Chapter Text
On the white sea-cliffs overlooking the city of Zagosur stood a rambling collection of stone buildings, which from a distance looked like so many worn greyish teeth protruding from a jaw. Officially, it was known as Bastard’s Rest; a place for His servants to live out their last days in peace, breathing deep of the sea air and the company of their fellows.
Unofficially, many called it Bastard’s Roost, for the flocks of seagulls and grackles that flat refused to leave. It was the task of the Rest’s orphans, foundlings, and young acolytes to scrub the guano from the stone statues and courtyards daily; the divines in residence considered it a form of meditation, proving that their sense of humor was as obtuse as their God’s.
The scullery ought to be beneath his dignity, Mikta supposed, straining under a load of dirty dishes. As a Lord of Roknar, he should have been out riding, or hunting, or putting all of those blasphemous Quintarian devils to the sword, not getting soapy to his armpits scrubbing their dinner dishes. By rights, he should poison the lot of them, or at the very least set some fires.
But the fact was, he was happier sudsed to the elbows among his fellow cast-offs and rejects than he’d ever been in his grandfather’s grey stone manse in Jokona.
“Move over, lazy wretch,” Mikta said, jerking his head at his fellow soon-to-be-Dedicat, Vallon. Mikta’s Ibran, which was never more than passable to the tutors of his youth (and apt to be rewarded with a sharp rap across the knuckles) had been improving quickly. Vallon stuck out his tongue, but obliged, making room for Mikta at the sink.
“Don’t you bark orders at me, you Quadrene dog,” Vallon said amiably.
Mikta said a choice oath in vile Roknari that would have earned him a thrashing from any relative who chanced to hear him; Vallon grinned, recognizing the phrase from the lessons Mikta gave the other foundlings late at night.
Vallon was very tall, Mikta thought irritably. He was tall, and loud, and his elbows stuck out too far, and he always talked too fast. He was always around, too, so Mikta was perpetually turning too quickly and finding himself bumping into his chest, which seemed wide as a doorway. Too much hair, sticking out in all directions, eyes too big for his face and too blue to be real. He was a ship-in-sail of a boy, constantly creaking and ducking and moving with the wind. Also he was a blasphemous Quintarian, and Mikta was probably supposed to cut off his thumbs or at least snub him at the supper table, or something.
The off-white tunic and trousers of a foundling suited him, though. Even if too much leg and arm stuck out.
“You’re getting good at scrubbing,” Vallon said. “Six months, maybe a year, and Cook will have you chopping vegetables.”
“Should you not be chopping, then?”
Vallon pulled his left arm out of the scrubwater, showing off a ferociously pink crescent-shaped scar on the back of his hand. Mikta winced.
“Turns out I’m better at scrubbing,” Vallon said, making a little face. Mikta laughed. Well, giggled. He did that a lot around Vallon, Four-- Five alone knew why.
“BOY!”
Mikta cringed. He knew that voice, all too well. It featured prominently in his dreams, along with the buzz of flies by the kitchen midden and the minty smell of strong soap he used every day.
“He means you,” Vallon said helpfully in an undertone.
Cook, who probably had a name but nobody in Bastard’s Rest knew it, called everyone under the age of forty-five Boy or Girl; Mikta had yet to learn to distinguish the tiny changes of tone and gesture that differentiated them.
Suppressing a whimper, Mikta turned to find Cook, whose florid pink cheeks and perpetual scowl gave his face a glow like a new-minted divinity.
“I have an errand for you,” Cook said, with the air of a Justicer pronouncing a grim fate.
“Sir?”
“One of our newer residents fancied a walk this morning along the beach; he has yet to return. Go and find him,” Cook said, pointing in the general direction of the sea.
“Yessir,” Mikta said, giving a little chin-duck.
Cook accepted this as he accepted all obeisance; with distant eyes and the slightest nod, a roya accepting a paltry tribute. He was already turning to castigate someone for overseasoning a roast, which he could apparently sense from thirty feet away with his back turned.
“Lucky,” Vallon said. “Wish I could go outside.”
“Who would scrub the dishes then?” Mikta said, then spluttered as Vallon flicked soapy water on him.
“Hurry back,” Vallon said, lips quirking slightly.
“You will miss me, you?” Mikta said mockingly.
“Of course, you little runt,” Vallon said, and suddenly he was doing that… too close thing he did, as he pushed Mikta’s chin upward with one finger and leaned over to kiss him, lightning-quick, on the cheek. Or--maybe he caught the edge of Mikta’s lip. Maybe.
So blue, his eyes.
“Wait,” Mikta said after a long moment of buzzing silence. “Wait. Wait wait wait. What. Wait.”
“Hurry back,” Vallon said, grinning at the dishes or the air generally.
