footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened
Fate had a funny way of spinning her threads. Why here? He wanted to ask her. On a saints forsaken island. Why now? Awareness — of his decisions, his miscalculations, his refusing-to-calm drumbeat palpitations — poured over Caine like a brook. Not the spring kind, clear waters swelled with snowmelt. The summer-storm kind. Raging. Muddy. Unforgiving. The black brook that ate spring fawns and covered the nostrils of alligators.
“If I didn’t know better, Caine, I’d accuse you of being concerned.” Was he? Concerned? The better question was (avoiding his feelings like always; typical, typical) did she really think him so heartless? A broken twig, pointed side turned viciously inward, stabbed into his shoulder. He swatted it out with a stymied frown. A betrayal was a betrayal, sure, but decency was completely separate. Granted, he hadn’t had much practice at “decency” for the first four years of his life, and he still wasn’t sure he was doing it right, but he’d assumed that it was one of those things like “compassion” that could smooth over any mortal hurt. Completely useless in context, but completely useful when taken out.
Like a mother’s kiss on a screaming child’s brow.
Growing a conscience was a little like growing a second pair of wings, he thought. Worse, even. He had to do it all himself. And before he was even sure he deserved one.
He left her comment unanswered, even when words pressed insistently at his tongue. He shouldn’t have warned her to be careful, hoped for her to see him as something more than the role he was knee-deep stuck in acting. It was unfair — and fairness, the impassivity it allowed, was a subject Caine knew leagues more about than decency.
Better she think him heartless, than for him to make her believe it.
(“You’re still pronouncing the r wrong,” she said. A pleased smile spread over Caine’s lips before he could twist it into a self-entitled smirk. “Raum isn’t the best teacher.” He made sure to roll the ‘r’ as he dowsed the Denoctian Crow’s name in a vat of Solterran gold. He’d like that, wouldn’t he, the sun-hating king.)
Like Fia — Seraphina — he regarded the shift in the monochrome boy’s tone with guarded interest. A skin branded ‘authority’ wrapped around his youngish voice and instilled an old, forgotten dread deep in Caine’s chest. Who was this boy, he thought, and was he really just a boy?
But unlike Fia — Seraphina — he made no reply. Not out of rudeness (a tentacle of guilt had started to wrap its feelers around his leg), but out of the sheer fact that his mouth was suddenly busy shouting the words: behind you!
How Fate laughed at them all.
He met the black hissing shadow in midair, and went down hard with it trapped between his front legs, head jerking back just as four gleaming claws swiped soundlessly at his jugular vein. Missing it by precious seconds. He couldn’t recall jabbing his dagger hilt-deep into the side of the thing (a jaguar, he realized, as he sprang backwards from it and into the light — but then he saw the draconian wings, and almost found the breath to gasp), but an assassin’s reflexes were quite literally the first bullet point on a contract that kept them employable, and he’d been employable for a good many years.
The not-jaguar slipped below his outstretched wings like he were a curtain and it the closing act, and only then did Caine feel the cut it had kissed into his chest. Shallow, by the hornet-sting of it. Deeper cuts, ones that dove below the muscle, felt like someone closing their mouth around it and trying their absolute hardest to suck his heart right out. Not so much painful, as organ-threatening nauseating.
Blood welled out like tears along the angry red line, dripped down the front of his chest and dove into the folds of his elbow. Bled too much. Surface wounds were apt to be dramatic.
“What in the Solis’s name are you doing?” was the first thing Caine heard after wiping the blood on his dagger off onto his shoulder (it shone there like a priest’s anointing, black as oil) and moving back into the clearing. The appearance of the not-jaguar seemed to have sunk the forest into a silence more absolute than its prior sullen quietude.
“Saving you both,” he wanted to say, but he’d been careless enough as it was. Here stood a once-queen who had slayed teryrs and sandwyrms. Survived the culling of a blood-crazed king. To imply she wouldn’t have saved herself, and then the boy (not him, perhaps — they didn’t need to be doing favors like that to each other, he reminded himself) was an insult to her honor. “Neutralizing a threat,” he said instead. It was an assassin’s favored phrase.
“And it has not — yet — been neutralized.” His dagger thrummed with anticipation as Seraphina dived towards the veiny wings of the creature, flaming Alshamtueur in tow. A rock sailed through the air and struck its mark true, right in the breakable humerus, and Caine aimed a glance of approval towards the thrower. Not just a boy, and not a helpless one either.
