Felun

“Zhao of Sungrazers,” a familiar voice chirped at the doorway. “There has been a problem.”

Felun looked up from the scraps of half-drawn spell-paper scattered across the floor. Thorn awaited, face wary and wings downcast, an even duller shade of green than usual.

“…Yes?” Felun asked, bracing himself for the prospect of more unpleasant work. He’d already spent the last couple of hours laying the foundations for new breaker-slips, and he was starting to feel it. “An unraveling problem?”

“A human problem,” Thorn said meaningfully.

Felun winced and rubbed a hand against his throat. “…Really?” he asked. “Couldn’t you, I don’t know, bring it up with Iolite first?”

Thorn’s spines twitched in an agitated sort of way. “No, no—Iolite is in her work-chamber, said she was not to be disturbed save for an emergency.”

“Huh,” Felun said, wishing he were lower down on the list of people Thorn thought held authority on dealing with unpredictable prisoners. “…What about Suria?”

“Lieutenant Suria is already present. The symptoms began not long ago. She is certain that she did not kick him too hard. She is now trying to ascertain that the Healer-mage has not attempted to, ah, intentionally injure himself. She believes guidance from a fellow human would be beneficial. Though to be truthful, he simply seems…quite ill.”

Felun blinked. “Look,” he said, trying for levity. “I’m a dungeonrunner, not an apothecary. If you’ve ever spoken to my father at all, I’m sure he’s made that quite clear.”

“Suria requests you take a look regardless,” Thorn said with a grimace. “We don’t know what’s wrong with him.”

“He’s a Healer,” Felun pointed out. “Have you tried, I don’t know, asking him?”

Thorn made an exasperated sound, a close approximation of a human snort. “He refuses to speak in Suria’s presence. I tried speaking to him alone—he claimed he was ‘perfectly fine’. We have…different definitions of the phrase.”

“Fine,” Felun said. It would be a distraction from the frustrations of making spell-slips from scratch, at least. “I’ll take a look. Don’t think I’ll be much help, though.”

Thorn nodded with evident relief. Felun slipped his runequill into his pocket on the way out; he was not going to almost get murdered a second time, thank you very much.

===

“Hello,” the Healer said from behind the iron bars. “You again.” He reached for the basin Thorn had provided and vomited into it, quite neatly.

Felun winced. Was this really necessary? He was no stranger to seeing other people chuck their guts up—the dubious perks of dungeonrunning experience saw to that—but that didn’t mean he cared to be in the room when it happened.

Thorn hovered at his shoulder, casting a dubious eye over the situation. “Do you see what I mean?” he asked. “I’ve brought him plenty of water, but it doesn’t seem to be working. I thought it would help. Are you humans not more watery than us, inside?”

“Um,” Felun said.

Suria had stalked out of the room shortly after his arrival, with little more than a snide remark to prevent any ‘incidents’ from recurring.

“I don’t think I can help you,” he said.

The Healer was sort of greying at the edges, twitchy and agitated. His hair was damp with sweat and he had also been, according to Thorn, vomiting up the occasional mouthful of bile at irregular intervals.

“Is there any possibility that he could be, ah, dying?” Thorn asked him. “I am certain that the food I brought him was palatable and uncontaminated, but Suria believes he may have smuggled something in with him…”

“I’m perfectly alright,” the Healer rasped as he set the basin back down. “If I were to attempt poisoning myself, I would be far more efficient.”

“Look, Thorn, I have no idea. Wouldn’t Iolite know? She does the potions, doesn’t she?”

“That one,” the Healer said with a sigh. He leaned his head back against the wall. “There’s little point asking. She will force me to drink more wine-flavoured potion and you’ll all realise that I’m telling the truth: I’m fine, not dying, nothing to be concerned about.”

“Why do you look like you’re already half-dead, then?” Felun snapped, twitchy with unease. “Great acting, if that’s what you’re going for. I’ve seen liches in better shape than this.” It was a low blow. But his neck still twinged with phantom pressure, and he wasn’t feeling very charitable.