“Um,” Mikta said, reaching up to touch his face, which was extremely warm all of a sudden.
“Boys,” Cook said drily as he appeared from apparently thin air, arms crossed, an oddly indulgent smile on his face. “There will be plenty of time for that later. I believe I sent one of you on an errand…?”
“Was it me?” Mikta asked, slightly dazed, which elicited a snort from Vallon and an eyeroll from Cook, who gestured broadly towards the doorway with an expression that implied he was saintly in his patience.
Mikta, and his bright red face, fled for cooler air.
<><><>
Mikta stopped by the foundling dormitory to grab a fresh tunic and his worn ivory coat; it was, theoretically, spring, but it was still very chilly by the ocean. He navigated the narrow, rickety walkway down the white cliffs toward the sea.
The sky and the ocean were near identical shades of grey, the sun hidden behind a thick blanket of overcast clouds. The seagulls overhead (sacred to the Bastard) burned like white flame, calling out in their lonely piercing voices.
The beach should have blinding white sands, Mikta thought, like the beaches of Cedonia that his father told him stories of. Instead it was slippery grey pebbles, as far as the eye could see.
Mikta had been excited to travel with his father, finally, to become a part of the family business. After years of his father’s stories of faraway lands...
Until on his very first trip to Chalion-Ibra, his father had left him to the Bastard, without explanation. Without warning.
Without saying goodbye.
Mikta buried his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders against the chill, unwilling to be soothed by the crying gulls, or the rough sound of the waves.
He made his way along the beach towards a hunched figure, sitting cross-legged in the surf, holding a stick of bleached driftwood and doodling little patterns in the sand.
“I suppose they sent you to fetch me. Who are you, then?” the man said, voice strong and clear despite his wizened appearance. Working at Bastard’s Rest, Mikta was familiar with the elderly. This man was about as old as any he’d ever seen, but his greyish eyes were clear as he craned his bald head, turning around to look at Mikta.
He had once been a big man, Mikta could see; not tall, but broad-shouldered and doughty in his youth. His pate retained nothing but wispy memories of hair, but his jaw and neck were covered in stiff white bristles, and the hands resting on his knobby knees were big-knuckled and seamed with scars.
“I am Mikta, Learned Sir,” Mikta said, bobbing awkwardly.
The man’s snowy eyebrows raised, probably at Mikta’s accent--or at his appearance, because his golden skin and wiry copper hair certainly hadn’t come from Chalion-Ibra.
~What is a mother’s son doing, so far from home?~ the man asked in flawless Roknari, in the declension of servant to lesser servant.
“I--” Mikta’s brain ground to a halt, suddenly; he had a moment almost of vertigo, as his brain reached for his mother-tongue and found Ibran instead.
Would he forget even that, in time? He felt very lost, for a moment, before he dragged himself back to the beach and the man in front of him.
~I, I, I was for the Bastard, m’hendi,~ Mikta stammered, in the mode of servant to scholar. He felt himself flushing.
“Ah, sorry lad,” the man shook his head. “I’m too old to have any manners at all.”
“It’s nothing, Learned Sir.”
“I’m not a divine, or not really,” the man said, waving Mikta’s manners away. “Call me Foix. Everyone does.”
“F... Fooey,” Mikta said after a moment, his accent turning into tripping shambles on the unfamiliar sounds.
“That’ll do,” Foix said, flashing what was probably a very charming smile, several decades and most of a full set of teeth ago. “Help an old man up, would you?”
Mikta helped him up. For all his breadth, Foix weighed about as much as a housecat; Mikta winced in sympathy as the old man groaned, knees creaking.
“That’s a good lad,” Foix said, grimacing. He kept hold of one of Mikta’s hands, bringing it up close to look at it this way and that.
“Sir?” Mikta asked after a moment of listening to Foix muttering to himself.
“Sword?” Foix asked, running fingers over Mikta’s palms. Mikta was ticklish, but managed to hold onto his dignity. “No, the calluses are wrong. I’m a blind old man. Axe?”
“I… yes, sir.”
“Makes sense, with your build,” Foix said. “You were good.”
“I--” Mikta shut his mouth. “That was in the past, sir.” And what did he mean by build? At fourteen, he was shorter than his thirteen-year-old sister, which she (and most of his peers) had never once let him forget.
“I don’t see why,” Foix said. “I’ll have a word with the Master of Novices. If they don’t keep armsmen at Bastard’s Rest, I’m sure I can recommend you to the Daughter’s Order for training; it would be a shame to waste a talent.”
Truth be told, Mikta… really missed weapons work. It was one of the only things his grandfather had praised him for, the only thing he excelled at that was appropriate to his sex and station. But wasn’t he supposed to be a monk or something?
