Chapter Text
Aloth wasn’t sneaking, exactly, but he was trying to be unobtrusive; so when he heard his name mentioned at the campfire he froze before he reached the ring of trees closest to the light of the campfire.
“Hey, where’s Aloth?” the farmer was saying. “Coulda sworn he was just here.”
The Watcher grunted and pulled his cloak tighter around himself. He was bundled up on the ground, nearly indistinguishable from the log he was laying against. Aloth took a careful step backwards, slipping behind a tree before his return could be noticed.
After a week on the road together, Aloth knew enough not to expect much from the Watcher once the sun went down. The travel-worn elf was uncommonly cheerful during the day, but at night he became withdrawn, taciturn. Aloth wasn’t sure, but from the way the Watcher occasionally batted at the air in front of his eyes, he thought whatever was afflicting the Watcher grew harder to ignore once the sun went down. The wizard had his own share of afflictions, so he was sympathetic. It seemed kind, not to mention potentially less dangerous, to let him have his space.
The farmer-cum-soldier, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have any issue poking at either elf’s business.
“It’s just, he’s a bit odd, isn’t he?” Edér mused out loud, despite the Watcher’s apparent disinterest in the conversation. “I mean, I know ya haven’t known me much longer, but do you trust him?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” the Watcher inquired, sounding as tired as the dark circles under his eyes suggested. His tone should have ended the conversation, but the farmer only shrugged and poked at the campfire with a long twig.
“You should be careful who you trust, is all. And maybe you don’t care, but this one’s hiding something.”
“So am I. So are you, probably,” the Watcher said wryly. “Everyone has secrets, Edér.”
“Sure, sure,” Edér replied, unconvinced. “I’d just be careful, is all. We can’t go around picking up every wanderer with half a story between here and Defiance Bay, ya know.”
As if the Watcher hadn’t invited Aloth to join him first, Aloth bristled. It wasn’t as if this hadn’t worried him, either—but he didn’t like the implication that he was some sort of vagrant, when Edér himself looked like he could have bathed for a week and the smell of manure would still be on him.
The Watcher only grunted again. “I’ll try to be more careful. Thank you for your concern.” He was pulling up bits of grass between his fingers and throwing them into the fire. After another moment he added, “Aloth left about five minutes ago. I doubt he’s been up to anything nefarious in that amount of time.”
Aloth’s eyes widened in shock, even as Edér said, “He did? How’d you know that?”
“Because I saw him leave. He wasn’t hiding it. I’m sure he’s just in the woods somewhere.”
Aloth almost expected the Watcher to turn around and look straight at him, but the hooded elf did no such thing, just continued to throw grass into the fire.
Edér whistled. “And here I thought you haven’t been seein’ a thing ‘cept those ghosts in front of your eyes. I’m gonna have to be careful where I take a piss.”
“Just don’t do it in my sight.” The Watcher sounded amused, now. “Which is probably all our wizard friend is doing, so keep the interrogation down to a minimum, okay?”
Aloth blushed and decided that he had better make his reappearance before either of them continued guessing what he was up to or, worse yet, decided to go look for him only to find him watching them from four feet away.
Yer gonna have tae start announcin’ when yer off tae take a shit, Iselmyr chuckled, and he pressed a hand over his mouth in case she decided to make her laughter audible.
Oh, be quiet, he hissed back.
It was perhaps fortuitous that he waited to get her back under control, because Edér’s next comment made him check to make sure he was still hidden behind the tree.
“You ever notice how his voice changes sometimes?” he mused. “One minute he’s all posh and proper, the next he’s using language that’d shock a Magranite. That don’t strike you as odd?”
Aloth cursed to himself. The farmer noticed more than he would have thought. And if he convinced the Watcher to get it in his mind to Watch him…well. Aloth couldn’t let that happen.
The company had been nice, but there was a reason he’d spent so much time on his own. Maybe he could slip away now: make good on the farmer’s suspicions, fade into the night, never be seen by them again. He could still track the Watcher back to the Leaden Key.
His rapid calculations were derailed when the Watcher said, “Are we still talking about Aloth?”
