Page 41 of Thief of Roses
“Baró, tell me what happened.”
He shook his head, still trying to keep his face averted.She accepted his silence.She had seen Baró vulnerable before, but he had not displayed signs of his distress.Maybe he desired to appear strong.Maybe he needed permission not to be.
“If you need to cry, I will not think less of you for it.”
“Yf only.Crying hath been taken as anymals doth not cry.”His body shuddered in a mirthless laugh.
Rivani reached out to touch him but caught herself.She wanted to tell him that he wasn’t an animal, or wasn’t just an animal, or any number of dumb platitudes that might soothe his wounded tone.She would worry about healing, emotional and physical, afterward when he was amenable to it.
“How do we stop this from happening again?”
“Cesfationne of the Magyc, but lyfe beeth dyffycult here without yt.Wouldst thou be able to manage?”
“We agreed.”Did she imagine it or had his brows grown heavier?“I told the Magic that this morning’s tray would be the last.”
“A surprise that She hath not mentionned yt to me.”
He tried to rise to his hind legs, but could not manage.Instead, he crawled back to the pallet and grunted as he lay down again.He cursed under his breath as he shifted and searched for a position that did not make him feel every ache and burn of his wounds.
“Y apologyze to thee, Rivani.Y hurt everywhere.”
“You have no need to apologize for that.”She gestured to the place beside his pallet on the hearth.“May I stay with you?”
“Pray, stay.”
He waited for her to sit and then, keeping the horns angled away from her, tucked his face against the outside of her thigh, curling his massive body up into as small a ball as he could, his arms wrapped around his chest with his claws kneading his shoulders.When he sought her touch, she combed her fingers through his mane and he relaxed.
Baró spent two daysrecuperating in his anteroom during which Rivani kept by his side.She brooked no refusal or resistance as she tended to him, performing a thorough cleaning of his wounds and combing the dried blood from his fur.She had not hesitated washing his genitals and other sensitive areas when he allowed her but Rivani had not anticipated the extensive bruising or amount of dried blood that surrounded and came from both.Not knowing what to say to him and not knowing if she should say anything, she swallowed back her horror at the tangible evidence of his own violation.In stories, the Fir’Darl presided over pain and torment, but the reality was that he alone suffered.
Baró barely spoke those two days.His eyes, though the one improved and the swelling diminished, resembled those after a long illness.Much to Rivani’s surprise, he continued walking on four legs when he was obliged to move at all.He had always been too prideful to let her see him on all fours.She found it disconcerting, not for the oddity of the act itself but due to the knowledge that he did so because of pain and weakness.But he had switched back to using Rivanic which, in her estimate, boded well.
“Baró, if you left here, would you still be visited?”
She undertook a cleaning overhaul to his rooms during his convalescence in the absence of greater occupation.She entertained the idea of going to look for the book repository in the destroyed areas of the fortress, but found that she did not wish to leave him alone.
“I cannot leave, though I would think not.”
She had surmised already that he had been bound to the land, but just because he had not found a way to leave did not mean that there was no way.Rivani had been about to ask him what he had tried until she considered how carefully words had to be chosen here.
“Baró, do you know if there is a way for you to leave here?”
He stilled.
“Ah,” she said, noticing his body language or lack thereof.“That’s not something you can talk about.”She grinned though and joined him in front of the hearth, tweaking his ear.“That means that there is or you would say no.”
“Rivani, if I could leave, you would be obliged to keep me in a cage and exhibit me.”
“I would never do that to you.”
“I am one tail short of an animal, and one whole body short of a man.”He pushed himself up to sitting, groaning both with exertion and pain.“You would have to.And I would put on a most convincing performance.Although,” he conceded, amusement in his voice, “that would be a remarkable deception, to have others pay to see the beast you trapped, never knowing we were friends.”He held his hand out, palm up, for hers.When she put her hand in his, he covered it with his other.“You are kind to consider me leaving — I accept that I am no longer impressive so I may say such a thing — but my future is here.I have long accepted that.”He squeezed her hand.“That you’re here at all is a gift, and for that I am grateful.”
Maybe Baró wasn’t impressive as they had once used the word, to indicate awe and an element of fear, but Rivani still found herself marveling over the improbability of him.She still found herself at peace with him even after the revelations and the strange experiences he endured.She enjoyed the sensations of his hands around hers, the reassurance and warmth, even the roughness of his hands, even if those hands might have terrified any person sound of mind.Maybe she wasn’t sound of mind anymore, having lived in these mad ruins for several months with a creature she still only half-believed was real.Maybe the loss of sanity was a consequence of living here.She witnessed the consequences with him, none of them good.
She extracted her hand from his grasp, swallowing back her anger at his complacency, and then petted his arm.Baró had centuries in which to accept his fate.It should not bother her.She leaned her head against his shoulder, biting her lip and trying to figure out how to wheedle the information out of him.
“Baró, I don’t know how to do nothing.”
