Chapter 25 #2
‘I need her to help me reclaim my memories, of course I’m put out when she’s not in easy reaching distance,’ he told himself. ‘Not to mention the fact that she’s about the only person I’ve had to talk to in recent memory. I can hardly afford to be fussy about company at the moment.’
Through habit more than hope, he tested the bonds around his wrists and ankles and found them to be especially tight, and when he lifted his legs into the air to get a better look, he realized there was something different about them—they were magical in some indefinable way.
A whiff of another god, someone sly and slippery…
In fact, this whole room smelled of it. He looked again at the items hanging from the ceiling. They had been tithes to someone, once.
‘So, I can smell magic. That’s something I didn’t know before.’ He swung his legs to the edge of the bed and looked at the door. There was magic there too, and he didn’t need to rattle the handle to know it was locked. ‘Looks like I’m not going anywhere this evening.’
Yet, when he shifted to swing his legs back up onto the bed—may as well get some rest in that case—he heard the stealthy tread of someone trying not to make any noise.
‘Elver?’ he called softly.
There was the faintest sigh, and then he heard her voice from somewhere just beyond the door.
‘I can’t talk to you.’
‘Why not?’
He slid off the bed and hopped awkwardly towards the door until he was resting his head against it. He could feel her on the other side, a cold slip of a girl with sharp golden eyes.
‘Artair knows I let you out at the Inn, and he’s angry about it.’
‘Why do you care what he thinks?’
‘I don’t,’ she said quickly. ‘But this journey is annoying enough without travelling alongside someone with the permanent hump.’ She paused. ‘And he has a point. He trusted me and I made him a promise. I might not have any loyalty to humans, but he is jih, and I owe him that much.’
‘Elver…’ Lucian’s mind was racing. If she wouldn’t untie him, that was one thing, but if she wouldn’t even be in the same room as him, he’d never discover who he was.
He decided to do the thing he would normally avoid at all costs: tell the truth.
Or something like it. ‘The memories you’ve uncovered have given me part of my life back.
I have to have more than just those tiny scraps. I need to know who I am. What I am.’
There was a long silence on the other side of the door. Lucian held his breath.
‘I can’t,’ she said eventually.
‘Elver, at least talk to me,’ he said, trying to keep the desperation from his voice.
For one strange, elastic moment he wanted to reach through the door and take her hand.
Not, for once, to rouse the forgotten memories that were still sleeping inside him, but simply to feel the touch of someone else.
The touch of the monster girl. ‘I just want to hear your voice.’
‘I can’t,’ she said again, and he heard the soft creak of a floorboard as she moved away.
Dispirited, Lucian hopped back towards the bed.
A familiar rising panic tinged with fury was flooding his chest. Was this it?
He’d been given a few glimpses of his life before this imprisonment and that would be all he would get—just enough to make this living nightmare an especially painful torture.
He wrenched at the bindings on his wrists, relishing the pain as they cut into his skin.
‘You don’t want to do that. You’ll do yourself a mischief.’
Lucian’s head snapped up. The voice came from a shelf that ran along the top half of the wall, filled with bric-a-brac similar to that hanging from the ceiling. Crouching amongst the figurines and decorative glass was a fox, his brush as red as an autumn leaf.
‘Who are you?’ Even as he said it, Lucian knew it was a ridiculous question. This was a god. It could hardly be anything else.
‘I think you know me, Lucian.’ The fox jumped down from the shelf silently, sooty black feet somehow delicate against the floorboards.
‘Do you know me ?’
Tisk laughed. ‘I like mortals, but they’re very self-involved, you know? Always assuming they’re at the centre of every story.’ He paused. ‘Well, perhaps you are, Lucian, but that doesn’t mean I know who you are. And that’s the question, isn’t it?’
‘Can you tell me who I am?’
The fox came and sat around a foot away from him, long tail curling neatly around his legs.
‘Why would I do that? It seems you’ve found a much more interesting way of getting that information.
Elver’s another story-fated mortal. Interesting, how you all group together.
Besides, haven’t you heard? You can’t just ask a god for a boon.
Not one you’re not dedicated to, and not without paying the price. ’
Lucian leaned back, considering.
‘Then why are you talking to me at all?’
‘Because it’s all so interesting .’ The fox’s ears pricked up. ‘I thought when Sunay paid the tithe it would be your usual peasant shenanigans, but oh no. There are other gods involved.’
‘Look, I’m not asking for magic. I’m asking for knowledge. All I want is to know who I am, and have a chance to rejoin the world. I used to be someone. I can feel it. I wasn’t always a prisoner locked in some idiot monk’s head.’
‘Listen, kid, I’ll tell you what I’ll do.’ The fox paused to lick the soft wad of fur on his chest with a bright pink tongue. ‘I have sharp teeth. I can chew through those bonds for you. How about that?’
‘You will?’ Lucian sat up, his heart beating so fast he forced himself to take a slow breath. Remember who you are dealing with. ‘And what’s the price?’
‘Ha. You’re smart. I like you.’ Lucian saw a flash of white teeth, a foxy grin. ‘At some point soon, you’re going to find yourself in the domain of another god. Steal something for me. That’s all.’
‘Consider it done.’
‘Good.’ With that the fox began walking towards the door.
‘Wait!’ Lucian half stood, the bonds pinching at his ankles. ‘Aren’t you going to let me out?’
‘Oh no, not yet.’ The fox’s tail swished back and forth. ‘It needs to be exactly the right moment. And this isn’t that. Sit tight, kid.’
And with that, Tisk the god of mischief and lies disappeared through the closed door as though it were made of smoke.