“I didn’t realize it was allowed,” Mikta said.
“We’re not so peace-loving as all that, lad,” Foix said, chuckling at the poleaxed expression on Mikta’s face. “Sometimes the Gods need our hands in the world holding a sword, or an axe. Maybe your God most of all.” Foix’s smile turned a little rueful at that. “Our God, I suppose.”
“How did you…”
“Nothing wrong with my mind, boy,” Foix said, tapping his brow with one gnarled finger. “Would that the rest of me was so sharp. Or my mind dull, I suppose; it’s the disparity that’s galling. Come, walk with me.”
“Oh. Well, sir, Cook said--”
“You were sent to fetch me, aye,” Foix said patiently. “Did Cook specify a time for your return?”
“Er…” Mikta knew that for Cook, there was only one time, and that was ‘you’re already late,’ but-- “no, sir.”
“Then we’re fine. If you’re going to serve the Bastard, lad, you’ve really got to get a better handle on your loopholes.” Foix grinned; it shaved twenty years off him, which made him look merely older than dirt, rather than older than stone.
<><><>
They walked along the beach. Well, ambled was probably a better word, down towards the tideline where the sand and gravel was a little firmer, and easier for Foix’s unsteady feet. Periodically Foix would send Mikta after a seashell, which he would examine for a few grave moments and then toss over his shoulder and continue on his way.
Mikta worked up his courage to ask why after a quest for what turned out to be half a quahog shell got him wet to the knees from an unexpected (and ice-cold) wave.
“My Analiss loved seashells,” Foix said, peering at a curved fragment of a twisty snail shell, edged with tan and lavender. “Gods know why, they’ve always been beach trash to me. Though it was the sea she loved, really. She’d been born in the upcountry, you see, and had romantic notions about it.” Foix’s gaze went fixed, as he stared out at the churning grey sea.
“Was she…”
“My wife,” Foix said. “You know, it’s strange. I was old when she died--older than I’d ever dreamed of being, when I was a strapping boy full of wind and spit like you. But it was so long ago. And I still turn and expect to find her there, wake up to an empty bed and lose her anew each morning. Nobody told me old age would take such a bloody long time.”
“How old are you, sir?”
“Ha,” Foix said. “At least neither of us have manners. I’m eighty-seven, lad. My kind live long, if we’re smart about it, but looking back, I wonder why I bothered.”
Gods, eighty-seven ? He must be twenty-odd years older than Mikta’s grandfather, who got called to give the blessing at every Father’s Feast because of his fearsome venerability.
“What do you mean by ‘my kind’--” Mikta trailed off with a little yelp as he slapped at a stinging sand fly. They were a torment; Mikta froze when the wind was up, but when it died, the sand flies ate him alive.
“Oh, apologies,” Foix said. “They don’t bother me. I suppose they like young blood.” Foix gave an absent wave of his hand, almost of dismissal.
A sand fly was buzzing by Mikta’s ear just as a wave of warmth washed over him, as though he’d stepped in a sudden patch of summer. The warmth and the buzzing quickly died, along with the fly; Mikta saw dozens of them drop abruptly out of the air for feet in every direction.
Well, that answered his question, alright.
“You’re a sorcerer?!” Mikta yelped, stifling the urge to flee down the beach, screaming and waving his arms.
In Jokona they still told stories of Joen, the Demon Princess, who trailed darkness from her hands and crushed her children’s souls with the vile monsters she pulled from Hell. Stories of the plague of elementals that had lasted for decades after her death at the hands of the avenger, Saint Ista.
“Ha,” Foix said, as though Mikta’s obvious terror was a joke. “They didn’t warn you? Why do you think that prig from the Mother’s temple is here? It’s not to tend to my arthritis, though that would at least be of some use.” Foix peered at him. “Lad, you’re in the Bastard’s care. They must have taught you that I’m not going to turn you into a toad, or eat your bones for breakfast.”
“Ha ha,” Mikta said weakly. “I, no. I am sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. I’ve been one for so long...” Foix said. “Bless me, but I do forget. You are from Jokona, from your accent? No wonder you fear demons, and sorcerers too.” Foix made a face. “Joen poisoned that well.”
Mikta shuddered. “Were you alive then?”
“Oh yes,” Foix said. “I remember those days very well.”
It was unfathomable to Mikta--the incredible expanse of time on the beach. Things from storybooks, locked in this man’s memories...
“My reaction to my sudden sorcerer-hood was much the same, granted. I came upon my demon in Chalion--back in the early days of Chalion-Ibra. I was on a pilgrimage out of Valenda, and I encountered a bear that was… not.” Foix shook his head. “A strange thing, to hinge a whole life upon. Aside from this prolonged and wearisome ending, I don’t regret it.”
