Work Text:
Khimil always receives a report whenever one of Numenor’s prized wool rabbits is injured. There is always an investigation, although Khimil accepts that rabbits are delicate and sometimes injuries are simply accidental, no matter how much training the servants receive.
This is not one of those accidents. The rabbit’s leg has been broken on purpose, his investigators tell him, and Khimil is so incensed by this message that he takes the time from designing a new war machine for Tar-Mairon to investigate personally. Tar-Mairon is more amused than upset at this, Khimil feels through their still-new bond. If he had truly needed the machine on a strict timeframe, then of course Khimil would have given that his undivided attention, but this is only for future need and he can take the time to attend to his own affairs.
He arrives unannounced in the middle of the questioning. The rabbit’s normal caretaker is pleading her case with the inspectors, saying that she had performed the health check, that she had only left for a moment, that when she returned, the rabbit’s leg had already been broken.
All of them fall silent when Khimil enters the room. He is very angry.
Khimil has an advantage that his inspectors do not: he can communicate directly with the rabbit, who has been treated for the injury as according to protocol. The rabbit, an enormous fluffy white creature, deigns to allow Khimil to touch its forehead and soothe the inflammation around the damaged bone. Khimil is able to heal the bone much more quickly than nature would normally allow, though the rabbit will never leap again. He also takes the time to find the true culprit.
(Osanwe with a rabbit, darling? Tar-Mairon laughs.)
(It is a valuable producer of resources, Khimil protests, And damaging your property apurpose is unacceptable, even if it is just a rabbit.)
(Well said, my dear one, says Tar-Mairon, and turns his attention away.)
The rabbit communicates more in terms of scent and hearing than sight; the pace of feet, the smell of skin. Khimil says, “Summon the other shift workers,” and waits while the inspectors set off running.
“You have done nothing,” Khimil tells the woman who has been accused. “Be at ease.” She presses her forehead to the floor, weeping in relief.
The other servants come into the room at a run. Something in Khimil’s expression has told the inspectors that this is not a time for propriety, and so none of them merely walk. He checks with the rabbit’s ears and bodily tension to confirm the true malefactor, a man who seems pleased to see the woman weeping.
Khimil descends on him without a word.
The malefactor screams as Khimil snaps his femur, and keeps screaming even afterward, and so Khimil speaks a Word to silence him.
“Throw him into the streets to beg,” he tells the inspectors, as the woman babbles something about having rejected the man as a suitor. “Send the rabbit to my personal garden.”
That evening, after Tar-Mairon has remarked on his war-machine’s progress, and the small time Khimil had taken to construct a wheeled sling for his new rabbit, Tar-Mairon takes him to bed.
“Your rage was magnificent,” Tar-Mairon whispers to him, touching him so carefully. “But why did you not kill the man, beloved? You were in a killing mood, I could tell.”
“He will be an example, this way,” Khimil explains, clutching at Tar-Mairon’s shoulders. “And also, the rabbit lived.”
Tar-Mairon laughs, and rewards him, though for what, Khimil could not say.