Chapter Text
Seth Domade had many good qualities. He was human and, as such, could traverse Rexxentrum with ease. He had some unremarkable magical capabilities, so it was not odd that he might, say, use Comprehend Languages to read a book or cast Prestidigitation to clean the muck from his boots.
Seth Domade, however, was not a powerful wizard. He did not wield spells that could disrupt the gravity of an entire street or send his attackers flying into a wall. Seth Domade was a quiet, unassuming man. He spent most of his days editing volumes in the Cobalt Soul’s library, and he looked the part.
Around the time the silence manacles clapped around his wrists, Essek realized he should have dropped the facade of Seth Domade earlier.
Just before his peaceful day went sideways, Essek had been walking across a bustling square in central Rexxentrum, not far from the Cobalt Soul Archive. Traders packed up their stalls, stacking goods into wooden carts in an echoing clatter. The lengthening days of spring lent the city a light so bright it felt almost gaudy. He passed this way most afternoons. After finishing his day at the Soul, he would head back to his rented room at a nearby inn or visit Caleb at his cottage bearing some arcane question or an intriguing book. His excuses for visiting were rather transparent, but Caleb did not seem to mind.
Today, they had planned their meeting. Calling it a date felt strange and presumptive, but it was, in fact, a date. Essek had found a Zemnian eatery, a homey place that advertised its down-to-earth traditional fare, and they would meet there and have dinner. It would be a lovely evening.
Cities, no matter the continent, had certain inherent rules to them: carts on this side, people over there, pull off to the side of the street if you need to stop and reference a map. And so, when he heard footsteps approaching briskly on his left, he veered to the right to allow them to pass. When nobody did, he glanced over his shoulder.
The glint of armor, blinding in the afternoon sun, hit his eyes just as an elbow jabbed into his ribs, hard.
He stumbled. It was a busy street, but that was no excuse for such rudeness. He turned to tell the person as much when calloused hands grabbed his wrists.
“Excuse me,” Essek growled, attempting to wrest his wrists back. His heartbeat stuttered.
He’d imagined this so many times, it felt like he should be more prepared. All of his nightmares started this way: with hands around his wrists, then a teleport to the Dynasty or perhaps to a rogue Assembly member.
The crowd flowed around him. Daylight stung his eyes. Every solely verbal spell fled his mind in a frantic rush..
Rough hands jerked him back against a plate-armored chest. His teeth clacked with the force.
“Behave,” he heard, low and close to his ear. Nobody had ordered him to behave since his mother. The indignation broke him out of his frozen terror.
He twisted a hand free. His fingers wove the first somatic form of Pulse Wave and then he froze.
He was in a public square in Rexxentrum.
Seth shouldn’t know that spell.
By the time he thought to teleport, his arms were being wrenched back and manacles clicked into place.
Air whistled soundlessly through his throat as he tried to yell. It was as though he had ceased to exist. Carts, horses, people—they all flowed around him and his attackers, like they were a tableau apart.
He squirmed and kicked, every bit of training he had ever had in hand-to-hand combat coming back in an unhelpful muddle. He threw his head back, hoping to feel the cartilage of his attacker’s nose give way. Instead, his skull clanged off a metal breastplate. The hands on his wrists tightened their grip.
There was no time for the ringing in his ears nor the throb of his head. He did not want to find out which of his enemies had found him, and he did not want to find out how long he could endure whatever they had planned before rescue. He was not helpless without his voice. He had been trained for this, prepared for certain necessary sacrifices.
Gritting his teeth, he twisted in their grasp and let himself fall, deadweight. His shoulder shuddered in its socket, cartilage grinding, tendons twisting. There was the animal feeling of wrong because his body could not move this way, or at least it could not until it did.
His shoulder gave way.
With a grunt of surprise, his captor’s grip loosened. Essek threw himself forward and for a moment, he was free. The archive was just across the square. He knew the guards out front; they would recognize him and help him, if he could get within sight.
The chain between his wrists grew taut. He was yanked sharply back and white-hot pain arced through his shoulder. A wave of white fuzzed his vision.
His captor readjusted their grip as Essek swayed. His arm hung limp and he panted, eyes welling. Pinpricks of pain sparked down his arm, a galaxy of nerves screaming to be put right.
A deep voice called out from above him: “A little help here?”
“You really do treat every job as though it’s your first, Felix,” another man grunted.
They were speaking Common. Terror-drenched as his mind was, he knew that was important. Their accents were not quite Rexxentrum, not Zemnian, and certainly not Kryn.
