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The first time he sees her, she's being escorted down into the cells to join the rest of them waiting for transport, her hands bound in front of her and the temporary collar the hunters use sitting uneasily on her long neck. Ifan looks up from his card game at the tramp of mailed boots and there she is, towering a full head above her captors for all she's hunched over, trying to make herself look small.
Aw, poor mite, Ifan thinks, because he knows a conditioned fear response when he sees one. The gods just keep stepping on you, don't they?
There's only one empty cell left, just across from his, and the magisters throw her in with more glee than caution, locking it firmly behind her with low laughs. Ifan's gaze follows them up the steps, memorizing their voices, their tread, their smell. Not all of the guards are deserving of death, even here. Some of them are true believers, and kind with their ministrations, under the mistaken belief that it's for their own good. Some of them are just following orders, doing what it takes to put food on the table. Ifan understands that.
Some of them, however, enjoy the cruelty for its own sake, and Ifan doesn't make a habit of letting that go unpunished.
"Hey there, friend," he calls, when he's sure the guards are gone, or out of earshot, at least. "Are you alright?"
The elf slowly unfurls from her crumpled heap on the floor. "I'm fine," she says, her voice unexpectedly low and smooth. Her Common is crisp and clean, without the lilting cadence of the old tongue, and lightly accented with the rich, rolling vowels of the lizard high court. "My captors have been very gracious."
Ifan exchanges a wary glance with his card partner, a one-eyed dwarf who'd neither asked Ifan's name nor offered up his own. Is she mad, or joking? She spoke so seriously, it's hard to tell.
"Well, if you need anything, let me know," he tells her, deciding that it can't hurt to take her seriously. "Not much we can do down here, but I can spare a little extra meat from my portion, if you need it.”
“That’s very sweet of you,” she drawls, and this time it’s definitely sarcasm. She shifts, settling herself cross-legged amongst the straw, and runs a hand through her loose dark hair, brushing it away from her face. She tilts her head to regard him curiously, a faint smile tugging at the corners of her thin-lipped mouth. “But I ate quite well before I came here.”
She’s not exactly talking about a hearty beef stew, he’s pretty fucking sure. Ifan of all people knows that the rumors of elvish cannibalism are wildly exaggerated, but there are some, far from their homes and people, who are rather more opportunistic with their diets than their scions would wish. The newcomer catches his gaze, her gold eyes luminescing in the guttering light from the lantern at the end of the hall, and he sees that her pupils are wide and dark, like a cat’s. He’s abruptly sure that if she were to smile wider, he’d see not human-blunt teeth but fangs, long and needle-sharp and weapons in their own right.
Inside his chest, Afrit stirs uneasily. I know, he tells her, soothing as best as he can through the thin thread of connection left to him through the collar. I see it, too.
“Made the magisters pay for it, did you?”
She bats her eyes at him in such an extravagant parody of innocence he’s honestly a little impressed.“Of course not,” she lilts. “I turned myself in.”
He can’t help it: he gapes at her. “On purpose?”
Her laugh is just as musical as her voice. “Naturally. It’s the duty of any Sourcerer, isn’t it?” And then, when he’s still staring at her in bare-faced shock, she winks at him and turns away, coiling herself up on the pile of filthy blankets these bastards call a bed.
Ifan watches her for a moment more, but she seems done with their conversation. He turns back to the bars and finds the dwarf squinting past him.
“Trouble,” he declares, after a moment. “That one’s naught but trouble, you mark my words.”
Ifan laughs, some of the worry fading away. Whatever the elf is up to, it will reveal itself in time, or not. He has bigger fish to fry. He shifts, feeling the reassuring crinkle of paper at the small of his back, and smiles through the bars at the dwarf. “I’ll not argue with that, my friend,” he says, and picks up his cards once more. “Shall we?”
The dwarf grunts his assent and scrutinizes his hand. “Any jacks?”
“Go fish.”
“Bugger!”
