Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Essek cannot, in honesty, say that he is paying attention to anything being said right now.  He should be—this is his trial, after all, his death sentence, the axe finally starting to fall—but he isn’t.  He’s made his confession, did all he could to exonerate anyone who might be caught in the crossfire, offered the names of his co-conspirators.  There is no defense to offer that the Bright Queen would consider worth hearing.

Indeed, laying it all out again has reminded Essek that I am a selfish and overcurious man, and thought nothing of it is not exactly an exculpatory defense, even if she did hear it.

So, Essek feels that his involvement here is complete, is the truth.  All he has left to do at this trial is still be sitting bound and compliant in the accused’s seat when they sentence him to die, and he can do that without listening.

On a strictly professional level, he finds that he’s impressed with the efficiency of his arrest.  He estimates that it’s probably no later than five hours past noon.  He was called to an emergency meeting at the palace perhaps six hours ago.  In that time, he has been accused of treason, thoroughly countered in an escape attempt, stripped of all spell components or possible weapons, and brought to the throne room to face the Bright Queen’s justice.  Quana Kryn, the Dusk Captain of so many lifetimes, is no fool—she did all her work in secret, and only arranged for his arrest when she was sure that her case was beyond reproach.

She did her work well, Essek is obliged to admit, if only in the privacy of his own thoughts.  And anything that she didn’t already know, he told them himself, under the strongest truth magic the clerics of the Luxon could muster.  He had worked alone, after all.  His confession meant that Verin, that the Nein, could walk free, and he freely admitted as much when his willingness to talk became the subject of question. 

The Bright Queen had given him a look of cool, weary disappointment, and remarked that it was a shame he had come to loyalty so late.  He had said frankly that he agreed, and that was the last they had asked of him.

And since then, he hasn’t been listening. 

Instead, he is thinking.  Not about magic, nor even really about saving himself.  Essek has been living on borrowed time since the moment he walked out with a Beacon in hand, and he’s known it.  He wants to live, but this feels—inevitable.  This feels like it’s already over, and Essek is only dreaming this trial, these chains, and this sentence.  So his mind wanders, and he’s surprised to find that there are more fond places in his memory than others, these days.

He’s thinking about the new cat that Caleb recently adopted, a scrawny gray-and-black kitten that Caleb coaxed with scraps for a week until it trusted him enough to be touched and taken inside off the street. 

He’s thinking about how Caleb promised Luc that he could name it, next time the Brenattos visited Rexxentrum. 

He’s thinking about Fjord and Jester making port in Nicodranas in a month, and Beau breaking into their study to sit on Caleb’s desk with Urana, the dainty black cat Essek brought Caleb two years ago, in her lap, just to tell them that they were going to teleport everyone to the Chateau for dinner.

He’s thinking about sunlight, strangely, and the way it glows on Caleb’s hair, makes the freckles on his eternally windburned cheeks bright on his skin, turns his blue eyes piercing and warm.  Sunlight speaks with a Zemnian accent, in Essek’s life, and he might be the first drow in a long time to wish he was going to see it again before he dies.

Essek is so absorbed in his own thoughts, in refusing to listen to the voices deciding on the method of his death in favor of the memories of other voices, full of joy and exasperation and playful outrage and affection, that at first he assumes he’s imagining the words in his ear.

“Heeeeeeey, Essek, it’s me,” Jester chirps, and he can picture her sitting on the rail of the ship, kicking her feet and making Fjord count for her.  “Just wanted to say hi, ummmm, we saw a whale yesterday that could have swallowed us whole!  Let me know how—”

Essek almost curses himself aloud for not having thought of this.

Jester doesn’t Send to him every day, not all the time.  Maybe one in three, on average.  Sometimes she’ll go a week without Sending at all, and other times—usually when they’re becalmed somewhere and she’s bored—he’ll get three messages a day.  She’s charmingly blasé about relative times, between the Lucidian and their landbound homes, or at least, Essek reminds himself that it’s charming when she wakes him up from a deep sleep.  He had no way of knowing that she would Send to him here, now, and now she has, and he has no idea what to do.