“Uh, yeah.” Edér had pulled out his pipe. “Unless that cute little blue pig of yours has started talkin’ Aedyran.”
The Watcher made a miffed sound. He seemed strangely uncomfortable. “Of course I noticed. It’s not that strange.”
Not that strange? Aloth was both relieved and indignant. He wasn’t sure what to make of the Watcher’s irritation about gossiping about him, let alone that he could so easily dismiss something that caused Aloth mental and physical anguish on a daily basis. The Watcher continued.
“I’ve seen it a lot in my travels; you’d be surprised by how common it is,” he said. Aloth gaped. What part of Eora was the Watcher from that Awakenings were common? “Haven’t you noticed it’s usually when he’s upset? It happens to me, too, sometimes. My accent gets thicker. I start sounding like I was just walked out of my father’s village yesterday.”
The Watcher sounded fond, almost amused. It took several frantic seconds for his words to click into place in Aloth’s mind, and then he sagged against the tree, incredulous. He thinks I’m code-switching.
Iselmyr, who had started to rile up in response to the potential threat of discovery, sank back into a controllable itch in the back of his mind. Aloth forced himself to stay in place and think. It was insulting that the Watcher thought he came from such an uncouth background, that Iselmyr’s opinions were his.
But this could be…good. He could use this to his advantage. If the Watcher was so confident in his diagnosis, then he was less likely to examine any further, and Aloth would actually be much safer than he had been in a long time.
He was so focused on maintaining his composure that he almost missed Edér’s next question.
“Watcher—Mirad—you haven’t really said…Where’re you from?”
“Here and there,” Mirad said evasively. Edér snorted.
“Eothas’ shoe, I would get paired with two of the shadiest elves I’ve ever come across.”
To Aloth’s surprise, the Watcher laughed out loud. “You have no idea,” he said, sounding more cheerful than he had all evening. “You wanna talk about how shady I am when you’ve been living in a village that regularly hangs its visitors?”
“Fair enough,” Edér chuckled, and Aloth decided that was his opening to make a reappearance.
He slipped around to the other side of the fire and sat down, opening his grimoire immediately and burying himself in it, hoping to avoid questions. Edér looked up from trying to push a log over with his twig and startled.
“When’d you get back?” he demanded.
Aloth sighed and tried to focus on his book; though when he glanced up and accidentally met the Watcher’s eyes across the campfire, the other elf grinned and raised his eyebrows as if to say, I won’t tell him if you won’t. As if to prove this point, the Watcher yawned loudly.
“If it’s alright with everyone else, I’m going to try to get some sleep,” he announced. “Aloth, do you mind taking first watch?”
“Not at all,” the wizard answered, without looking up from his grimoire.
“Great. Edér?”
“I’ll take second, if you don’t mind,” Edér said, shooting Aloth an appraising glance. He was clearly debating whether or not he could get away with drilling Aloth with questions once the Watcher went to sleep.
“Thanks. And keep it down if you can, alright? I’d like to try and actually rest,” the Watcher added, with a sort of tired desperation that didn’t seem all put on.
Aloth gave him another glance and the Watcher shot him another grin that made it clear that the request for quiet was, in fact, at least partly for the his benefit. Aloth felt his cheeks burn again. Yes, the Watcher was dangerously perceptive. He was lucky the other elf had come up with such a plausible, if incorrect, explanation for his eccentricities. If Aloth played his cards right, he could keep on going as he had been and never have to explain Iselmyr away at all. He would find his way back to the Key and—well, they would know what to do from there.
He let himself bask for a moment in the security that, sooner than later, someone else was going to have to deal with the big problems, and he could go back to playing his own small part in the grand scheme of things. Who knew—perhaps the Watcher would even be interested in the Leaden Key’s mission. They were both looking for answers, after all.
Aloth pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders and settled in for the watch, listening to the spit and crackle of the fire. Eder added his snores to the night music fairly quickly. After another hour even the Watcher dropped off, though he twitched and whimpered in his sleep. Aloth kept the fire going, eventually giving up on studying when his eyes burned, and spent the rest of his watch wondering how longer he could keep his secrets to himself.