The Angolhills
The Midmorn Hour, December 9th
Mardo awoke suddenly, eyes snapping open, cringing in pain as he grabbed at his chest. His large hands brushed thick bandages, stained red with his blood, which wrapped his torso from his hips to his neck. He froze, stunned at the sight. They were so red in the daylight.
“Only fair, I guess,” Indirk said, “That we’d do this the other way around for once.”
Mardo looked up in surprise.
Indirk was perched on one of the cheap dining chairs in a littorn manner she didn’t normally give in to. She was up on her toes, elbows resting on her knees, hunched forward like a scavenger bird watching something die. If she’d had the clawed toes that most littorn had, she’d probably have dug her claws in to grip the chair, but she balanced with plenty of skill as it was. Her voice was flat and sharp when she said, “How bad does it hurt?” like she was reading from a script.
Mardo couldn’t answer. He held her hard gaze for a time, then looked about the room, his apartment – their apartment now, his and Indirk’s – and saw no sign of his sorcery equipment. He’d been stripped of his robe. The steel chiming orb, the instrument with which he made the music of his sorcery, was missing, too. He started to say, “Where…?”
Indirk interrupted him. “Someone attack you?” Her voice hadn’t changed. Her gaze hadn’t moved.
She’d taken them, Mardo realized. The robes of his rank, the tools of his sorcery. He met her stare with his own, quietly waiting.
“Your clothes were rags. You were pretty much naked when you got here.” She twitched her head to a side. “I put it in the bathroom so you can wash the blood off when you want.”
Mardo sighed. “Indirk. I should explain.”
“I don’t want you to. You didn’t ask about my shit, so I’m not going to ask about yours.” As she spoke, her little pet, Avie – he’d been trying to place what it was, some kind of weasel or stoat – crawled onto the chair beneath her feet and she reflexively picked it up. She managed to hold it carefully in her lap without blunting the sharpness of her stare and tone. “But you need to know I put mine behind me. I hung it up. It’s done. You should think about doing the same thing.”
“I’m not sure it’s that simple,” Mardo grumbled.
“You need to take yourself to a physician after breakfast.” She jumped from the chair to the bed in a quick motion, taking a strange path to stay far from Mardo as she went around him to the apartment’s door. “I need to get to work.” She scooped up her boots and her green Admiralty coat, and she was gone.
* * *
Hour of the Threshold of Night, December 9th
“We shouldn’t be spying on our fellow spies,” Adishesk said to Nymir.
“I outrank you here,” Nymir huffed, choosing to sit on the table in the middle of his fishmonger’s shop. He crossed his arms and eyed Adishesk severely. “Anyway, you’ve reported on her. That’s enough.”
Chuckling, Adishesk shrugged widely with his clawed hands. “You just jealous this Indirk lady’s got a more comfortable cover than you?”
“Don’t you have some work you should be doing? Someone to bury?”
“Hah.” Adishesk adjusted his black undertakers’ rags and grabbed one dark horn, seeming to pull his head down into a formal bow, as he backed out of the shop and left Nymir alone.
Taking a deep breath, Nymir let out a heavy, long, forceful sigh. “I’m just about done with this bullshit.”
Then there was a heavy movement in the corner. “I need a favor.”
Nymir flinched and gagged, grabbing at his chest. “Phaeduin! God damn you, man. How long have you been there?”
“All day,” said the nearly-stationary suit of armor. “Pay more attention.”
“Seriously? Holy hell.” Nymir struggled to catch his breath. “Since when are you so sneaky?”
“I thought you were done with bullshit.” Phaeduin took careful steps out of the shadow. What remained of the dusk didn’t let much light in, and Nymir hadn’t lit the lamps yet, but Nymir slowly noticed the dried blood that covered the man as he said, “I need you to take me to your cathedral.”
“What happened to…?” Nymir recoiled at the sight of so much carnage on the man. “What? Where?”
“Your cathedral. The bloodletting faith of Redfall. Take me there.”
“How do you even…?” Nymir shook his head. “We’re not supposed to just take people there. Why do you want to go?”
“I’m dying, Nymir.” Phaeduin spoke with a heavy bluntness, a tone of dire command earned by surviving decades of war. “You know I don’t have long left. In these twilight moments, I need the truth. Your faith boasts of divine knowledge, doesn’t it? Promises the truth?”
Nymir responded hesitantly. “Of course it does. But it doesn’t offer you salvation. It’s not that kind of faith. We don’t believe in that kind of thing.”
“That’s not what I want.”
“Ah. You want…” Nymir looked to a side, half-turned away, pondering, fretting, thinking over risk. “We can, if you’re sincere, and open to the deep truths of the world… We can offer you a kind of cure… for death.”
“Take me there,” Phaeduin commanded. Whatever the people of Redfall said, their faith was a cult, which made Nymir a cultist, which made him a predictable fool. Nymir would take Phaeduin straight into their place of power, never imagining what Phaeduin might actually seek, what the mistake would cost them.