Essek needs to answer her, though.

The reality of his situation—it doesn’t set in, all at once, abruptly.  He’s been well aware of the reality of his situation for some time now.  But the reality of this aspect, this unforeseen complication, comes home immediately.

If Essek doesn’t answer her, Jester will assume something is wrong.  If she assumes something is wrong, she will either hammer him with Sendings until he responds, or, more likely, go directly to Caleb and demand his help in reaching Essek.  He loves his friends desperately, but they have never encountered the idea of a half-measure, and he doubts the feeble protection offered by his confession will keep them from being apprehended as traitors if they actually come and try to rescue him.

If Essek had more time to think, he might take a moment to bask in the warmth of being a person whose friends might try to rescue him.  But he doesn’t have time, and he doesn’t have the luxury of letting this slide.

He can’t risk them.

Essek raises both his bound hands and scratches at his brow, hiding his mouth.

“I’m sorry, Jester, I’m in a meeting,” he murmurs, so quietly he can barely hear himself.  He keeps his voice as calm and matter-of-fact as possible, just like the times when she really has interrupted a council meeting or the like.  “I may be quite busy for a week or so.  I will Send to you when I can.”

There’s a pause, and then her voice comes back, dramatically forlorn.

“But Essek, we miss youuuuu,” she whines, and then bursts into giggles.  “We really do!  Send when you have time, and stay out of trouble!  Love you!”  She pauses again, and then hums tunelessly until the spell runs out.

“Essek Thelyss,” the Bright Queen says, her voice ringing across the throne room like struck crystal.  “Rise, and receive your judgement.”

“I will,” Essek whispers, and then lowers his hands, and stands to face his sentence.

Chapter Text

There are logistics to consider, when it comes to publicly executing a wizard.  It’s a show of assurance from the Dynasty, to have him killed under the eyes of all Rosohna, to prove their strength, but also a risk.  It looks unprofessional for a captured traitor to make a last stand within feet of the axe, even if all he achieves is going out in a blaze of glory rather than a quick drop of steel. 

Steps have been taken to avoid this eventuality.  Essek’s hands are shackled behind his back, forced into gloves with steel wires running through the fingers and palms to prevent even the smallest gesture.  Between the cloth between his teeth and the metal muzzle holding his jaw tightly closed, he’s no closer to speaking a spell than he is to walking on the sun.  Every fiber of his plain prisoner’s shirt and pants has been searched, twice, to ensure that he has nothing on him that might conceivably be used for casting.

Essek has seen this before, although rarely.  It was not a surprise, when the appointed day arrived and his guards brought the restraints.  Yet it feels unreal, as everything since his trial has felt unreal.  As everything since Jester’s message has felt unreal.  A dream, unspooling before him, outside his control. 

There is a kind of ease to it, that Essek has never experienced before.  There is nothing left for him to do.  He made his attempt to run, and he failed.  He said his words of defense at his trial, and they were not enough.  And now, they will use the same techniques that he helped to perfect to drag him to the block and kill him for his treason, his callous disregard for all the lives lost in the war.  All neat and tidy, and all he has to do is let the current carry him forward to the inevitable end. 

He tells himself, as the gloves are locked onto his hands, that this is one of the better possible outcomes, and he even believes it.  His friends, his family—they are not here.  Jester has done as she agreed, giving him time to resolve the situation, and hasn’t messaged him since his trial.  The Nein are well outside the possible radius of destruction that Essek has caused, in his arrogance and carelessness.  He knows his actions will reflect poorly on Den Thelyss, but he hopes that Verin might escape with a mere demotion, as unscathed as anyone could hope to be, protected by Essek’s full, willing confession.

It’s worth it, to pay for their lives with his own.

Essek believes this.  He believes it with his whole heart.

The gloves keep his hands from shaking.

Two guards, a goliath with her arms tattooed so densely she looks scaled and a burly half-orc with skin nearly as grey as the stone walls, haul him to his feet in his cell and push him forward.  They hold him up by main force when he stumbles and he would otherwise take a head-first fall into the stone.  Nonetheless, his pride prickles and burns when the half-orc yanks him upright after his latest near-fall, grip hard on the collar of Essek’s shirt, and snorts a laugh.