“Oh!” Mikta said. “From Valenda, you say? Some of our divines will be travelling there when the weather breaks, for a pilgrimage. I and some of my fellow novices are to go along.”
“A pilgrimage to Valenda?” Foix furrowed his snowy brows. “Whatever for?”
“To the shrine, sir,” Mikta said hesitantly. “The Shrine of the Holy Madness of Saint Ista.”
Silence descended, broken only by the crashing surf and a long, mocking cry of the seabirds above.
“I’m sorry, the what?”
<><><>
Foix stayed quiet all through the walk back to Bastard’s Rest, and he allowed Mikta to lead him to the main temple; it had small shrines to all the Five, but the Bastard’s tower was the largest and most elaborate by far. He had, apparently, only been there for a few weeks, and hadn’t yet attended any Temple services.
“See, sir?” Mikta said, gesturing to an alcove filled with flowers and bright with lighted tapers. On the wall was a painted and gilt-edged icon of Saint Ista, the Paladin of Souls. The artist had given her a peaceful expression, at odds with her fearsome reputation. The hallowed dead crowded in the shadow of her cloak, and under her feet demons cringed with palpable dismay; since demons were bodiless, as far as Mikta was aware, he chalked their crooked teeth and woebegone expressions up to artistic license.
“In Jokona, they taught us…” Mikta signed the Four, then winced, remembering, and touched his thumb to his lips. It still felt wrong, like missing a stair. “They taught us she was not a true concubine of the demon god, but that she belonged instead to the Mother of Summer.”
“Oh no, no no,” Foix whispered, eyes wide as he gazed at the icon. “She was for the Bastard, and no mistake. I had no idea…”
“Her stories are my favorite, in the seminary,” Mikta said. “The fearless warrior Royina, with her companions; her dashing lover, her Lady of Horse, her clever fat divine with the crow on his shoulder, the demon-haunted brigand, the Bear Knight--”
Foix made a choking sound that caused Mikta to turn with sudden alarm. It sounded like the ancient sorcerer had swallowed his tongue, and indeed the sight of him seemed to agree; his face was bright red and his eyes were full of tears.
“Sir--”
“Oh Gods,” Foix gasped, and Mikta realized the old man was laughing. “Gods, what a jest. She would have hated this!” The laughter broke free, a surprisingly youthful shout. Foix wavered on his feet and Mikta was instantly at his side, bracing him up. “Oh, our God has the greatest sense of humor. I can just picture her reaction. She would have been furious.”
“She--” Mikta made his own tongue-swallowing sound. “Fooey--sir, did you know her?” Surely, surely that was impossible--
“Oh, aye,” Foix said, his laughter a thin breathless weeze. “I knew her well. I suspect I’m the Bear Knight, from your stories.”
“I, you, I--” Mikta guided the old man to a pew; he needed one himself. “What was she like?”
“Tiny,” Foix said, still gasping. “Angry. She could drink all of us under the table. Her horse was in love with her. Oh, Ista, my lady, my Royina, I can picture your scowl.”
“Sir, calm down,” Mikta said. The man’s face was still alarmingly red, and his breathing had a wet wheeze that Mikta really didn’t like. Even in only a few short months at the Rest, he’d learned to recognize illness, and the nearness of death.
“Oh, oh, oh, my boy, my splendid lad, you have no idea,” Foix said, coughing. “I haven’t laughed like that in years. Tell me, are there picture books for children? Is there a feast day?”
“Yes. Ista’s Day, it was two months ago,” Mikta said reminiscently. “Cook made little spice cakes.”
“Little spice cakes!” Foix said, and that set him off again, laughing and coughing and gasping for breath.
“Sir--”
“Oh,” Foix said again, but he abruptly sobered, leaning back . “Oh. I... lad, do you know where Learned Sellee can be found?”
“The Mother’s divine? He’s usually in the library. Why, sir?”
“Fetch him, lad,” Foix grimaced, and clutched suddenly at his heart. “Very quickly now.”
Mikta froze, wanting to obey but not wanting to leave the old man gasping by himself. At Foix’s sudden, thunderous “GO!” (alright, perhaps he was the Bear Knight) Mikta fled, running for the library as fast as he could.
<><><>
He nearly killed himself, tripping over his feet to get through the library doors, shouting hoarsely for the divine. He was saved from braining himself on the corner of an oak desk by the fortuitous hands of Learned Delmer, the Master of Novices.
“Boy, you should know better--” Delmar, a bald old man who looked positively childlike compared to Foix, looked at him with concern that belied his tone. “Mikta, what’s wrong?”