“That was a good stasis, wasn’t it?” the Healer replied cryptically.

Thorn groaned. “And here is the part where he stops talking,” he said. “I don’t know what he has against us faeries—”

“I take issue with people who whisk me from my home and imprison me in singularly depressing locations,” the Healer said, his voice somehow kept dry and otherwise toneless. “Would it kill you to install a sun-lamp or two?”

“—but he won’t explain anything to any of us,” Thorn continued. “Will you be alright if I step outside for a moment? Perhaps you can talk some sense into him.”

He made a vague sound of assent. He might be getting dragged around by Iolite’s crew, but Thorn was one of the more decent ones, and it was tricky to get along with the faeries as it was. Maybe, just maybe, he could try to come across as less of an idiot for once.

“I’m right here, you know,” the Healer said. “I can still hear you.”

“Give a shout if he tries anything funny,” Thorn said, and left. So much for the hope of moral support.

Felun turned back to stare at the Healer, sitting feebly in his cell. He made sure to keep himself a few fair paces away from the bars, this time. The Healer watched him through the gaps. His expression was tinged with amusement, even through the sweating-sickliness. It made Felun’s skin crawl.

“So uh,” Felun said, crossing his arms. “Are you going to talk, or what? Because if you don’t, I’m pretty sure they’re going to fetch Iolite.”

“Sometimes, certain lessons in life come with experience,” the Healer said. He raised a hand and brought it to his face, rubbing at his sweating temple; there was a tremor to the movement. “Here’s the thing, little Breaker: they’re going to fetch her no matter what I do.”

Felun bristled. “My name’s Felun.”

“I didn’t know that was a Cathayan name,” the Healer said with interest.

“It’s not,” Felun said. “I have a different—no one can pronounce it properly over here.”

“…So you people haven’t actually dragged me off-continent,” the Healer observed. “That is good to know.”

Felun snapped his mouth shut and shifted uncomfortably. He had the distinct impression that he’d been played. It wasn’t going to do wonders for Suria’s estimation of him, but hey, at least it wasn’t like he’d let slip major information. Maybe the Healer had only been a bit unsure because Felun was the only other human he’d seen around.

The Healer interrupted his train of thought by vomiting again, loudly. His hand shook as he set the basin back down, almost spilling its dubious contents.

“Okay,” Felun said, eyeing the Healer’s still-worsening tremor. “Seriously, what’s up with that? You’re like, having a mini seizure or something. I don’t know, I’m not the medicine mage here.” He hesitated. “Look, I don’t like you and I know you hate my guts too, but you might as well tell me. They’re going to get an answer out of you anyways.”

“Only if I can keep the truth potion down,” the Healer said with a disgustingly inappropriate amount of cheer. “And here I thought it should be quite obvious. Go on, guess.”

Felun frowned. “Since when is your puking all over the place a riddle game?”

“Since now. You’re meant to keep me sane, aren’t you? Go on, it’ll be entertaining.”

“I’m not an apothecary,” Felun said. Slow-rising irritation itched at his temples, not made any better by the shadow of a spellcaster’s headache. “I don’t know, a fever or something? Food poisoning? Did Thorn give you one of the lichen teas?” He paused as the Healer’s shoulders shook; he realised, with a testy start, that the Healer was laughing into his sleeve. “I have no idea how any of this is funny to you.”

“Surely you can see the humour in a captor being overworried over a hostage?” The Healer snickered bitterly. “First, your compatriot inflicts repeated bodily harm upon my person. Now, when I present with ill effects unrelated to her actions, she has the presence of mind to bring in a consulting expert. The sheer hypocrisy. If this happened back home, the courts would be having a field day.”

“I don’t want to be here either,” Felun said. “Can you stop with the jokes, already?”

The Healer shrugged through his restless shivering. “As I’ve said, I’m perfectly alright. Now, I am going to wish that I were dead in a few hours—but unless I perish of dehydration, which I doubt, given all…” He waved a hand dismissively at the small flotilla of water jugs Thorn had left him. “…All this. A handful of electrolytes would be nice, but I shan’t come to actual harm. It is a mere rebound effect.”