“Can’t believe he’s the fucking traitor,” the half-orc says over Essek’s head, drawling the words in a tone full of vindictive amusement that Essek has become regrettably familiar with, lately.  “Fucker can’t even walk in a straight line.  Can you, Shadowhand?”  He gives Essek a sharp cuff on the shoulder to punctuate the insult, and it’s only because Essek has a sense of how this goes by now that he manages to anticipate the blow and stay on his feet.

The goliath laughs, a rolling rumble of thunder as she checks Essek hard with her hip, sending Essek into the corner of the next corridor hard enough that he’d have a bruise, if he lived long enough for it to show up.

“You’re telling me,” the goliath says.  “Goddamn, wizards are useless once you get ‘em quiet, huh?  Up this way next, what is this, your first time down here?”

“You’ve got to do a pretty good job, but yeah, pretty much just decorative once you shut ‘em up.”  The half-orc grabs the cuff holding Essek’s hands together and tugs to indicate the next corridor, ignoring the way it forces Essek up onto his toes against the pain in his shoulders.  “I just got in from Jigow,” he continues, as if Essek isn’t even there.  “Y’know how it is, they were looking to cover y’all’s staffing problems since this bastard’s confession did a real number on things.  Anywhere good to get a drink around here?”

“Thought you looked new,” the goliath said.  “You trying to get lucky, new guy?”

“Hey, miss every shot you don’t take,” the half-orc said, sly, angling a glance up at her.  “How’s my progress?”

“Depends on how much you spend on those drinks.  Hold him, I’ll get the gate.”

The half-orc’s hands close firmly around the tops of Essek’s arms, holding him in place as the goliath strides ahead.  In front of her—in front of Essek—is the great gate to the courtyard, and beyond it he can hear the roar of a crowd, bloodthirsty and victorious.

He can picture it.  He’s put people here himself, attended executions for treason.  The flagstones, smooth and dark beneath the crowd of witnesses.  The stone dais with the Bright Queen’s throne, the chairs beside her for close advisors and other nobility.  His mother might have been there, if he hadn’t so recently destroyed the reputation of Den Thelyss.  And at the center, where all could see, the stairs, and the platform, and the block, and the axe.

The goliath is at the door, and the lock clatters, metal-on-metal.

Under cover of the noise, the half-orc lowers his head and speaks into Essek’s ear, no longer the careless drawl, but quick, clipped words in a familiar accent.

“I don’t have time to explain,” the half-orc murmurs in Fjord’s voice, so quiet that Essek would think it was a hallucination if he couldn’t feel the air move against his skin.  “We have a plan.  Do you trust me?”

Essek’s first response isn’t relief.  It’s not even shock.  It is pure, undiluted, blazing rage, that, after all this, these fucking morons are here.  It hits him so hard that his skin burns with it, his vision spotting black at the edges, lips twisting against his gag.  All at once, for the first time in a week, Essek is awake, jarred back to the present by the fury pounding through his veins.  He can feel the air rushing into his throat, the hammering of his heart against his ribs, every fiber of his coarse prisoner’s clothing and every imperfection of the stone under his bare feet.

Fortunately, Essek has been a traitor in the heart of the Dynasty for too long to let it slow him down, and he nods, once, minutely.

“Okay,” Fjord breathes.  “She’s going to open that door.  When I yell, make a run for it.”

Once upon a time, Essek would have spent valuable time thinking about how astronomically terrible that plan is, but prolonged exposure to the Mighty Nein teaches a person to accept the reality of a plan being terrible right away and move on to thinking about managing the terrible plan quickly.  And—

Even if it was the worst conceivable plan, even if it was—well, make a run for it, when there’s a sword-wielding goliath between him and the outside, which is entirely populated by guards, magic users, and a crowd that wants him dead—even then, Essek can’t imagine turning down the offer.  It’s not exactly a port in a storm, but it’s something.