“Foix,” Mikta panted, fending off Learned Delmar’s hands as they reached for his forehead. “The--the Mother’s physician. Needs. In the Temple,”
“Bastard’s balls,” Delmar swore. Mikta wondered if Delmar would have to sentence himself to five days mucking the stables. “Sellee! It might be time.”
Learned Sellee, a tall and storklike divine of the Mother, unfolded himself from a corner desk. As always, he seemed to be trying to touch as little of the air as possible, but he rushed out obligingly, looking oddly eager. Well, perhaps he was enthusiastic about healing.
Mikta felt… odd. His heartbeat slowed and he caught his breath. There was nothing he could do to help the old man--well, not unless Foix had a great many dishes that needed scrubbing, he supposed--but the odd feeling remained.
<><><>
At dinner that night, after prayers, Vallon seemed to notice that Mikta was out-of-sorts. He took up his customary seat and a half next to Mikta, and his nearness was at once comforting and utterly discombobulating, now that he and Mikta… well. The customary arm he slung around Mikta’s shoulder in aid of a bone-creaking squeeze felt less companionable and more… something. It had thrown Mikta, during his first weeks there. Men did not touch, among the Roknari.
“Are you alright?”
“I--yes, I am alright,” Mikta said, looking up into Vallon’s eyes then quickly away.
“I heard you met the sorcerer ,” Vallon whispered. “What was he like?”
Strange. Compelling. Amusing? Disconcerting. “Interesting,” Mikta said after a few moments.
Vallon made a little face. “Did you see him do anything sorcerish? Did he shoot fire from his hands?”
“No,” Mikta said. “Wait, yes. He killed sand flies.”
“With fire from his hands?”
“With a--” Mikta waved his hand to demonstrate.
“Wooooooow,” Vallon said.
“I liked him,” Mikta said. “I would like to talk with him again.”
The Bastard was the God of, amongst many more-and-less savory things, coincidence. So perhaps it was to be expected that Learned Delmer took that moment to approach the table, sending silence up and down the gathered foundlings and acolytes like Foix waving death amongst the sand flies.
“There you are. Have you eaten?” Delmer gave him an extremely perfunctory smile and waved to the others that they could continue eating, yes yes, blessings upon you.
“Yes, sir.” Mikta stood. “What do you need?”
“Your presence is requested,” Delmer said. “Well--demanded. Stop by the kitchen for a tray, and make haste to the East Wing--fourth door on the right.” Delmer made a rueful half-smirk. “If you get lost… well, follow the shouting.”
<><><>
Follow the shouting, indeed.
Mikta’s tray of tea, fish broth, spongy bread, and butter shook a bit as he walked through the East Wing, towards raised voices that echoed down the hallway.
“Sir, I must insist--”
“It’s not your damned inheritance while I live!” Mikta was surprised to recognize Foix’s voice, in a shockingly robust bellow. “I do as I like, it’s still my bloody life!”
“Sir--”
“I won’t have you hovering like a carrion bird, waiting me to breathe my last,” Foix growled. “You are in the Bastard’s House, Learned Sellee, and here we learn to take our chances. I sent for you, didn’t I?”
“Anything could have happened, out on the beach--”
Mikta snuck into the room, trying to blend in with the hangings on the wall, setting the tray discreetly on a desk. Difficult or not, they had certainly given Foix one of the finest chambers, the floors thick with rugs that warmed the chilled stone, and a tightly glazed window that overlooked the sea.
Learned Sellee looked distraught, wringing his hands. Foix, looking like a child’s doll in the immense bed, weighed down with blankets and bolstered with pillows, gestured violently; if he’d held a dagger, Mikta was certain, he’d have thrown it.
“Get out,” Foix said, struggling to sit up from his bed. “I’ll send for you, you may be sure. I promise not to die without you breathing down my neck in anticipation. But get you gone.”
“Foix,” said the grey-haired woman in whites, who Mikta realized belatedly was Learned Anara, who held the Rest in her charge. “Please. We all agreed. Learned Sellee is just trying to avoid--”
“If Learned Sellee doesn’t absent himself this minute, I swear to the Fifth and White that I will live another ten years, just for spite, or set his ears on fire.” Foix fell back into his pillows, wheezing suddenly. “And we did not all agree, Anara, and you know it.”
Sellee’s protest was cut off by a curt gesture from Divine Anara; the Mother’s divine cast a baffling glare at Mikta, of all people, as he left the room, closing the door behind him with more force than strictly necessary.
“Foix,” Divine Anara said, shaking her head. “That wasn’t fair.”
“I’m too damned old to worry about fairness,” Foix grumbled, looking sheepish. “He’ll get over it, in due time, once he has what he wants. Ah, good lad, you’re here.”
“I brought soup,” Mikta said, with the wide, placating smile of a child among loudly arguing adults, that he knew in his bones fooled absolutely nobody.
