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Content warning: Nudity, image of child abuse.

 

 

Chapter 20

 

Micka’s face goes slack, his jaw trembles. It wants to go to him, but isn’t sure if that will make things better or worse. He looks ready to fall over at any moment, but doesn’t. Instead, he stands there, eyes still shining with tears, body shaking with relief or shock or both.

It turns from him and lights the other lamps, telling itself that it needs to get to work and not that it can’t stand watching his reaction. When they are all lit, it sets them in a square big enough for them both to sit. It gets the bundle of sticks and the basket of flowers and its bag with the instructions and puts them in the square.

It hears cloth swishing and footsteps coming up behind it. It straightens, but before it can turn Micka drapes his cape around its shoulders. He is tall enough that the fabric covers it to mid-thigh. His hands stay on its arms, gently tugging on it to turn it. And when it does, and looks up at him, Micka’s eyes are still shimmering, but his fear is gone, replaced with pity and concern. He pulls the front of the cape together and asks, “Why did they do this to you?”

“I don’t know.” It shakes its head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does.” He looks at the scraped, bruised flesh of its legs. “You need new bandages.”

It turns away and heads for the workbench. It brings out the box of bandages and the bottle of wound cleanser and cloths to clean its injuries. With luck, by the time its done, Micka no longer be looking at it with pity, which it doesn’t like and doesn’t want.

He’ll stop when he remembers I’m a thing, not a person.

Then Micka ruins everything by saying, “Let me help you.”

When it was being Metilia, people treated it as a person. Otherwise, they always treated it like a thing. The only ones who hadn’t were the Litarch and Silinie, and that only sometimes. But Micka knows what it is and is still kind and it has no idea how to deal with that. So it hands him the brown bottle and says, “start with my back.”

It takes the cape off and Micka gulps. When it glances over its shoulder, it sees him turning red and looking away from its backside. “Why are you embarrassed?”

“Because you’re naked,” Micka says.

“So?”

“So, I’m not used to touching naked people.”

“I’m not a person and you aren’t touching me yet.”

“But I’m going to.” Micka holds up the bottle. “What do I do with this?”

“Put it on my scrapes.” It brings the cape down from its shoulders and wraps it around its waist, and Micka’s face lightens. “Pour some on the cloth and rub it over the injuries. It keeps the wounds from getting infected.”

The cleanser hurts as much as before. It hides its pain, not letting Micka see for fear he’ll stop. Micka’s touch is far gentler than its master’s ever was. The man didn’t believe in being gentle to his apprentice, and saw every injury on its body as a sign of failure.

“I’m finished,” Micka says.

“Clean the front, too,” it says, turning. “Then we can bandage my torso.”

Micka, to his credit, hardly blushes as he touches the skin on its chest and stomach, cleaning each scrape as gently as possible. When the last is done, it shows him how to put on the bandages. His hands are gentle as he winds the cloth around its body.

They do its arms and legs next, and Micka helps with each limb. When they’re finished, it puts the bandages and bottle back in the box and shoves it onto its shelf.

“What are these?” Micka asks, pointing to the volumes on the top shelves.

“Books on death and how to kill,” it says. Micka withdraws his hand, revulsion on his face. But curiosity replaces it a moment later, and he reaches out again. It catches his arm. “Don’t. They’re poisonous.”

“Really?” Micka’s eyes widen. “How?”

“They’re covered in a contact poison. Touch them without gloves and you die in eight hours.”

“That’s . . .”

“It was my master’s way of teaching me to be careful while keeping the rats from eating his books.” It pulls him away from the shelf to the training floor. “Give me a moment.”

It goes to the chest and puts on a clean loincloth and its last set of working clothes. It picks up Micka’s cloak to return it and finds the man looking the other way.

“Why are you doing that?” it asks, confused. “You’ve seen everything.”

“It’s still not right for me to stare at you.”

It shakes its head again, not understanding why, and sits on the floor. From its bag, it takes the instructions and lays them out. It examines the willow sticks and picks out six. Micka, it learns, is skilled at weaving the sticks together and binding them with thick string. Together, they finish the first in half an hour. The next one goes much faster.

When they’re done tying the second dagger’s frame, Micka asks. “Do you remember what you were before they cursed you?”