Essek is twenty paces from his own death, and even if this plan just ends with him having a friend at his side while he dies, it’s already better than dying alone.  He never claimed to have entirely cured himself of selfishness.

And besides, Essek reassures himself as the goliath shoulders open the door.  If this gets Fjord killed too, Essek will just have to find a way to drag himself back from death and throttle the entire Nein on principle.  Stranger things have happened.

The door creaks open, and Fjord’s hands loosen, just slightly, and Essek runs.

“Fucker!” Fjord roars behind him, sounding breathless—pained?  It buys Essek a bare moment to close the distance to the gate, and then dart around the goliath’s side as she starts to turn.  “He’s using magic!  Stop him!”

The goliath snarls, and Essek puts on a reckless burst of speed.  Her hand shoots out and grabs his shirt, but Essek is moving too quickly.  The fabric cuts into him as it rips, and then he’s stumbling into the courtyard.

He doesn’t get any further.  His luck doesn’t hold up to a second blow from the goliath, and she slams a fist into his chest so hard he hears ribs crack.  He’s shoved backward, toward the door, with a helpless, strangled shout of pain that draws every eye.

He’s caught from behind, a fist in his tangled hair, and he hears a whisper of “Trust me.”

And then Fjord’s hand, unremarkable guard’s sword in his grip, comes down, and cuts Essek’s throat.

Chapter Text

Essek gasps his way back to life, wheezing through his healed throat.  At first, as he tries to drag air into breathless lungs, he thinks, wildly, of the fragile golden-green thread that dragged him out of the dark, a noose that pulled and pulled, as if he could never move fast enough to satisfy.

But--no.  He's struggling to breathe not because of a cord around his throat, but because of the weight on his chest.

“Jester,” Essek manages, peering down at her.  “I can't breathe.”

“Essek,” Jester gasps, jolting up from where she was folded over his chest.  Her hands flutter uncertainly over his shoulders for a moment, and then close into fists in the rough cloth of his prisoner's shirt.  “Essek!” she repeats, hotly.  He grabs automatically at her wrists, but his hands are weak, a faint tremor in his muscles as if he’s done a lot of physical labor in the recent past, and all he can do is hang on as she gives him a hard shake.  “You lied to me, Essek!”

“Now,” says a deep, placid voice from somewhere over his head, “let’s give him a chance to get caught up.  I’m sure he has a very fine explanation he’ll be excited to share with us.  Mister Essek.”  Caduceus unfolds his long skinny limbs from the floor, where he’s apparently been sitting cross-legged above Essek’s head like a lichen-covered gravestone, and offers Essek a hand.  “You might like to go and wash off some of the blood?  I’m afraid you’ll feel a bit wrecked for a few days, but we’ve found you some new clothes.”

Jester gives Caduceus an obscure glare, and then lets go of Essek to stand with a huff, brushing off her skirt with undue violence.  Essek blinks, and takes in the room as he lets Caduceus help him to his feet.

They’re—in Nicodranas, of all places.  They’re in the wine cellar of the Lavish Chateau.  He can see the shelf that Beau ordered him to help her clear out and bring upstairs, when they celebrated Caleb’s posting at the Academy.  Essek’s body was laid out on the stone floor, it seems, with Caduceus at his head and Jester on one side.  On his other side, there’s a dusting of crumbled, dried blood, but no evidence of the person who left it there.

“Was someone hurt?” Essek asks, uselessly brushing at his shirt—also completely crusted with dull crimson, his life dried papery and stiff.

“You were hurt, you fucking idiot,” Beau snarls, standing with crossed arms and a forbidding expression on the cellar stairs.  “Why didn’t you tell us you were being executed?  We had, like, an hour and a half to figure something out, by the time I finally heard about it through the Soul!”

“Sorry about that,” Fjord adds, restored to his own face and familiar clothing, one hand resting on the hilt of the Star Razor.  “We were a little short on miracles, so we figured we’d better let them execute you.  Sort of.”