“Ah, wonderful. I do hope it’s fish broth,” Foix said, clapping his gnarled hands together.
“It is!” Mikta nodded encouragingly, and tried not to shake from terror.
“The key to an infuriatingly long life, lad. Fish broth, and managing your expectations.”
Anara sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose and shaking her head. “Foix, what are we going to do with you?”
“Wait,” Foix said, a touch acidly. “And not terribly long now. I’m surprised that officious ninny hasn’t decided to cut his sojourn among the Holy Family’s castoffs short by adding arsenic to my tea.” Suiting word to action, he accepted the cup Mikta offered him and took a noisy slurp. “Doesn’t have the stones for it, I expect.”
She rolled her eyes skyward. “Bastard defend me. It’s nice to know that old men are still men. For better and worse. You must be Mikta.”
“Yes, Lady.” Mikta gave a little bob, while buttering a slice of bread for Foix.
“Stay with him. And if he sends you for someone, Learned Sellee perhaps,” she spoke loudly over Foix’s disgruntled mutterings. “Be sure to make haste.”
“If a vulture must circle, let it be a little one,” Foix said, accepting the morsel.
“Whatever you say, I’m sure,” Anara said with another eye roll, and turned to leave.
“A good woman,” Foix stage whispered to Mikta. “If I were thirty years younger, I’d soothe that line between her brows, right enough.”
“If you were thirty years younger, you might stand a chance of success.” Anara smiled fondly over her shoulder at him. “I’ll have a cot brought in, Mikta.”
She left, closing the door--rather more gently--behind her.
“Am I to stay, then?” Mikta asked in the sudden silence, after Foix established that he could use a spoon just fine, thank you.
“Seems so,” Foix said, blowing on the broth to cool it, though it couldn’t have been more than passably warm. Mikta moved the tray to a convenient low table by the bed, exactly for that purpose. “You won’t thank me for it, I expect. It’s a death watch, lad. Or a… right before death watch.”
“It’s alright,” Mikta said. “I have done it before. Some of our guests want company, want not to feel alone. I am used to it.”
Brave words, but sometimes those moments stuck with him. Like the old woman who had called him by another name, until she went to the arms of her God. Her son’s name, he discovered later.
Many of the Bastard’s best beloved had no families. Or no families that wanted them.
“Others want solitude, to meet their God by themselves,” Mikta continued, buttering another slice of bread for Foix, then popping it into his own mouth when Foix shook his head.
“Very soon, now,” Foix murmured, settling down into his cushions and closing his eyes.
“I’m sure you have many--”
“Don’t,” Foix said sharply, opening his eyes and staring at Mikta. “Don’t. I’m ready, lad. Ready and past ready. I just have one last responsibility to discharge, and then I can rest.”
“A responsibility, sir?”
“An inheritance,” Foix said, eyes closing again. “Gods, but I can’t wait to be done.”
Foix went quiet, and Mikta thought that he slept, as he tidied up the dinner tray. He paused before the door, turning to look at the resting old man.
“I will miss you,” Mikta said quietly, tray in hand, as he eased the door open slowly to return it to the kitchen.
“That’s a comfort to know,” Foix murmured. “Hurry back, lad.”
<><><>
That was the shape of the next few days. Mikta slept on a cot, though not well; he was too busy keeping track of the old sorcerer’s breath.
Mostly, they talked. Foix shared stories about the mighty and terrible Saint Ista that were very much at odds with Mikta’s imaginary version of the woman. Foix’s re-enactment of Ista excoriating a Jokonan lord for not wanting her to remove a demon from his favorite ornamental carp had Mikta crying with laughter.
“And he said, ‘but lady, the fish comes when I call!’” Foix said, patting the choking Mikta on the back.
“I don’t believe it,” Mikta said, as Foix described Saint Ista grabbing the recalcitrant lord by the lobe and pulling him to the fishpond, blistering his unpinched ear with a holy lecture. “She didn’t!”
“Oh she did, lad. That and more. She had no tolerance for fools, our Ista.”
Foix took delight in Mikta’s laughter, so much so that he laughed himself; almost immediately beginning his terrible, blue-lipped wheeze as he did so.
“Oh, sir, you should not--” Mikta wrung his hands and wondered if he should run for the Mother’s Divine, but Foix quieted, his face losing that dreadful sallow tinge it got when he exerted himself.
“‘Course I should,” Foix said, irritably brushing off Mikta’s attempts to tend to him. “Most men never get the choice, but if you do, choose to die laughing. I can think of worse ends.”
