08.5 Fic: Small Hours

Absently, Cypher ran a finger over his throat where Mirage's knife had cut him.   It was shallow, but still stung. He drew his hand back with a hiss, surprised at the smear of scarlet.   "Shit," he muttered.   Okay, maybe it went deeper than he thought.   Across the room, like something out of a painting, Mirage was sleeping in a pile of throw pillows. Her starry freckles glittered in the edges of the lamplight. Was her anger spent, or only stowed?   He resisted the reflex to touch his throat again. Mirage had pulled a knife on him before, but never like that. Never even close to that.   Usually it was a joke. Kind of a fucked-up joke now that he thought about it, but it never felt that way at the time. He never thought she’d actually cut him.   Once, walking back from a mission, somewhere in the Trollfell. He couldn’t even remember what he said to provoke it, only that he’d been pretty proud of himself in the moment.   She had whirled on him like a dervish, backed him against a tree with his hands up before he could blink. But she was smiling, and it found a mirror in him.   He remembered the chill of steel on his windpipe, rock-steady. A moment’s held breath. Then,   “You fucker,” said with a laugh, and she’d release him.   That’s how it went. That’s how it was supposed to go. How he thought it would stay. He’d feared a lot of things, but never her. Wasn’t it the same? She stood next to him while he lobbed madness like bombs into the minds of men and monsters, unflinching. Now she needed a promise before she could be in a room with him unbound?   She had a long day, he reminded himself, she was in prison.   And she thought I put her there.   Only for a minute.   But she believed it.   He shook his head, trying to force a refocus. It was ineffective.   She changed her mind. We're fine now. It's fine.   It's fine.   He glanced at the window. Still clear. The pre-dawn shadows gave way before his sweeping glance, showing only vacancy.   He sat back in the chair, fidgeting with his pen.   Mirage. In prison.   Mirage had always been a force to be reckoned with. How many of them had it taken to pin her down? Did she fight them? Or was she too stunned to resist? How the hell did they keep her locked up for weeks? Some windowless cell of magicked stone?   Was it cold?   He swallowed, looking at the open pages of his grimoire on the table, but not comprehending them.   He exhaled, picked a letter five back from the last, and translated it. Then he moved to the next. It only took a few before he knew where he left off and could continue, one mark at a time.   Repeating, stable, a code and a mantra both.   He finished the line and clasped his hands behind the chair and raised them, stretching.   Ah, sweet freedom of movement.   The rope thing was new, too. He really had almost made a joke, until he saw her humourless face and was confused into silence.   Oh, you don’t like it when people are distant and distrustful? Taste of your own medicine. Bitter, isn’t it? You really are a hypocrite.   The word echoed in a feminine tenor, and he winced in the quiet room.   It carried the momentum of a long time unsaid. What else had she been wanting to say for that long?   Nothing. She was frustrated. It’s fine.   He turned back to the window. Still clear. Few more minutes and he'd walk the perimeter again.   Back to the page. He’d lost his place again.   Can’t even read my own codes anymore.   He started counting, chewing a rhythm on his inner lip, worrying the flesh to tenderness.   Movement inside the tower distracted him again – not a difficult feat. The Efreet woman was sitting up, carefully extracting herself from the improvised sleeping area.   He straightened automatically. Felt like he should stand, but forced himself stationary.   "You’re up early,” he said, careful to keep his voice soft. “Bored?"   "I felt I had rested enough." She answered, guarded. Her Common had the crisp pops and hisses of an Ignean accent. She had to bend to fit in the small space. What the hell was Mirage doing on the run with a fire genie?   “How did you know I was not asleep?”   He shrugged. “Faked it myself enough times to clock it, that’s all.”   “Is that so?” She was taking steps, slow ones. Positioning herself between him and Mirage. Eyeing him like someone who’s spotted a wasp.   You’re... protecting her? What on earth did she tell you?   "Pardon my directness," he said, "But we seem to be on the wrong foot."   The smouldering woman was silent, still. He’d spent too much time with the rogue behind her to think that meant she wasn’t still on edge.   All that time, thinking I was the one who put her there. Left her there.   He extended a hand. "My name is Cypher, and you are?"   What did she tell you? ‘Unrepentant liar, don't trust a word out of his mouth’?   She hesitated, glancing backward at Mirage's sleeping form, and then at his offered hand. After a moment's debate, she gave the slightest bows.   "Asmira."   ‘Selfish little shit, only out for himself’?   He dropped his hand, tapping fingers to an erratic staccato on the table’s edge.   "A pleasure to meet you. I get the sense you know more about me than I do about you – or think you do."   ‘Batshit insane, I'd feel sorry for him if I wasn't scared of him snapping’?   She regarded him, wary.   He sighed, the direct approach, then.   "What did she tell you."   “Enough.”   He waited.   ‘Absolute snake, he’ll turn on you the second he’s able.’?   ‘Pathetic, honestly, don’t let him drag you down with him’?   ‘Trusting him was a mistake I won’t make again’?   ‘Just keep him away from me’?   “She said only that you were a former companion, that you had... been unkind to her, and that you could be dangerous.”   ‘Former’?   The room spun. Somehow, it was worse.   ‘Unkind’? The prison thing. Fine. Fine. She knows now. A mistake. We’ll laugh later, she said so. It’s fine. It’s fine. But ‘Dangerous’? To her?   Memory of the gag came crashing back. It had chafed, and held his jaw open in a way that made it ache pretty much instantly, but when he realized it was to keep him from casting a spell on her, the sick feeling in his stomach had been far worse.   This was up there, though.   ‘Former’?   “I see.”   It was all he could manage. His lungs weren’t working properly.   “But now she says we have agreed to be friends.”   He nodded, trying to pull his mind back into the room.   She was angry. She still thought I’d turned her in at the time. She doesn’t think that now. She trusts me. It’s fine now. We're fine.   Aren’t we?   Asmira was looking at him, waiting for some kind of confirmation or clarification.   He cleared his throat, which did nothing to relieve the weight on his chest, and forced his voice to certainty.   “Yeah. We’re good now.”   There was something wrong with the air in this room. He stood. “I gotta walk the perimeter. I’ll be back.”   He shrugged his coat on and grabbed his scarf, then paused over the grimoire.   The odds she could read it were low, but not zero. He closed it, wrapped it shut, left it on the table.   He shut the door softly behind him. Glanced up. Nimbus was circling, a faint patch of grey against the pre-dawn sky. Was it his imagination that the elemental dropped altitude a little when he came outside?   He set out clockwise around the tower, scanning the slopes as he went. It was quiet, in the way only high mountains were. The wind burned his ears and cooled his face. He glanced up. Nimbus had reversed his circling to match.   That’s fair.   Former.   Yup, it still stung the third time. ‘I’ll know to watch my back when this partnership ends,’ she said. He’d just assumed that day was further in the future. A lot further. Besides, she was joking.   Wasn’t she?   Rounding the back of the tower, he looked over the edge of the shelf it sat on and forced his mind to the present.   ‘Count the things you can see. Name them.’ Cri’s voice was soft in his mind. Patience he never deserved.   ‘Greet them as friends, let them ground you.’   He took a breath.   Low clouds, heavy with the promise of dew, hovering around the mountain’s slopes.   Beyond their misty edges, bristling alpine forests of spruce and juniper, mountain alder and quaking aspen, rising and falling like a dark sea, giving way to rolling fields freckled with birch and elm that smoothed into furrowed squares of oat and barley between stretches of chokecherry and prairie-fire. Beyond these, Kraken Bay slept, a pool of black ink against its shadowed shores, snaking off in rivers to the north and south, splashing too far away to hear against the glassy cliffs of Obsidian Bay.   For a minute, he stared down the Bay’s west extremity. Searching for some pinpoint of an oil lamp, the flash of a lighthouse on the water, or a fire from one of the wall-towers. The lights of Midnight.   The shore stared blankly back.   He turned and continued his perimeter. The eastern sky was tinging with grey on the horizon. In a few hours, early-risers would be getting out of bed. Tiptoeing down creaking hallways. Squeaking doors to let the dog out. Lighting ovens for coffee, tea. Humming the kitchen to life.   How long since he’d been home? Probably too long. Probably be a lot longer yet.   Guess I don’t really have any grounds to be upset about someone leaving, do I?   ‘You hypocrite.’   Mirage’s words rang in his ears. He knew it was frustrating, his... excursions. He knew there’d come a reckoning for them eventually. But he thought it would come from Ta’lok. A logistic ultimatum of stay-or-keep-going.   He thought of that tavern in Mossfalls. Of the hole he’d nearly paced in its floor as the weeks wore on.   He knew his sneaking off was cause for frustration, but he never imagined distress. Surely it couldn’t be like for her every time. But did it matter, if it was enough times? Enough disappearances, dodges, bumping her nose on his walls?   Have I finally used up your patience?   