The second time he sees her, it’s two days later and she’s finally released from the magister’s clutches, prowling around the hold of the ship with a measured stride that puts him in mind of that bloody tiger that landed him in this mess in the first place. Her freshly-fitted collar hangs awkwardly around her neck, tight enough that it won’t fit over even an elf’s narrow jaw, but if she’s discomfited by its pinching grip, she makes no sign of it. He watches her make a slow, deliberate circuit of the hold, familiarizing herself with the layout and the occupants, and smiles a little to himself. He’s been in this business long enough to know another hunter when he sees one, and this elf, with her honeyed-wine voice and her silent stride, is definitely hunting something.
Good for you, lass, he thinks. As long as she’s not hunting him - and why would she be? the only folk who care about his worthless hide already have him collared - then her business is none of his, and he wishes her luck with it.
Eventually she makes her way to his corner, where Viktar continues to eye him suspiciously and Ifan continues to occasionally yawn, or stretch, or reach for a weapon he isn’t wearing, just to make him flinch. It’s a petty enjoyment, but prison doesn’t offer many others.
Ifan winks at her, as she’d done that night in the cellar, and beckons her closer.
Viktar, predictably, pokers up in outrage. “Watch your back, new fish,” he declares loudly. “There’s a murder on board, and I’d bet three months pay it’s this tramp Ifan.”
The elf flutters her lashes. “What harm could come to me, with such a big, strong soldier to protect me?” she purrs, and sidles over, her hot golden gaze sliding carelessly away from Viktar’s confused face as if she’s already forgotten him. Ifan laughs under his breath and reaches up towards her neck, slowly enough that she can see it coming and duck away, if she wants. She stays still, regarding him with that catlike curiosity he remembers from that last night in Driftwood, and allows him to adjust the collar, tugging it so that it lays flat and balanced against the gnarled twist of her collarbones.
“Pinches less that way, right?” he says, and lets his hands drop away to his sides before she can change her mind and stab him with whatever sharp implement she’s almost certainly palmed. He hears Viktar hock a wad of phlegm into his mouth and then spit onto the filthy wooden floor, but though the elf’s shoulder tense at the sound of it, she doesn’t turn away from her interested examination of his face.
“You know, I don’t believe that man likes you,” she says, after a moment.
He feels a crack of laughter well in his throat. It’s not often that people surprise him anymore; that’s twice now she’s gotten him. “We used to know each other, more’s the pity. I was his commander many, many, many moons ago.” He raises his voice. “Isn’t that right, Vik?”
Over her shoulder, he sees Viktar draw a finger across his throat in elaborate pantomime, and feels the urge to laugh get stronger. The whole situation is just so ridiculous. He’s never needed Source to kill a man, and if Viktar thinks that the collar around his neck means he’s gotten any less dangerous, his head’s even harder than Ifan remembers.
“I can’t say much for your methods, if this is the sort of recruit I can expect from your command,” the elf says lowly, the faintest of smiles flirting at the corner of her mouth.
“I take no credit for that one,” he replies, equally low-voiced. “Haven’t seen him since he was a lad - some other poor fool had the raising of him. I’ve been out of the soldier business long since.”
“Mm.” Her hum is low and throaty, her gaze fixed squarely on his. “So you’re telling me you aren’t this mysterious killer, then? Shame. And here I was hoping for an easy coin or two out of this business.”
Yes, he rather thought their jailors would have made her an offer. She’s the only one unequivocally uninvolved in the entire bloody mess, as she was having her collar fitted when the deed was done. The magisters would be fools not to take advantage.
“Sorry to disappoint,” he tells her. “But I’d no business with the dead man - Finn, was it? - and I wouldn’t put a man down without reason.” He grins toothily over her shoulder at Viktar. “Damn shame annoyance isn’t reason enough, but ah, well. What can you do?”