“It wants an easy target. If we drive into its skull the fact that we’re far from easy, it just might slink away.” We, he said, carefully. Inclusive. The boy — Pravda — included. A balm for his earlier prickliness, never mind his chosen time for delivery. (An unfortunate side effect when he inflated his arrogance was that he couldn’t yet finetune who was swept up in the tide.)
“Can you guard our backs, Pravda? And watch out, yourself. It’s a fast devil,” he said, eyes never straying from the violent dance unfolding between silver Seraphina and black beast. A dull thud tapped against the inside of his skull, laughably polite, his curse come at last to call. Lured like the cat creature by the promise of violence; he’d wondered when it would show itself. Valiantly, he ignored it. It was still too weak to be much of a distraction, and the cut in his chest was keeping it full, for now.
Eyes back to the battle — the dance was reaching an interlude, and Caine took it as the signal to pounce. Inserted himself neatly besides Fia, dagger swiping down at a fragile wing so unlike his own. Like Pravda’s throw his swing met the mark, and his lips dipped down in a disgusted grimace when more black blood sprayed onto his skin.
The rip in the wing membrane he’d left was small — the cat was damn fast — but he could see an edge of flinty wariness seeping into those bloody eyes. It opened its jaw and hissed, then backed up a few paces until its back pressed into the bark of a tree. Gathering its anger, Caine knew. The fight was not yet over.
“Near death experiences are an excellent opportunity to make new resolutions and amendments. Perhaps you could reach an agreement over unsettled business?”
Caine didn’t turn, but the edge of his right eye swam in silver. He remembered their battle, then, moons and moons ago, and wondered when the tentacle of guilt had multiplied into four. Half of an octopus. What would he do when two halves became a whole? (Nothing. Everything.)
His right eye took in her hollow face, the suggestion of ribs beneath her sword’s leather sheath. Like the children lining the streets, ribs picked bone-white clean by fat vultures. He’d stopped counting the bodies after a month. Started dropping whatever bread he could, uncaring, like a gold-draped noble who lost a coin. What was one coin to a man with thousands?
He thought of the ration carts he’d left to be found by the Resistance. He hadn’t stayed to see them claimed — someone could’ve gotten to it first.
Could he begrudge them if they did? Could anyone? His eyes hardened. To steel, to symbolic silver spoons.
“A leader should stay strong for her people. Perhaps,” he murmured, “you should stop letting yourself waste away.” His velvet-soft voice belied no emotion, his words a string of flat monotone. It was the only way he could let himself speak them; because what a dangerous game he was playing. One misstep, and —
Checkmate.
“If I didn’t know better, Caine, I’d accuse you of being concerned.” Was he? Concerned? The better question was (avoiding his feelings like always; typical, typical) did she really think him so heartless? A broken twig, pointed side turned viciously inward, stabbed into his shoulder. He swatted it out with a stymied frown. A betrayal was a betrayal, sure, but decency was completely separate. Granted, he hadn’t had much practice at “decency” for the first four years of his life, and he still wasn’t sure he was doing it right, but he’d assumed that it was one of those things like “compassion” that could smooth over any mortal hurt. Completely useless in context, but completely useful when taken out.
Like a mother’s kiss on a screaming child’s brow.
Growing a conscience was a little like growing a second pair of wings, he thought. Worse, even. He had to do it all himself. And before he was even sure he deserved one.
He left her comment unanswered, even when words pressed insistently at his tongue. He shouldn’t have warned her to be careful, hoped for her to see him as something more than the role he was knee-deep stuck in acting. It was unfair — and fairness, the impassivity it allowed, was a subject Caine knew leagues more about than decency.
Better she think him heartless, than for him to make her believe it.
(“You’re still pronouncing the r wrong,” she said. A pleased smile spread over Caine’s lips before he could twist it into a self-entitled smirk. “Raum isn’t the best teacher.” He made sure to roll the ‘r’ as he dowsed the Denoctian Crow’s name in a vat of Solterran gold. He’d like that, wouldn’t he, the sun-hating king.)
Like Fia — Seraphina — he regarded the shift in the monochrome boy’s tone with guarded interest. A skin branded ‘authority’ wrapped around his youngish voice and instilled an old, forgotten dread deep in Caine’s chest. Who was this boy, he thought, and was he really just a boy?
But unlike Fia — Seraphina — he made no reply. Not out of rudeness (a tentacle of guilt had started to wrap its feelers around his leg), but out of the sheer fact that his mouth was suddenly busy shouting the words: behind you!
How Fate laughed at them all.