Mikta had only been in the Rest for four months, but that was long enough to have begun learning the arts particular to caring for the very aged, and Foix took heart from Mikta’s strong back and lack of embarrassment, even at the inescapable necessities of chamber pots and soiled linens and attacks of coughing during the night. It was no less than Mikta had done for his mother, after all, in the last months of her terrible illness, and at least Foix did not cough or vomit blood, as she had. He told Foix as much, surprising himself.
“Tell me about her,” Foix said.
Foix’s room had a comfortable bench built into the stone frame of the single window; it pleased him during the day to be ensconced there, wrapped warmly in blankets, and gaze out through the thick bubbly glass to the sea far below.
Mikta had his backside in one of the room's cushioned chairs and his feet up on another. Hardly appropriate to the studious acolyte, but he kept his hands busy with a hamper of donated clothing he’d begged for to stave off boredom. He remembered his surprise when Learned Delmar had discovered his ability to sew, and had not decried it as a weak or womanly pursuit, unsuited to a man, but instead viewed it as a minor miracle of the Bastard that at least one of the new foundlings wasn’t completely useless.
“She was…” Mikta paused, taking the threaded needle from between his teeth. ~She was very kind,~ he said, switching to Roknari, in the daring and presumptuous mode of friend to friend. Kind. What a stupid word, to sum up Inima am Hoskah.
~She loved you, very much,~ Foix guessed, in the same mode, which made Mikta flush and turn his eyes back to his sewing.
~Yes, as a mother should. But she… saw me, in a way that others didn’t.~ Mikta fought back tears. He had been a little boy and fascinated by her weaving and embroidering, the way she’d turn skeins of yarn into warm blankets or cloaks that felt like her arms around him. And so she’d taught him. It was only when Grandfather had discovered it that Mikta learned it was something shameful.
~Ah, that is… somewhat more unusual,~ Foix said, staring out the window. He was, Mikta knew, giving him the privacy of his grief.
“Our mothers love us, or at least the good ones do,” Foix mused, switching back to Ibran. “But they don’t always see us. She was a rare woman.”
Mikta smiled a little. “She said I would be a rare man.”
“Did she now,” Foix said, something… considering in his voice, his eyes fluttering closed as he soaked up the thin sunlight through the window like a cat. “I have a feeling she might have been right.”
Mikta kept quiet, allowing the old man his rest. Better he fall asleep before he asked questions about Mikta’s father.
<><><>
Mikta was on his way from the kitchens, Foix’s lunch on a tray, when Learned Sellee pulled him aside into an empty hallway.
“Hello,” Sellee said, with an ingratiating smile so patently false that Mikta honestly wished the man would just scowl instead. “Mikta, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, Learned Sir,” Mikta said. “I really must get this tray to--”
“Yes yes,” Sellee said, waving Mikta’s objections away. He was an oddly colorless looking man, tall and thin; bleached hair, skin, and eyes so pale provincial Roknari would think him blind, so skinny he looked like he could turn sideways and disappear entirely. “How… how is he?”
“Very sick, sir,” Mikta said, confused. If the man was Foix’s physician, shouldn’t he know?
“Yes, of course,” Sellee said, eyes calculating. “But… hm. Would you say he’s… how long does he have, do you think? Does he seem stronger?”
Mikta was not used to disliking adults; he more saw them as irresistible forces of nature, like natural disasters. But perhaps he’d been spending too much time around Foix, because he found himself pulling up straight, tray held before him like a kite shield.
“He will go to his God when it is right for him to do so,” Mikta said, biting back his sudden fury. “When his God is ready to receive him. Not on your time, or mine.”
Mikta watched Sellee see his dislike and anger, and then watched the man dismiss it as irrelevant. He was a man used to being disliked by his lessers, Mikta realized. “Yes of course,” Sellee said, signing the Five. But his hand snaked out and seized Mikta’s wrist when he turned to leave. If Mikta had his old practice axe at that moment, he fancied, the Divine would be missing that hand.
“You will call me, when his time comes?” Sellee asked, eyes intent, jaw clenched. “You will bring me to him?”
“Yes, sir,” Mikta said stiffly. “As I have been ordered to do.”
Mikta turned and walked away as quickly as he dared., wishing that he could erase Sellee from his mind as thoroughly and instantly as the Divine did him, when he was out of the room.
<><><>
Mikta awoke in the night from a hand shaking his shoulder.
“I--” he blinked, blearily, realizing that it was Foix shaking him awake, and the man was upright. Well, mostly. He was leaning heavily on the cot, and he was shaking all over. “Is it time for me to fetch--”
“No,” Foix snapped, voice quavering. “No. Come, lad, I have one last favor to ask of you. One last service to a lonely old man.”
Mikta forced himself awake and upright. “Yes. Of course. What is it?”
“I wish to see the sea, one last time,” Foix said. “Surely that is a small thing.”