Essek’s mind feels strangely slow, the dragging sensation of trying to walk through deep water, but he begins to feel the pieces click together.  “You…posed as a guard so that they would let you take my body.  How did you—”  He gestures, a little awkward, as he fails to think of a polite way to say how did you steal my corpse.

“Caleb,” Beau says, with a glint in her eye that Essek has learned to be concerned about.  It’s vicious, but not in the way that Essek knows intimately as ruthlessness, nor the way he’s observed so often, an animal trapped without escape.  It’s the look of Beau’s great heart at its most protective.  “He teleported you back here, and while Jes used Word of Recall to get the rest of us back here, he went and got Cad.  Congratulations.  Essek Thelyss is officially dead.  Come on, babe, we’ve gotta tell Marion we’re done misusing her cellar.”

She storms away in a cloud of blue robes and fury, her footsteps purposefully audible as she stomps up the stairs. 

Yasha pauses, crossing the room to follow her, to set her hand on Essek’s shoulder.

“We were worried,” Yasha says in her soft, simple way.  Her hand is warm enough to alert Essek to the fact that he’s dreadfully cold, cold to the bone, and he starts to shiver when she takes it away.  “I’m—glad you’re okay.”

Essek manages to give Yasha a grateful nod as she brushes past and climbs the stairs after Beau’s retreating slam of the door.

It’s only through a great effort of will that Essek doesn’t jump in alarm when Jester rushes up to him again, and then she’s brushing fretfully at his shirt.  “You’re covered in blood,” she says, despairing.  “Fjord, couldn’t you have done something neater?  Someone will definitely notice you, we have to figure out how to get you upstairs—”

Essek ignores Fjord’s mildly offended “Sorry my murder wasn’t up to your standards, Jessie, fuck” and tries to smile at Jester instead.  He glances down at himself—it really is a horrorshow, it looks.  Well, he supposes it looks like someone slashed his throat, and didn’t take too much care about it.

“It’s, ah—it’s all right,” Essek says, and makes a familiar gesture with one hand.  The magic jumps to his command, the blood flaking away from the coarse-woven fabric and leaving it clean.  His prisoner’s uniform still has a grubby look to it, something about the careless construction and indifferent coloring leaving the clothes beyond the help of simple prestidigitation, but he doesn’t look like he was involved in a murder anymore, on either side of things.  “There,” he says, looking back up to Jester and managing a much more successful smile.  “See?  Like it never even happened.”

Jester gives him a smile in return, and it looks real.  She has dimples in her cheeks and her eyes crinkle at the corners.  There are tears clumping her lashes together.

Essek’s gut twists.

Taking a breath, Essek straightens his aching body as tall as he can manage, and asks, “Did you say I could change upstairs?”

The sniff and quick dash of Jester’s hand over her eyes are less subtle than she probably hopes them to be, but then she’s nodding, and her usual energetic good humor clicks back into place like it’s any other day.

“Yeah!  My mama said you should feel free to have a bath, too, and we found some clothes that Caleb said would fit you and left them on the bed.  Your room is the second one on the left, up the stairs—if you get lost, just ask Blud!  He’s real nice, you’ve met him, right?”

“I…have,” Essek concedes.  He did not find Blud particularly nice himself, but then, perhaps he’s just excessively paranoid because of how transparently suspicious Blud is of him.  And Blud undeniably dotes on Jester, even if he does tend to watch Essek with a distinctly gimlet eye.  Essek has, regrettably, come to recognize both those things as an indicator of someone trustworthy, regardless of other personal judgements. 

Essek catches Jester’s eye, and takes her hand gently between his own.  “Thank you, Jester.”

Jester sniffs again and laughs, a wet and somewhat strangled sound, tossing her head and making her newest horn chain jingle merrily.  “Oh, it’s just some old clothes, Essek!  You’d think I raised you from the dead or something!  You should be thanking Caduceus, you know, he’s—he’s practically made a business of bringing the Mighty Nein back from the dead.”

Jester soldiers heroically through the whole of her sentence, smile still in place even when her voice breaks, and then she whirls on her heel and starts for the stairs.