“What indeed,” the elf says smoothly. She leans in a little closer, tucking her long frame more squarely between him and Viktar. She’s lean like a shadow, skinny even for an elf, and he tips his head back to meet her gaze as she ducks her face intimately close to his. His pulse thuds up into his ears, for no reason he can quite figure. “I can think of one or two that have annoyed me quite grievously. Can't you?"
His pulse thrums louder, and there's a strange tugging sensation behind his eyes. He frowns at her. "Anyone in particular?"
"I could think of a word or two for Bishop Alexander," she says, her face fixed on his.
Hmm. "Let me guess. It's not 'Seven bless and keep you?'" It's been some time since he’s been this close to someone without the threat of imminent death and dismemberment, and longer still since he’s had to look up to meet a woman’s eyes. Homesickness and grief roils against the predictable flush of heat in his belly, and he blinks lazily up at her, focusing on quieting his rabbiting pulse. “Might be I could think of one or two of my own. But don’t let Vik hear you say that, he’ll blow a blood vessel.”
Predictably, Viktar catches the sound of his name and turns to scowl impartially at them both. “Hey, what are you conspiring about over there? You! What’s your name?”
“Lenka,” the elf says, with such insulting casualness that there’s no doubt she made it up on the spot. Viktar, just as gullible as he was at fourteen, turns away to scribble furiously in his notebook, and a laugh scratches once more at the back of Ifan’s throat.
“Nice to meet you, Lenka,” he says, grinning up at her. “What brings you to the Joy?” Since you turned yourself in, he adds mentally - which she hears well enough, from the sharp quirk of amusement at the corners of her wide eyes.
“Oh, you know.” She’s close enough that her breath washes against his face. It’s sour from sleep and the drugs, but underneath he can pick up the relatively clean scent of her skin, still mostly untouched by the reek of unwashed bodies and the pervasive smell of brine. “Sun, sand… friendly faces.”
And which friendly face are you after, he wonders, but does not ask. She’s like him, he can tell that at a godsdamned glance, and that's enough for him to mind his own. (Not pack, though: he’d damn sure remember a face like hers.) Like him, though a damn sight more determined, if she’s truly here under her own volition. Even he, as much as he hates Lucian’s whelp and everything he does, wouldn’t have locked himself into this stinking coffin with a collar ‘round his neck for the sake of it, if he’d had any other choice.
Ah, well. It’s still no business of his.
“I wish you luck with it,” he says, and she clearly hears the dismissal there, because she smiles wryly and straightens away, till she's not tucked so intimately close.
“I don’t need luck,” she tells him, and strolls off with a wink, taking her fresh green scent with her. He watches her walk away, the tugging feeling fading from his forehead, and only returns his attention to Viktar after she turns the corner out of his sight.
Viktar twitches and glares at him out of the corner of his eye, and Ifan sighs as he folds his arms once more across his chest. Seems the game’s lost its savor, more’s the pity. He’ll have to find something else to distract him.
Five minutes later, the front cabin explodes.
The third time, she appears abruptly from the midst of a shower of Voidwoken innards, like some kind of avenging angel. There are two long knives in her hands and her hair is slicked back from her face, wet with rain or blood or both, and when she turns her head he sees for the first time the ugly scar that mars the cut-glass perfection of her left cheek.
“Follow me!” Her long legs carry her impossibly quick across the floor, barely pausing long enough to thrust a hand down and yank the little bard back to her feet. “Quickly, now, before more come!”
“Follow you where, lass, the ship’s about to sodding break apart!” Ifan’s dwarven friend complains, but he’s right on her heels, faster than anyone so stout should possibly be able to move.
“Up! There’s a skiff waiting.” She shoves the woman ahead of her up the ladder, and the dwarf a moment later. “Come on, come on!”
“Ordered about by a creature I wouldn’t even take as a slave,” the lizard grumbles, but he’s quick enough to follow her command with his life on the line. Ifan hesitates at the foot of the ladder, trying to wave her ahead of him, but she bares her teeth at him and her incisors lengthen into fangs as he watches, so he decides discretion is the better part of valor after all and follows the red swish of a reptilian tail up into the dark.