Rebound, Felun thought, and blinked as half-remembered puzzle pieces clicked into place. Comprehension dawned: a vague recollection of his black-sheep of an older cousin downing pain potions, getting the shakes if he went without for too long. Orhan, too, with his stash of moonshine.

“You’re hooked on potions?” he hazarded. “Or something like that? That can’t be good. Let me guess, you want to tell Iolite to brew—”

“Not quite,” the Healer said wearily. He picked up the closest flagon and took a careful sip. “I won’t be needing your people’s assistance. There were better alternatives, in the kingdom. Not nearly so risky, helped with work, most of us had—anyway. Never had to worry until I was abducted, of all things. Stasis held it off some, but it can’t be helped. I certainly can’t say that anyone could have accounted for this. What about you? What poor twist of fate brought you here?”

Felun frowned. The Healer’s almost affable tone at the end stirred up worms of unease within him—a squirming wariness in his thoughts. The skin on the back of his neck prickled; something seemed…off, about the way this conversation was going. He hadn’t been involved with court stuff back in Shenzhou, but he’d picked up some things—kind of hard not to.

He thought about it, carefully. Kept his silence and let the Healer stew in it as he considered the angle: the Healer had just finished opening up about his own personal matters, before framing his next question about Felun’s own past. The implication of a trade of sorts, an equivalent exchange of information, the push-pull thing happening here—it seemed…fishy.

Hadn’t this Healer guy just tricked him into giving him a clue as to their whereabouts, earlier? Hadn’t he, just yesterday, seen some passing shadow of violence on the Healer’s face right before he’d taken a makeshift garrote to the throat? It should’ve clued him in. Today, he’d brought the runequill. But perhaps it wasn’t just a physical maneuver he had to watch out for. He loathed these sorts of games, plausible here-and-yet-not cues, chess played with living people-pieces. He also had no intention of making the same mistakes twice.

“Are you going to keep pretending that you didn’t try to kill me?” he asked.

“Kill you?” The Healer asked, and started jogging a leg restlessly.

The mannerism reminded Felun of Vilette, bouncing her knee and fidgeting as she’d glared down at her hand of cards. He grimaced and pushed the memory aside. He was remembering a lot of things lately. Too much time to think.

“Killing you, now that’s quite the accusation,” the Healer continued, “If I intended on killing you, I would have simply crushed your trachea. That wouldn’t have helped me, however.” He gestured vaguely at his restraints, and around the cell.

“Right,” Felun said. “Great. Fantastic. Just what I wanted to hear. If you try that again, I’ll—” He wracked his brain for plausible threats. “I’ll break your nose.” He wondered if Suria had beat him to it.

“Can you really blame me?” the Healer asked lightly. “You’d be just as opportunistic, in my place. And your faery friend inflicted far more bodily harm than I did to you, so aren’t we even? Or does it not count if I was forced to undo it upwards of a dozen times? It was definitely more than a dozen, but I lost track. Don’t enjoy seeing the consequences of your actions, hmm? And have you considered that you’re not doing a particularly admirable job of keeping me sane?”

Felun flinched as the hazy memory crystallised, an echo sharpening— “I think you’re just kind of fucked in the head. Living next to that Library would send anyone loopy.”

The Healer shrugged. “You’re the one who threatened to break my nose just now.”

Felun scowled and fell silent at the sound of approaching footsteps; Iolite’s voice floated up the corridor.

“…Prior exhaustion combined with a form of stasis-sickness,” she was saying. “Though I requested silence, you did interrupt me at a fortuitous time this time. I require more knowledge of the Songian court structures…”

“Ah,” the Healer said, shooting Felun a grim look. “I was right, wasn’t I? Here we go again.”

===

Felun repositioned the parchment on his lap and shook the cramps out of his writing-hand. Iolite had shoved him into a corner and dropped a blank book and a quill into his lap. Not for the first time, he wondered if slogging through the spell-slips would be preferable to serving as a glorified note-taker.