“I’m going to go make sure Beau doesn’t make Mama think we’ve been up to anything horrible!” Jester chirps, and almost manages to hide the fact that she’s wiping her face with her sleeves.  “Make sure to come to dinner, Essek!  We have to figure out a new name for you and everything—I’ve been trying to convince everyone that you should be my brother, Francis Fancybottom the Fourth!”

Essek snorts quietly at that and Jester laughs again as she leaves the cellar.  Her footsteps retreat across the floor overhead, and the three of them remaining, Essek and Fjord and Caduceus, stand in silence, lit by the soft glow of Caduceus’ staff.

“Essek,” Fjord says at last.  The sharp yellow of his eyes is washed out almost to white by the lavender tint of Caduceus’ crystal lamp, and it leave Essek feeling wrong-footed when Fjord fixes him with that gaze.  Fjord just saved his life, Essek thinks, by killing him in front of everyone he knows—knew—in Rosohna.  Essek should be grateful, or angry.  Instead, all Essek can think of is the way that Fjord looked him in the eye and told him to send the rangers to their deaths outside Aeor.

Fjord is, in many ways, what Essek wanted so desperately to believe he himself was.  He is the one who does the hard thing for the right reasons, and does it without hesitation.  Essek doesn’t know if he could have walked up to a friend and slit their throat without batting an eye, but Fjord did it.  Fjord did it, and kept up the mask while Essek died at his feet.  There isn’t even any blood on Fjord’s boots.  Essek can picture it perfectly—Fjord slashing his throat from behind, with all the easy skill of a butcher killing an animal, and dropping Essek in a pile, taking a step back to keep the blood from splashing on him.

Whatever Fjord finds in Essek’s face, it seems to satisfy him.  He nods and says, “Glad you’re all right.”

“I owe you my life,” Essek says frankly.

Fjord grins crookedly at that.  “Well, we can call it even, since I did kill you.”  Essek makes a vague gesture that Fjord apparently interprets as agreement, because Fjord claps him on the shoulder—harder than Essek expected, honestly—and strides away toward the stairs himself.

“We were all very concerned about you,” Caduceus says calmly as Fjord leaves.  “Jester was very upset.”

Essek knows perfectly well that he has no defense to offer.  He tries anyway.  “I didn’t mean—”

“Like I said,” Caduceus goes on, as if Essek hadn’t spoke.  “I’m sure you have a very good explanation.  I look forward to hearing it.  If you’d like to go upstairs now, I think that would be good.”

“I—yes,” Essek says, resisting the urge to stare at his feet like a scolded child.  Caduceus has a talent for making his disappointment known without ever actually using a word of reprimand, and Essek is only just now remembering that it’s been quite some time since that talent was turned on him.  He hasn’t missed it.  “And—thank you.”

Caduceus gives him a gentle smile with steely eyes and says, “Well, you know us.  We’ll do anything for our friends.”

Essek nods, silent, and trails after Caduceus out of the wine cellar.

He passes Veth on the stairs.  She gives him a narrow-eyed look and a menacing point of her finger, but otherwise shoulders past him without a word.

He isn’t surprised to find Caleb in the room that Jester told him had been assigned to him.

Caleb is standing in the attached washroom, standing bent over a basin of water and scrubbing his hands mechanically with a cloth.  He doesn’t twitch when Essek steps into the room, but his hands stop moving.

Essek, for a long moment, can’t think of a single blessed thing to say.  Sun-common escapes him entirely as he gropes for words, and when he finally comes up with something, it’s stilted Common—Undercommon, rather.  Essek supposes that he’ll need to get used to the distinction, now that he can’t go back to Xhorhas.

“I am—sorry,” Essek says on a breath.

Caleb doesn’t answer him.  Instead, he drops the cloth into the basin and wraps those pale, scarred hands around the edges of the shallow porcelain bowl, and grips it until his knuckles go white.  Essek walks forward, uncertain, but Caleb doesn’t flinch when he reaches out to rest a hand between his shoulder blades.  Caleb stands there and allows it—first the touch of Essek’s hand, and then his forehead, as Essek rests his brow against the firm line of Caleb’s spine.