Mikta glanced at the window, which was pitch black. “But it’s night.”
“The sea is a marvel at all times,” Foix said cheerfully, pulling on a cloak with shaking hands.
“And it might rain,” Mikta said.
“Neither of us shall melt,” Foix said. “But you can either come with me, or I go alone. I can tell you which your Master of Novices would prefer.”
“Fooey,” Mikta said, unsure for a moment if he was saying the man’s name, or providing commentary. “Sir. You are too sick. You must rest.”
“Nonsense,” Foix said. “I’ve never felt better.” There was a frantic light burning in his eyes, and his toothless grin didn’t call an answering one to Mikta’s lips like it usually did.
“I am going,” Foix turned on his heels and hobbled towards the door, leaning heavily on a carved stick. “Best follow me.”
Mikta got up, throwing on the warmest clothes he could find. There would be others; at the very least the watchman at the gate would stop them, would know what to do.
Oil lamps winked out as they passed, shrouding them in darkness. As they passed a door leading to the kitchens, Foix reached out a hand and brushed the lock; the sound of the bolts throwing was shockingly loud in the quiet night. Mikta wasn’t sure who had a key to that door, or if anyone did. It was never locked. When they were some distance down the hallway, he heard the handle jiggle, and then frantic pounding.
“Ha,” Foix said as they stepped out into the pitchblack night. “Best grab a lantern for yourself, lad.”
“For us, sir,”
“I can see in the dark,” Foix turned to him, and Mikta recoiled to see, for a split second, two purple sparks buried deep in his eyes. He grinned at Mikta’s reaction, gesturing for him to follow.
The watchman… wasn’t there, and the gate was hanging open. Mikta’s lamp was wholly inadequate to the inky black night.
“Sir? Where’s the guard?”
“There’s been a commotion at the stables,” Foix said merrily, wiggling his fingers. “I expect he’s gone to help. Come, come.” Foix eased the door shut, and Mikta once again heard the click of the lock being thrown. Foix paused a moment, then brushed his fingers lightly over the lock and keyhole, which grew clogged with orange rust.
“They’ll open it eventually,” Foix murmured. “Or someone will be bright enough to fetch a ladder. But they’ll have to open it with a hammer.”
“Sir, please,” Mikta pleaded, wild with fear. He knew some of the guests at the Rest were prone to wandering and flights of fancy where reason left them entirely. But this was a man he cared for, with uncanny powers to boot. Was Foix losing his mind, before he lost his life? Would Mikta lose him to madness before he lost him to the God? “We have to go back!”
“There’s no going back,” Foix said wildly, walking so fast the wheeze was coming back, heading for the sea-cliffs. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t. Even knowing the pain. I would follow my brother into battle. I would follow my Lord Caz into the mouth of winter. I would follow Ista on her pilgrimage, I would follow her into Hell. I would kill the bear. I would love my Liss until I lost her. I have been blessed beyond any man’s deserving, no matter how it hurt. I have one last thing to do, one last promise to keep, and I can’t.”
“Sir--”
They reached the edge of the cliffs and the walkway down, which Mikta doubted he could get himself down safely in the dark, much less a sick and raving old man. But Foix stopped. In fact, he fell, and Mikta barely caught him in time to lower him gently to the ground. The lamp rolled along the ground, thankfully snuffing itself.
“I will get the Divine, sir, I will be right back--”
“You will not,” Foix said. “Please. I beg you. Mikta. Son. Please, just stay with me.”
The old man clutched at him, pulled him into an embrace. Foix’s voice was growing thin, and Mikta couldn’t help the wild keening sound escaping his own lips.
“I made two promises, and I couldn’t keep both, you see?” Foix said. “And Gods help me, Gods forgive… no, not the Gods. Forgiveness is their one great trick. It’s what they’re for. But you. You must forgive me. I have played my last trick, the last available to me. I have picked the best option among the bad, and I couldn’t ask, in case you would say no. Please.” Foix pulled back and met Mikta’s eyes, expression frantic. “Please, Mikta. Forgive me.”
“Of course, of course, anything,” Mikta said, trying to pull himself away. “There’s nothing to forgive--”
“Take good care of him,” Foix whispered, voice full of pain.
“Who?”
“I wasn’t talking to you, lad,” Foix said. From the gate, Mikta heard shouting, pounding on the door.
“I guess it’s now, it has to be now…” Foix’s ragged breaths trailed off, and his eyes grew wide and wondering.
“Oh.” he said. “Oh. Have You been here, this whole time? What a splendid thing.”
And then he died.
Mikta didn’t have time to scream, or cry out, or do anything at all, though he wanted to. He heard the sound of splintering wood and people running and shouting Foix’s name, before all the world turned to purple fire, and then to darkness.