“And how many Healers in your kingdom?” Iolite was asking.

“I can’t say for certain,” the Healer replied, his words slurring at the edges.

“An approximation, if you will.”

“Mm. Depends on what you count as a Healer,” the Healer said. “…The ones leashed to the king’s side, are they Healers? Learn just enough to siphon your own life away. Doesn’t seem so bad when you’re an apprentice, when they tell you how…ah. Two, three hundred, perhaps? Of the lucky ones.”

Two to three hundred Healers, Felun wrote diligently. He ignored the rest of it; the Healer had started making extraneous comments early on, diversionary anecdotes that Iolite tutted at, but listened to nonetheless with a level of patience that eluded Felun. The longer they kept this up, the more meandering the replies seemed to get. Was it late, yet? Hard to tell in a place with no windows. His eyelids drooped.

Iolite twitched her spines. “How many apprentices are there at any given time?”

“Hmm. Not sure. I had three—four.” The Healer paused. “You want to hear about apprentices? I’ll tell you about apprentices. The smart ones leave and become Menders or apothecaries. If you keep going—they do tell you what they’ll do to you. They don’t lie. Choosing-day is…past now? Lost time in stasis. I was going to tell them all to get out, scare them off—” He gave a bitter laugh. “But, what am I saying, of course some continue. Wasn’t wholly sane at the point. If you’re good enough, lucky enough…you’ll be longer-lived than a siphoner, freer than a courtling, richer than a Magician. All you have to do is make it out alive. It used to be worse, you know? We still lose a few each year. If you’ve killed any of mine, I’ll kill you.”

Suria hissed, stepped forwards from Iolite’s side, and kicked a clod of earth at the Healer’s head. He ducked. She snarled, wings flaring wide.

“At ease, Suria,” Iolite cut in. “You forget your place.”

Suria stiffened and took a clipped step back, dipping her head. Felun caught a glimpse of her expression before she schooled it, and winced at what he saw there.

“My apologies,” Suria said.

“Noted, Suria,” Iolite said, tipping her head to one side. “Heed that—someone is returned. And from what I can hear, it is without our…requested companion. Alas. I do expect they have information to report. It will not be pleasant, will it?”

Suria’s spines flattened. “…The second time is less unpleasant,” she said, glancing carefully at the floor. “Usually. Though I expect with the quantity you have provided her, and the assumption of a failure regardless…”

Iolite tutted. “Felun, fetch my equipment in from the corridor. Hurry.”

Felun set the parchment down and obliged. Iolite had left her bag—or at least, she called it a bag—a little ways outside of the room: an orange, jelly-like lump that was cold and unpleasantly slippery to the touch. He grabbed it gingerly, cringing as it gurgled and pulsated in his hands. He wasn’t completely sure that this thing wasn’t somehow alive; it reminded him of the natural wildlife in shallower, calmer dungeons—harmless, amorphous shapes slurping their way along the walls and ceiling. He wondered if the thing he held felt any pain.

Shuddering, he hurry-walked back into the room. Iolite awaited, her attention turned away from the Healer prisoner. Suria more than made up in her stead; her gaze was trained on him, every line of her body poised and wary.

The Healer’s gaze flitted over to the thing sloshing around in Felun’s grip.

“Oh,” he said blearily. “What accursed torture does that entail?”

“Silence,” Iolite said, striding over to pluck her so-called bag out of Felun’s hands. “Be out of my way, now. Suria—”

“Gladly,” Suria said, and Felun felt the edge of a silence-field flare to life on the other side of the room.

Iolite held the bag up, plunged her hand into its center, and rooted around, heedless of the way it twisted in her grasp. She withdrew her hand with a sticky squelch, grasping a handful of dried herbs, potion vials, and a cauldron the size of a teapot. She cast the bag aside. It hit the ground with a faint mewling sound. Felun tried not to feel sorry for it.

From the tunnel leading out into the safehouse came the sound of shallow wingbeats. Iolite murmured words in the faerie language as she crumbled herbs into her cauldron. Spell-light glowed at her fingertips as she melded the concoction together.