Topside everything is slick with seawater and his vision hazy from the salt spray in his eyes, but he manages to stagger across the deck, his gaze fixed on the frantic wave of the child perched in the bow of the lifeboat. The ship gives a sick lurch just as he tries to clamber in, throwing him prone halfway over the gunwale. He hears a deep crack somewhere in the foundations, barely audible over the roaring of his ears, and then strong hands have him by the shoulders and haul him the rest of the way into the boat.
“No, wait!” he hears a high, childish voice scream. “The lady’s not out yet!” and Ifan manages to twist around just in time to see the elf stagger and fall halfway out of the trapdoor. “Not yet! Please!”
“Not on my life, youngling,” the lizard says, and before Ifan can quite realize what he means to do, he slices through the ropes suspending the lifeboat with one careless swipe of his claws.
They plunge down into the churning waves, but Ifan thinks that he’ll always remember the sight of that elf's face: pale and drawn in a sudden flash of lightning, her cat’s eyes gleaming at him in the sudden dark that follows.
And then she’s gone.
The weather fades quickly, as Source-driven storms are wont to do, and it’s a silent crew that drifts along the gentle waves towards the island in the distance. There was some muttering that perhaps they should try to head back to the mainland, but the dwarf shook his head with such certain finality that none of them were willing to argue. Escape seems too big to contemplate just now, anyway.
Ifan smooths his hand down the back of the child who’d pleaded so desperately for them to wait. Her hair is a tangled mess, and her face red and stained with tears, but she’s still, now, at long last. He’d had to hold her still to keep her from attacking the lizard, who had a look in his eyes that said he wouldn’t tolerate such a trespass even from a child, and she’d collapsed into sobs a moment later. It took her almost an hour to wind herself down into sleep.
“What was her name?” Ifan asks, and almost starts at the sound of his own rough voice shattering the silence. He sounds as if he’s been shouting for hours, though he’s barely spoken since he woke in the hold. “The elf. Did anyone catch her name?”
The lizard looks pointedly away, as if to demonstrate the utter absence of any care, but Ifan can see one golden eye flicking back towards them, in curiosity or maybe even shame. The dwarf sighs and slumps back against the side of the boat, his head dropping back against the gunwale with a hollow thunk.
“Too busy showin’ off to catch it,” he admits. “You?”
The bard clears her throat. “Sebille,” she says hoarsely, all of her arch, extravagant amusement drained away. “That’s what she told me, anyway. Sebille.”
Sebille. After the long-lost Prime, presumably. Her mother must have had high dreams for her, once upon a time, to give her such a grand name. He wonders, with the dullness born of exhaustion, what those dreams had been. Surely it wasn’t to die in bondage, alone in the middle of the ocean, with nowhere for her bones to take root.
“To Sebille, then,” Ifan says, and he has no drink to lift in a toast, but he flicks the fingers of his free hand into the old thief’s sign for luck. Somehow, he thinks she'd appreciate the gesture.
“To Sebille,” the dwarf repeats, and signs it back, respect in his eye. “May your blade be ever sharp, your step be ever swift - and may you see the shining Halls for half an hour before the Void knows you’re gone.”
Blood to earth, sister, Ifan thinks sadly, watching the first fingers of dawn come up over the horizon. Blood to earth to wood to birth. I can’t lay your bones to rest, dear one, but I’ll take it out of Alexander’s hide for you. I promise.
But perhaps someone is looking out for fools and old soldiers after all, because two days later, when he hears the scuff of a bare foot against stone and looks up from the thug shaking down one of the prisoners, it's her. She's scrounged up a tie for her hair, and wrapped her long neck with leather to shield it against the pinch of the collar, but there's no mistaking that beautiful, scarred face; that haughty, cat-eyed glare. It's her. She survived. She came back.
Perhaps the gods are with them, after all.