He wished he could feel surprised.   The tower’s interior was significantly warmer. He didn’t know if it was because of the genie or not, but he was grateful for it as he dropped his coat over the back of the chair by the window and collapsed back into it. The chill fell from his limbs like a thin layer of frost.   Asmira had taken a seat in the large armchair that he was pretty sure Cri only had in case Ta’lok or Saeldor visited. It fit her like a throne.   “Welcome back.” she said, neutrally.   He shut his eyes.   I really don’t have the energy for an audience hall right now.   He forced himself to his feet, and gave a bow too low to be sincere, too slight to be a scene.   “<An honour to reenter your presence.>”   She blinked. Her hair flickered. He didn’t know it did that.   “You speak Infernal?”   “You don’t?” he asked, switching back to Common immediately.   Stupid, now you’ve insulted her, assuming just because-   “<Not in the everyday.>”   Relief. He sat down.   “<Do you mind? I could use the practice.>”   Fluency might almost make up for being gone so long.   She laughed, a quiet sound like kindling.   “<You certainly could. Your accent is atrocious.>”   He gave a chagrined shrug, but managed what he hoped was an appeasing smile. “<As before I said, I need practice.>”   “<You mean ‘As I said previously.’>”   “<As I said pr->” His tongue tangled on the consonant switch.   “<Said. Previously.>” her meter was halved, watching him.   He repeated it, slowly once, then attempted a few times at a normal speed.   “<Not bad. But your accent remains strange.>”   “So is yours, frankly,” he said, switching for lack of vocabulary.   “I suppose it could be regional,” Asmira mused, “I did not travel much before... before I met Miss Mirage.”   He glanced backward out the window, where dawn was coming on in earnest, streaking the grey mountainside pink and gold, scattering through the mountain’s foggy cloak, dispersing it.   “Yeah, she has a way of shaking things up, doesn’t she?”   “You knew her well?”   Her irisless gold eyes were on him again, focused.   “We were friends,” he said, selecting the word carefully from among too many alternatives. His hands were itchy. He picked up his pen.   She kept watching him. Waiting him out.   Turnabout. Well, fair play.   “We used to travel together. With some others, of course.”   The past-tense was bitter on his tongue.   “It’s... been a little while though.”   “It is difficult to travel while imprisoned.”   He winced, looking down at his pen if only to escape her stare and realizing that he’d gotten ink on his fingers again. He put it down.   “I didn’t know,” he said, quiet. “None of us did.”   “A misunderstanding?”   Her tone was critical, but not damning.   He nodded, probably too forcefully.   But does it matter?   “Since becoming fugitives, Miss Mirage has spoken often of seeking out her companions.”   I bet she did.   If Mirage thought he was the architect of all that, he was certain there was nowhere in the Realms he could hide from her.   “Well, she’ll get her wish,” he said, turning to watch the sunrise grow through the window.   “Yes, she said they are in trouble?”   He nodded. “When Mirage never showed up, we ended up going without her. Boss said she was probably just enjoying being home, but I know he was worried, too. Bet this would have been our next stop if it hadn’t gone tits-up so quick – ah, sorry.”   She waved a hand in dismissal.   “Anyway I’ll spare you the gory details. I got away and came up here hoping to catch an airship with someone who’d know where the Noors live on it. Can you believe, for a second when she showed up I thought I was lucky?”   Asmira regarded him steadily.   “You were.”   His hand strayed to his throat again, and he stopped it halfway, looking across the room where the genasi slept. She’d turned over at some point, squishing her cheek into her upper arm.   ‘I want to trust you,’ she’d said.   If only I could quit giving you reasons not to.   “Yeah,” he said, quiet. “I guess I was.”   “You truly did not sleep.”   “Not a wink,” he confirmed, redirecting his hand to spin his pen through his fingers.   “Are you under a curse of some kind?”   A sharp bark of laughter escaped before he could stifle it. Clapping a hand over his mouth, he glanced back to Mirage. She shifted, half-muttered something unintelligible, then fell silent.   Damn, she really was exhausted.   “No, I don’t think so.”   “Are you tired?”   “Always.”   “Would coffee help?”   He looked up. Asmira had gotten up and moved purposefully to the kitchen.   Huh.   Somehow, I’ve got being-in-a-room-with-her privileges again.   His surprise must have shown, because she shrugged.   “If Miss Mirage trusts you...”   Hope flared too fast for him to stomp it down.   “She said that?”   Asmira cocked her head at him. “You are still here. So.”   “Right.”   It’s fine. It’s fine. I can work with that. Christ, it’s more than I’m owed.   Just try not to fuck it up this time.