The bearded man that came to stand in front of him had the Righteous Brand insignia squarely visible on his chest and heavy plate mail. “You just gotta let him exhaust himself or show him there are consequences,” the man continued, drawing closer.
Essek raised his chin. Even through Seth’s face, he could manage a shadow of the Thelyss haughty glare.
The bearded man smiled and slapped him across the face. A heavy ring collided with his cheekbone and his ears rang. He blinked up, dazed, and watched the man gesture. The man’s hand came in and out of focus. The illusion rippled, and he could see the dented plate armor underneath. These were not real Righteous Brand.
“See? Consequences,” the bearded man was saying, chuckling. He patted Essek on the cheek. “It’s okay. You’ll learn.”
His two captors pulled him along, stumbling and stunned down the street. A hand on the back of his neck steered him firmly forward. He blinked back spots from his vision and tried to keep up. If he fell, he feared they would drag him.
A third man fell into step with them in the shadow of an alleyway, illusory Righteous Brand robes shimmering around him. He had a component pouch and an irritated frown. “You’re late.”
“Yeah, well, this one has been fussy,” the voice behind his ear said.
“He’s a mage. With those manacles on, you might as well be babysitting,” the robed figure grumbled.
The manacles chafed his wrists, rubbing reddened grooves into his skin. His captors were distracted, bickering amongst themselves. He had about twenty minutes left on his disguise spell and they were walking farther and farther from the part of the city he knew well.
A cart capsized in front of them. Loathe as he was to try the same trick twice, it was his best option. He dropped again and twisted, throwing his full, albeit meagre, body weight behind it.
He hit the ground
The hands around his bound wrists released. The man cursed, surprised.
Only training and momentum pushed him through the roll as his shoulder screamed and his vision blurred. He staggered to his feet and ran.
A brush of enchantment magic glossed over him in a wave but did not stick. He could taste it in the back of his throat, cough-syrup sweet. Then, a hand closed around the chain binding his wrists. He was wrenched backwards into his pursuer, his voice mutilated into a pained gurgle by the cheap silencing enchantment of the manacles.
“You…” the bearded man panted in his ear, “need to learn your place.”
The man spun him and tossed him against a decaying plaster wall. He pressed a forearm over Essek’s throat, and he wheezed around the obstruction, legs kicking.
The world narrowed. His heartbeat was all he could hear, pulsing in his ears like it was the destination at the end of a tunnel he was fast approaching.
“Alive, Anton,” the sandy-haired man scolded.
The pressure on Essek’s throat eased. He crumpled forward, heaving and hacking. Firm hands on his wrists forced him upright and forward.
“Consequences, Felix,” the bearded man replied mockingly.
“Let me talk to him. We magic users have ways of reaching an understanding.”
Essek looked up just in time to see the mage’s hands twist in a somatic gesture. He did not recognize the spell, but he knew the first somatic; necromantic spells were predictable that way. His breathing quickened.
The mage grabbed his chin, lifted his face, and cooed the verbal component. Rays of sickly green energy flooded from the mage’s fingers.
Essek’s eyes crashed closed and his body tried to curl in and shield itself, but the hand on his chin was unyielding. There was an odd tugging to the spell, like there was a hand in his chest, fingers wrapped around something vital and slippery, and pulled. Then it stopped.
Lungs heaving, he opened his eyes to a fascinated grin.
“I’ve been wanting to see that one up close,” the mage confided.
The street blurred around him, dreamlike compared to the throbbing ache that pulsed deep in his bones.
He glared back at the mage, defiant, but then they were moving again and all his remaining focus went to staying upright. They tugged him down the street, around corners, and through back-alley archways—always one hand on his wrists, another on the back of his neck. He could feel the grit of dirt and sweat on their hands pressing into his skin. Blood dripped down his knees from his fall. He could feel it congealing and scabbing into his spider silk under-layer as he stumbled forward.
By the time they reached the run-down house, he would do anything just to sit down. Its chipped paint and fallen shingles rendered it unremarkable in this part of town, the poorest part of a middling district. A woman and her children ducked inside after seeing their small party, and a few people down the street raised their chins in greeting towards his captors, then glanced away.
His captors pushed him through the door. The bearded man kicked it shut, while the blond man steered him to the far wall.
“Come on, you. Over here, where we can keep an eye on you,” the blond man said. The hand on his neck pressed down. Essek’s legs shook as he crouched, before an impatient push sent him to the ground.