He met the black hissing shadow in midair, and went down hard with it trapped between his front legs, head jerking back just as four gleaming claws swiped soundlessly at his jugular vein. Missing it by precious seconds. He couldn’t recall jabbing his dagger hilt-deep into the side of the thing (a jaguar, he realized, as he sprang backwards from it and into the light — but then he saw the draconian wings, and almost found the breath to gasp), but an assassin’s reflexes were quite literally the first bullet point on a contract that kept them employable, and he’d been employable for a good many years.
The not-jaguar slipped below his outstretched wings like he were a curtain and it the closing act, and only then did Caine feel the cut it had kissed into his chest. Shallow, by the hornet-sting of it. Deeper cuts, ones that dove below the muscle, felt like someone closing their mouth around it and trying their absolute hardest to suck his heart right out. Not so much painful, as organ-threatening nauseating.
Blood welled out like tears along the angry red line, dripped down the front of his chest and dove into the folds of his elbow. Bled too much. Surface wounds were apt to be dramatic.
“What in the Solis’s name are you doing?” was the first thing Caine heard after wiping the blood on his dagger off onto his shoulder (it shone there like a priest’s anointing, black as oil) and moving back into the clearing. The appearance of the not-jaguar seemed to have sunk the forest into a silence more absolute than its prior sullen quietude.
“Saving you both,” he wanted to say, but he’d been careless enough as it was. Here stood a once-queen who had slayed teryrs and sandwyrms. Survived the culling of a blood-crazed king. To imply she wouldn’t have saved herself, and then the boy (not him, perhaps — they didn’t need to be doing favors like that to each other, he reminded himself) was an insult to her honor. “Neutralizing a threat,” he said instead. It was an assassin’s favored phrase.
“And it has not — yet — been neutralized.” His dagger thrummed with anticipation as Seraphina dived towards the veiny wings of the creature, flaming Alshamtueur in tow. A rock sailed through the air and struck its mark true, right in the breakable humerus, and Caine aimed a glance of approval towards the thrower. Not just a boy, and not a helpless one either.
“It wants an easy target. If we drive into its skull the fact that we’re far from easy, it just might slink away.” We, he said, carefully. Inclusive. The boy — Pravda — included. A balm for his earlier prickliness, never mind his chosen time for delivery. (An unfortunate side effect when he inflated his arrogance was that he couldn’t yet finetune who was swept up in the tide.)
“Can you guard our backs, Pravda? And watch out, yourself. It’s a fast devil,” he said, eyes never straying from the violent dance unfolding between silver Seraphina and black beast. A dull thud tapped against the inside of his skull, laughably polite, his curse come at last to call. Lured like the cat creature by the promise of violence; he’d wondered when it would show itself. Valiantly, he ignored it. It was still too weak to be much of a distraction, and the cut in his chest was keeping it full, for now.
Eyes back to the battle — the dance was reaching an interlude, and Caine took it as the signal to pounce. Inserted himself neatly besides Fia, dagger swiping down at a fragile wing so unlike his own. Like Pravda’s throw his swing met the mark, and his lips dipped down in a disgusted grimace when more black blood sprayed onto his skin.
The rip in the wing membrane he’d left was small — the cat was damn fast — but he could see an edge of flinty wariness seeping into those bloody eyes. It opened its jaw and hissed, then backed up a few paces until its back pressed into the bark of a tree. Gathering its anger, Caine knew. The fight was not yet over.
“Near death experiences are an excellent opportunity to make new resolutions and amendments. Perhaps you could reach an agreement over unsettled business?”
Caine didn’t turn, but the edge of his right eye swam in silver. He remembered their battle, then, moons and moons ago, and wondered when the tentacle of guilt had multiplied into four. Half of an octopus. What would he do when two halves became a whole? (Nothing. Everything.)
His right eye took in her hollow face, the suggestion of ribs beneath her sword’s leather sheath. Like the children lining the streets, ribs picked bone-white clean by fat vultures. He’d stopped counting the bodies after a month. Started dropping whatever bread he could, uncaring, like a gold-draped noble who lost a coin. What was one coin to a man with thousands?
He thought of the ration carts he’d left to be found by the Resistance. He hadn’t stayed to see them claimed — someone could’ve gotten to it first.
Could he begrudge them if they did? Could anyone? His eyes hardened. To steel, to symbolic silver spoons.
“A leader should stay strong for her people. Perhaps,” he murmured, “you should stop letting yourself waste away.” His velvet-soft voice belied no emotion, his words a string of flat monotone. It was the only way he could let himself speak them; because what a dangerous game he was playing. One misstep, and —
Checkmate.
@Seraphina @Pravda | "speaks" | notes: caine? morally conflicted? what a revelation
