would shatter every easily if any of them asked him how he was. He couldn't face them, Torrin, Petra, none of them. Not yet.
Anders, it seemed, was not to be avoided. He appeared at the end of Niall's table. Niall had expected the man to be sombre, even grief-stricken – part of him had hoped Anders would be just as much of a wreck as he was himself, if for not other reason than to prove what Irving said about all Anders had endured wasn't true.
Instead, Anders looked almost giddy as he took a seat across from Niall. He took a folded sheet scrap of parchment out of his pocket and slide it across the table.
"What's that?" Niall asked rather than reading it.
"That," Anders was still grinning so widely it was unnerving, "Is a note from Jowan."
"What? But – how?"
Anders shook his head in amusement,
"I have no idea how, many the Maker intervened because it shouldn't have been possible but - he made it across the lake."