It was a bare room, just a table and some chairs. The bearded man and the mage took seats at the table, their illusory armor dispelled or faded. The blond man crouched down next to Essek.
“Kick me and I’ll break your leg,” he warned, eyebrows raised. He pushed up the hem of Essek’s robes and tied his ankles together with a sturdy twine.
“Good,” he said, meeting Essek’s eyes. “Cooperate and we won’t have any further problems.”
The blond man stepped back and took his own seat at the table. Essek pulled his knees to his chest like he was playing hide-and-seek with Verin again, trying to tuck himself in his mother’s wardrobe. At least if his knees scabbed this way, they would hurt less when he had to move again.
Time had slipped away from him. He wasn’t sure how long they had walked or how far. Caleb was expecting him two hours from when Essek left the Soul, and, though he felt ill at the idea of Caleb thinking he did not care enough to be on time, at least when Essek failed to show without a Sending or note, Caleb would know something was wrong. Perhaps, if Caleb got here quickly, they could still have dinner. Essek would drink one of the healing potions in Caleb’s satchel. They would get to the restaurant late and laugh at the ridiculous lives they led.
The bearded man unwrapped a sandwich; the blond swigged some water. Essek was a captive audience for their mundane activities as they waited. His mouth watered. They had walked some ways to get to the safehouse but he did not want to draw attention to himself by asking for anything. A clock ticked in the back of his head. He did not have Caleb’s acute sense of the passage of time but his estimates had grown more accurate since his life had begun revolving around intervals of casting Disguise Self. Twelve, maybe fifteen minutes remained on the spell. Perhaps twenty, if pain had stretched his sense of time.
“Only a few days until Shadycreek and I’m telling you, I’m going to get plastered,” the blond man said.
“Me too—at Pixie’s because unlike Anton, I’m not banned,” the mage replied.
“Fuck you, Karel,”’ the bearded man spat back.
They commiserated, trading tavern and brothel reviews. Essek was, much to his distaste, learning exactly what the good people of Bezra’s Palace or Pixie’s Emporium would tolerate. He heard Caleb’s familiar voice in his head.
“Schatz, I have received concerning news from Beauregard. Please indicate your status to the extent it is safe to do so.”
Essek separated chapped lips and whispered Caleb’s name. He knew it was futile, knew as the words turned to garbled sludge in his throat that Caleb would hear none of it, but Caleb’s name felt like a summoning in his mouth. At least Caleb had not been stuck waiting for him, but Essek wanted this to be over. He had gotten too comfortable, too complacent in his nascent life here in Rexxentrum. He had been sloppy. He hoped Caleb didn’t hold it against him too much.
Caleb’s voice returned.
“Ach. Message received. Please standby. I am on my way to the Soul now. Do not endanger yourself. We are working on it.”
It was Caleb’s ‘bad news, stay calm’ tone. The same one he used to say things like ‘do not look behind you, there is an Aeorian absorber’ or ’there is a healing potion over there and I need you to bring it to me within the next forty-five seconds’. It made his heart twist in sympathy.
“How much you want to bet those Cobalt Soul fuckers try and negotiate?” the bearded man asked, leaning back and combing fingers through his beard.
“I don’t know, man, did you see their building? They’ve got to have enough gold. Dari said his robes meant he’s an archivist, so he knows shit, right?” The blond man leaned back in his chair.
Essek’s stomach dropped. He should have been relieved that there were no Kryn agents, ex-Volstrucker, or Assembly agents waiting to descend on him, and he was. But he was also spectacularly embarrassed. When Beau made her case for his employment, he was relatively confident one of the main arguments in his favor was that he did not need protection beyond an alias. He could be trusted to take care of himself in dangerous situations.
With his captors distracted by their fantasies of a raunchy break in Shady Creek, Essek let himself daydream. He would make it up to Beau and Caleb, when they or the Soul paid his ransom. There was just enough gold left in his wristpocket to buy Beau a nice bottle of wine and perhaps take Caleb out to the dancehall he had spoken so fondly of. They would stumble in the door to Caleb’s cottage afterwards, a little tipsy and wine-flushed. Caleb would kiss him and Essek would kiss back—a new dance, but one he was growing fond of. But this time, Essek would not shy away. When Caleb’s hand nudged at the hem of Essek’s tunic, he would say yes, please instead of redirecting the hand to his back. They would finally earn Jester’s teasing.