Felun turned back to the doorway just as a pair of bodies blundered in. For a moment, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at: rain-spotted wings, a tangle of limbs collapsing. Then he blinked, and Curlew staggered upwards and away, leaving a silvery mess crumpled on the ground.

It was Saiph, he realised, damp and shivering all over, save for where wisps of smoke leaked from her joints.

Iolite’s cauldron hissed with spell-wrought steam, powder-motes puffing in a cloud as she combined the ingredients, tipped in the vials of potion, swirled the contents around. She shouldered Curlew aside, ignored whatever he was saying with hissing faery-words, and pried Saiph’s jaw open. In went the makeshift cauldron-mixture, bubbling bright blue.

Saiph jerked upright, spluttering and coughing. Iolite held her jaw shut and braced an arm against her back, keeping her from choking. Her wings shivered and her tail spasmed from base to tip before going still. She cried out something in the faerie language, sharp sounds between jittery coughs.

“It will settle,” Iolite said, placing a hand to her brow. “Curlew, it was you who carried her home?”

Curlew said some more things that Felun couldn’t understand. Whatever it was, it made Iolite shake her head and sigh.

“She will recover in time,” Iolite said. “And Silverwater?”

She paused as Curlew explained.

“Yes,” she said when he was done. “I am aware. He has his instructions. As for Saiphenora…she could not achieve the objective? I will speak with you all at a later time. Recover first. I thank you for your assistance and I am sure that Saiphenora does, too. After she rests.” The last part, she said with a pointed, almost hostile glance. “There is lichen tea aplenty. Do make use of it this time; it would be a shame if I were to have restocked for naught.”

Saiphenora tried to speak. Curlew hushed her with a flicker of spines, a soft swish of his tail, a select few words in the faery language. He edged in and helped her upright; Suria took a half-step forwards herself, before Iolite shook her head and jerked her tail towards where the Healer sat, bound and silenced but still conscious, his gaze flicking from faery to faery.

“Now,” Iolite said as Curlew and Saiph left the room. “What to do with the human?”

She turned and walked up to the edge of Suria’s silence-field, wings flared blank and wide; not an outright threatening gesture, but enough that she looked almost twice as large. The Healer watched them from his side of the spell, face still set in that fearless expression that Felun didn’t quite believe.

“It will be a little while before I can make full use of certain spellworks,” Iolite said, and began to pace. “Items to attend to in the meantime, items to wait upon. The information, that is of modest use, but there is only so much juice one can squeeze from a fruit grown in drought. Am I correct, Felun?”

He almost startled at his name. “…Yes?” he ventured.

“The Scionsong-mage has truer knowledge,” Iolite said with a gleam of teeth. “The fact that Saiphenora could not play the part of retrieval speaks volumes. What say you?”

His skin prickled at her speaking to him. He had the distinct impression that he really didn’t know anything useful. Was this a test? Did she just like listening to herself talk? He was already their Breaker. What the hell else did she want from him?

“Saiph is…already really strong, I guess?” he asked, hoping that would be the end of that.

“The mageling is located within wards,” Suria cut in, “of sorts. Saiphenora is not…to blame, as such.”

“Blame?” Iolite said with a too-bright tone. “Who is to speak of blame, or wards for that matter? No, the wards were clearly less of a danger than the mage-magic itself. I am certain that Saiphenora did her very best, against a harsh adversary. This Healer-mage here, he took many to subdue; it is understandable that Saiphenora could not succeed alone against a similar individual. Very understandable.”

“Yes,” Suria said. An almost-frown tugged at her mouth. “We are stretched quite thin.”

“Oh?” Iolite asked, her tone turning. “Thin, you say. Are you presuming I do not know? That I do not feel it in every step, every breath, every nudge of wing and weave?” She paused, and a flicker of blue-black rippled over the tips of her wings. “Do you have splendid ideas to share, Suria? Do you suggest I send the majority of our living resources in pursuit of a secondary goal? Do you understand the limits by which I work, so far from the Hive? So far from our Titania’s entirely voluntary aid?”