“No. My first memory—”

 A huge man pushing his knee into its stomach and pinning its small arms to the ground with one hand. Searing heat coming closer and closer. Pain erupting in its chest, and the stink of its flesh burning. Screaming and screaming and no one caring.

“Was being branded,” it finishes, surprised its voice is steady. “After that me, they gave me to the Master of Death. He kept me in darkness for a month, to teach me how to find things by touch.”

“By the God.” Micka’s look of pity is back, and it looks away as he asks, “How old were you?”

“Four?” It had only the haziest understanding of time then, but it knew the rainy season had passed once before the Master of Death made it sit in the closet with him. It reaches for the food basket because it doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. “We’ll eat first, then I’ll start sewing on the petals.”

To its relief, Micka doesn’t ask anything else. They devour fish cakes and plums and three cookies each. It sets the rest aside for breakfast, picks up its needle, and reads the instructions once more. Overcast stitches will work best, it decides, and using two needles and two threads up each side of each stick. It’s tricky. Each thread must tie around the willow stick first, then have the petal sewn on it, then tie onto the next spot. It does the first, messes it up, and does it again. It does the second one much easier. The two petals lie facing each other, waiting to be sewn together into an edge. It shows the results to Micka.

“Do you want to do the other one?” it asks.

“I’m terrible at sewing,” he says, sounding embarrassed. “Every time I visit home, my mother tears out the repairs I’ve made on my clothes and redoes them. But I can pull the petals off the flowers for you.”

And so he does, pulling each carefully so it doesn’t tear and laying them before it in neat little piles before it. It takes dozens of petals to do one side of the blade, and then it must stitch them together to form the blade’s edge.

Micka is yawning when it finishes the first side. It gets up, fetches its rug from the corner, and lays it just outside the square of lamps. “Sit on this so you can fall asleep.”

“I don’t want to fall asleep,” Micka protests. “I want to keep you company.”

“Then keep me company on the rug. It’s more comfortable.” When he hesitates, it says, “Please, it will make me feel better.”

Micka looks reluctant, but does. It turns back to the sewing, biting its lip in concentration. Even the most delicate, airy fabrics have enough structure not to rip apart at the slightest hard tug. The flower petals are far more difficult. More than once, it rips one and has to start over. After the fifth time, it realizes it’s getting tired, too.

“How did you get your scars?” Micka asks, yawning halfway through the question.

“Which ones?”

Micka doesn’t answer at once, and it glances at him. He’s red again and doesn’t meet its eyes when he says, “On your back.”

“Beatings.” A mischievous thought goes through its head, and it adds, “Same as the scars on my ass.”

Micka blushes brighter, and it laughs. It’s the sort of thing Silinie did when she wanted to make a boy blush. It wishes that the young woman was there to see it.

Grief hits it, sharp and strong. Its vision blurs and wipes away the wet and sniffs. It misses Silinie, even though she treated it like a pet. She misses the way the girl gossiped with her, and taught her to stand and dress and flirt with boys. It misses the Litarch too, and the times the old woman praised it for doing its work well.

Micka stops asking questions, and soon after, he lies down and closes his eyes. It wishes it could, too, but goes to the clohalc box instead. Only four left. It takes one and returns to its task. Hours pass with no sound but Micka’s slow, even breathing. It matches its sewing to the rhythm of his breath, in and out, in and out. The thread whispers against the petals with tiny stitches, gently pulled tight, until, at last, it ties off the final one.

It lays the weapon down with a warm sense of satisfaction. The work is as neat as any the Litarch asked it to make, perhaps more so. It smiles, and says, “I did it well, Litarch Bellinisa.”

But because the woman died peacefully, there is not even the whispered voice of a ghost to answer it.

Its eyes are heavy again. The clohalc is wearing off. Micka is sound asleep with his head on his arm and his hair over his face. It thinks about crawling on the rug beside him, and sleeping with its body next to his. Would it be as warm as the blanket?

It suspects Micka wouldn’t mind, but it doesn’t know, and it doesn’t want to wake him to ask. So, it places the sparker and tinder bowl where it can find them in darkness and blows out the lamps. It lies on the floor, staring in the direction it knows Micka is sleeping, and closes its own eyes.

In the morning, they will have the blades blessed. Then it can get itself killed trying to stop the demon.

 

Click here to read Chapter 21!

 

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