Sleep came and went for hours afterwards, leaving me suddenly in a haze of pain, then overwhelming me just as randomly and pulling me back into its embrace. When I slept, I dreamed of my master’s face locked in that moment of livid despair, of fists and claws and rage, of the relief in Mister Valentin’s eyes. When it fled, I lay on my master’s bed and panted quietly, focusing on staying as still as I could. True to Master Iladin’s word, the pain in my muzzle and jaw eased as morning approached, but the ache in my heart refused to fade.
Throughout the night, Mister Valentin remained beside my master’s bed. At times he paced, or he dozed fitfully on my mattress. Most of the times I woke, though, he was where I saw him last, sitting in one of the chairs dragged in from the parlor, his elbows on his knees, his muzzle resting on the backs of his fingers, his eyes half-closed. If ever he caught my eyes, he smiled or offered some reassurance, but then he withdrew back into his thoughts. At one point, as I fell back to sleep, I felt a brush of fingers against my forehead, but then the sensation was gone as I sank into the darkness again.
The sun had risen fully and shone through the high and narrow windows by the time sleep finally left me. My bones ached and I felt weak, but the worst of the throbbing pains had passed. As I struggled to rise, Mister Valentin’s paw was at my shoulder again. “Easy, pet. Listen, I don’t think you should be up until Iladin’s had another look at you. How do you feel?”
I put a paw on my stomach with a grimace. “I’m sorry, sir. I’d like to try to stand.” My words were slurred, my tongue swollen in my muzzle, but I spoke slowly and carefully, trying to make myself clear. “My back is sore from lying still.”
“As sore as the rest of you?” Mister Valentin smiled faintly, then shook his head. “You can sit up, but only for a bit. Are you hungry?” I nodded, and the lynx offered me a mug of lukewarm broth. “Drink slowly, pet.” I took it between my paws and sipped from it carefully, while the sergeant-at-arms sat on the edge of the bed. “Listen, Taneh….” He hung his head and sighed. “I’m sorry about what happened. You didn’t deserve to be treated like that. Don’t.”
For several moments, I balanced the mug in my lap and my words on my tongue. “Sir….” I took a deep breath and bowed my head. “What I deserve doesn’t matter. What my owner wishes, does. He wished to beat me.” I closed my eyes, but my master’s face came back to me, and I shuddered and forced myself to gaze into the murky broth instead. “I don’t know why. It doesn’t matter why.” It wasn’t true, but it wasn’t my place to ask, and likely no-one here could—or would—tell me.
“But it does, Taneh. Listen.” Mister Valentin shifted closer and put a paw on my shoulder, his eyes wide and full of false earnestness. “Erik… the baron… wasn’t well. He hadn’t been for some time. That wasn’t the first time he’s lost his temper. He’s hurt people—”
I lifted my head and narrowed my eyes, cutting off the sergeant-at-arms with a glare. “Sir, with respect, I may be a slave, but I’m neither a dolt nor a kit. You don’t have to tell me anything. You don’t have to even talk to me; just give me orders and I will follow them. If you do wish to treat me like you would a person, though, then please do so.”
The lynx sat, muzzle agape, for several seconds, then broke out in a weary chuckle. “I probably ought to beat you for that, but you’re already injured and I’m too tired to care.”
“Do as you wish to do, sir. ” I replied wearily. “Use me, beat me, ignore me. Just, please, if you want to pretend that I’m your equal, at least do so.”
Mister Valentin’s ears flattened against his head. “You want me to treat you like an equal, then? Then I’ll tell you everything. Erik was an alchemical half-breed, he probably shouldn’t have been trusted with the throne in the first place, and he was becoming too unstable to risk keeping it.” My own ears fell back against my head, but the sergeant-at-arms pressed forward, putting his muzzle a whisker’s breadth from mine. “He was my best friend, he was his father’s only son, and he could’ve been a great leader, but he gave it all up to play with his toys.” His breath was hot, and he hissed his words at me. “From the moment he got you, he was too busy to care about his barony, either the threats from outside or the rumors within. There, is that more to your liking?”
I swallowed hard, my heart pounding, but I didn’t withdraw. I met the lynx’s eyes with my own, my paws pressed tightly against the mug to keep them from shaking. “That may have been Baron Deterikh, but that was not my master. My master was deeply committed to Barony Deterikh’s safety and its future. If he wasn’t the baron his father was, it was because no one gave him a chance to be the baron.” Ice flooded my veins, but I couldn’t stop the flow of words; it felt as if they were being pulled out of me. My master’s litany rang in my ears as I spoke. “He wasn’t too busy to care; no one let him care more. He felt everyone’s eyes on him, all the time: his aunt’s, yours, the court’s. If someone didn’t like something he did, it was the stars or his mother, Great Family keep her. He could have done everything exactly as his father would have, and people would say he still wasn’t good enough. Did he act like a whelp at times? Absolutely, because that’s how he was treated! Hold someone to an impossible standard, measure his steps by a stride he can never match, and see how long it takes him to—”
In a flash, my master’s expression in that last moment of violence came to me, and my heart seized. His lips were curled back in a snarl, but the whites of his eyes were visible all the way around and his ears were pulled flat against his head. He wasn’t enraged; he was terrified. His blows weren’t aimed at me, but at everyone who had forced him into the hole from which he was desperately trying to escape. It was the same expression I must have had, the day I sat at my father’s funeral and felt every frown in the room judging my life by his. I dropped my head and closed my eyes. “To break and run,” I finished, barely above a whisper. My cheeks burned. “Sir.”
I clutched the mug to my chest and braced for the blow, but all I heard was the whisper of the mattress as Mister Valentin rose. His hinds shuffled against the stone floor, then stopped. “I think I liked it better when you were just the Baron’s plaything, Taneh.”
“I did as well, sir,” I murmured after a moment’s pause.
The lynx walked over to the bed and took the mug from my paws. “Listen, pet. I’ve barely slept or eaten since nightfall, Jazinsk’s troops are on their way, Iladin’s supposed to return to work on your muzzle, and Chelin and Inika should be back in a few hours with the Baron. I need a bath, a hot meal, and two hours of sleep. I suggest you get some more rest, while you still can.”
Oooh! Taneh has a spine! And quite a tongue to boot! Yayyyyy!