“Your Titania,” Suria said sullenly. The words dropped into the silence like stones into a murky pond.

Iolite tilted her head a fraction. “Yes,” she said softly. “My mistake. My Titania.”

Suria twitched her spines and kept silent.

“Suria,” Iolite said, swishing the word in her mouth like water. “What is it that we do to overcome such obstacles? How is it that the hunters of old feasted on the armour-scaled laminilva? How did they pry the sweet flesh of cochleamossa from its shell?”

“They pried it open,” Suria replied, glancing over at Felun. “Fully shattered it, if they could. Though I do not suggest you send the boy.”

“One attempt was plenty, Suria,” Iolite said. A hiss danced on the edge of her voice. “I do not burn my syrup to acquire the soot that remains.”

For a moment, Felun tensed, sure that she would do something—loom over Suria, maybe, or start to shout. Then all the tension dropped out of her and her wings drifted down to drape across her back.

“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “What some hunters did, was they coaxed the creature out of its planispiral as the others rallied for more. It did not always work, I have read. This may not work now. But an exhausted prey is easier to claim at a later date. We cannot let the matter consume us, but we cannot let it rest in the meantime, either.”

“You are speaking of bait,” Suria said.

“Yes.” Iolite beamed and her wings glowed with her, throwing ephemeral pinpricks of light onto the walls. “Precisely. You are getting into stride, aren’t you?”

“I am glad you think so. That is to say, I am glad to be of use.”

“Cut his fingers off,” Iolite agreed.

Suria paused visibly, every little motion gone still. For a moment, she didn’t even blink.

Felun froze, too. Had he heard that correctly? He glanced across the room to the Healer, sitting tied with spell-twine and still looking faintly nauseous. Silence-fields worked both ways, didn’t they? Suria’s must work that way, because he hadn’t moved, save for to meet Felun’s eyes when he looked over.

“Well, Suria?” Iolite asked, sounding faintly puzzled. “It shouldn’t be difficult.”

“No,” Suria said slowly. “Not difficult.”

She placed her hand on her forearm, readying the pull of chitin, and Felun felt every muscle of his body tense. Felt his mouth go dry. Pictured flowing gold sharpened into a blade, sawing through bone. Remembered that one pile of severed arms outside the Ironport dungeon—accidents, or curse-touched. Amputated quickly and out of necessity, and yet…

“W-wait,” he stammered out.

Iolite turned her head and stared him down. He’d expected it. His pulse jumped anyway.

“Yes, Felun? You are free to leave the room.” She nodded thoughtfully at her own words. “You are an obligate diurnal, of course. And you may not want to observe, I understand. By all means, have an early night. I have heard that Winterbird has cooked…soup. You may wish to partake.”

She started to turn away, dismissal evident, and he hesitated.

It would be easy to run along, he thought. Her attention dropping off him was like the relief of sinking into shadows on a sweltering day, like unexpected shelter from the heavy beat of high summer sun. The Healer had pretty much tried to kill him. It wouldn’t be any worse than having opened that castle door.

Doors, he thought. Doors and locks. Dungeon—dungeon doors. Dungeonrunners missing fingers and arms and lips and chin and half their fucking skulls and the guilt, the sick familiarity of it all weighing on his chest—

“Wait,” he said again. He had to force it out, his throat almost closing around the word. “Maybe…maybe there’s a better way?”

Suria’s head snapped round at his voice. Iolite turned to face him again, too. This time, it was colder and slower. Whole body angled, wings shifting ever-so-slightly.

“Pardon, Felun?” Iolite asked, all frost-point politeness.

“It’s just,” he said over his pounding heart. “Maybe cutting his fingers off might make it more difficult for him to um, do what you want him to do.”

“What is the problem here, Felun?” Iolite asked, a note of irritation creeping into her voice. “I am very patient. I understand that you can be squeamish about these sorts of things, so I gave you the opportunity to leave. The mage can regenerate himself. He will be fine.”

“Maybe you should ask him first?” Felun tried. “There are limits, sometimes. He might not be like Suria and her…” he waved a nervous hand, indicating the half-a-knife she’d pulled from her skin.

“Hm,” Iolite said. “Then perhaps just one or two may suffice, for bait. I do not think human casting is reliant on possessing all ten fingers, is it?”

“Uh,” Felun said, scrambling for better words, more convincing reasons. “You know—if this is bait, it might not be very good bait. Cause, you know, Scionsong’s going to think it’s a threat. She’s not going to know the fingers came from another Healer. Our noses don’t work like yours; a bunch of fingers could be from anyone.”

“Then you can write me a note to go with them,” Iolite said. There was a look in her eye that made his stomach turn. “Stop with this childish nonsense, Felun. We must give her something compelling to follow. I heard about your little incident, by the way. Don’t tell me that you harbour such touching quantities of sympathy for a fellow human who attempted to asphyxiate you.”

He blinked, remembered the makeshift garrote tightening across his throat, the feeling of suffocating…

“What about the fabric?” he blurted out.

“…Fabric,” Iolite said flatly.

“Yeah,” he said, latching onto the idea. “He’s got like, a uniform, right?” He gestured at the Healer, using the motion to distract from the way his hand trembled. “All that red, on that type of fabric, it’s like the thaumaturge’s cloak. You could take some, and that badge. She’ll recognise those way more easily and it won’t spook her as much. I know he can live without some fingers, but she can’t know that without seeing the rest of him. If she thinks you killed someone like her, she’ll just, like, run. So, um. Yeah.”

Iolite stared him down. He could feel himself start to sweat under her gaze.

“The boy may be right,” Suria said quietly. “It is an unusual weave.”

She still had the beginnings of a knife coming out of her forearm. She hadn’t moved to draw it further out.

“Is that so, Suria,” Iolite said slowly, tilting her spines back. “I see. Felun’s idea does have some merit. In which case, perhaps you should manage this as you see fit.” She turned on her heel and strode past him, into the flaking plaster tunnel. Her voice echoed as it grew fainter. “I tire of thankless, unending work. Lay your bait. Learn your lesson when she does not bite.”

An unsettling quiet settled in her wake, still air and low-light. Felun felt both relieved and completely frozen in place. The Healer still sat in his bindings, cut off from the world.

Suria let the knife-point coming out of her arm sink back down. She dispelled her silence-field with a gesture. The Healer lifted his head. He winced as she stalked over, knelt, and tore off a fair slice of his cloak.

“Why—” the Healer said, and twitched when she moved to take his badge.

“Keep quite still, mage,” she said, the warning hissing up from the back of her throat. “Or I shall kick you again.”

“What’s the point?” the Healer asked. “That silver’s not worth much once melted down, you know.”

“Iolite wanted to cut off your fingers,” Felun said. “I asked her not to. You’re welcome.”

“You’re not serious.” The Healer baulked. “I’m a Healer, not a—an amphibian. It doesn’t work like that. My colleagues wouldn’t occupy themselves hunting for organs, elsewise.”

“Your kingdom is but a stew of slow-rotting filth,” Suria remarked. She walked away, features scrunching up as she glanced at the fabric and badge in her grasp. “Hmph. Come along, breaker-boy.”

The dungeon door clanged shut behind them. Felun sensed the pulse of locking magic that followed—like pins digging into his fingertips—and shivered.

“…Um, hey,” he said when they were a fair ways out into the tunnel. “Thanks.”

“Whatever for?” Suria asked, without so much as a sideways glance.

“You know. With Iolite.”

“Here is a suggestion,” Suria said. “You may find it beneficial to remain in her good graces.”

“Yeah.” He swallowed. The corridor felt airless all of a sudden—the air heavy with the weight of earth bearing down upon his head. Like a dungeon-tunnel, almost. “I, uh, I know that. Thanks anyway.”

“Don’t thank me just yet,” Suria said, finally deigning to glance down at him. She held up the red cloth. “I need you to write a little note.”