“I’m sorry,” Essek repeats into the cloth of Caleb’s coat as he hesitantly raises his arms to grip the lapels.  It’s too warm, here in Nicodranas, for Caleb to still be dressed like this, coat and vest and shirtsleeves.  It looks like Caleb hasn’t changed since—when?  Since Beau contacted him in a panic, with whatever she learned from the Cobalt Soul about the execution of a traitor in Xhorhas?

Essek realizes, standing there with his arms wrapped around Caleb and his cheek pressed to Caleb’s back, that he doesn’t even know how long he was dead.

This proves to be his breaking point.  It wasn’t his capture, smooth and engineered, nor his endless interrogation, nor his planned execution, nor his murder, nor his resurrection, which Essek recognizes clinically as perfectly reasonable breaking points for anyone.  It’s the realization that he was dead, maybe for days, and he somehow forgot to ask how long he spent as a corpse.

Essek begins laughing into Caleb’s back, and finds that he can’t stop.  He’s shaking with it, shuddering, the tremors of laughter combining with the shivering of death-cold bones until he can barely stay on his feet.

“Essek?”  Caleb turns around, and Essek wavers before Caleb manages to grab him by the elbows.  Caleb is looking at him in alarm, eyes skimming over him as if looking for an injury.  When he doesn’t find one, he exerts gentle pressure on his grip, steering Essek backward until his knees bump against the edge of a bathtub.  Caleb lowers him onto the edge with firm hands, and Essek grips the edge of the tub with one hand, the other covering his mouth as he laughs helplessly.  “Essek, schatz,” Caleb says, crouching so that he can look up into Essek’s face, “do you need me to call Caduceus?  Bist du gut?”

“No,” Essek gasps.  His chest hurts, his jaw aches.  He thinks his eyes are running with tears, but he can’t tell if it’s the laughter still bubbling uncontrollably out of his throat, or the lances of midday sunlight slipping around the dark curtains on the windows.  “No, I’m fine.  What—what day is it?”

Caleb’s face does a complicated something, the rapid series of minute expression shifts that Essek has grown familiar with as an indication that Caleb is deciding not to experience a particular memory.  Then it settles again, and of course Caleb doesn’t bother with unimportant information like the day of the week.  Instead, he cuts effortlessly to the heart of the thing, those familiar blue eyes watching Essek’s minor breakdown with steady concern.

“You were—gone—for three days.  It took some time to leave Rosohna without raising suspicion, and then I had to get Caduceus and return.  I am sorry that we did not have a chance to get you out of these,” Caleb adds, plucking at the sleeve of Essek’s shirt.  He musters a small, twisted smile, grown in unkind ground but valiantly alive, and says, “I thought you might prefer if the lot of us didn’t strip you naked and leave you the victim of Jester’s artistic skills for the rest of your life.”

“Thank you,” Essek says, wiping at his face with the back of his hand.  “Thank you, I do—I do appreciate that.  Ending up unexpectedly naked is something of an occupational hazard around you all, though.”

“It is,” Caleb agrees.  “I wonder if we’re doing something wrong, sometimes.”

Essek chuckles, an unexpected burst of genuine humor on the tail end of his brief fit of hysterics, and Caleb’s smile takes on a brighter edge.

Essek is still smiling, a little, sadly, when he reaches out and touches Caleb’s cheek with one hand.  “I really am sorry,” he whispers.  “I thought—I had hoped to spare you all suspicion.  I was ready to pay for my actions, but I couldn’t bear to see you as collateral damage.”

Caleb’s brows snap together, anger flashing across his face like lightning, but he puts a hand up to hold Essek’s palm against his face.

“That is our decision,” Caleb says, sharp.  “If we wanted to risk our standing in the Dynasty to rescue you, you could not have stopped us.  You should not have tried.”

“I—”

“You died, Essek,” Caleb says.  He doesn’t raise his voice, doesn’t shout, doesn’t even glare.  He simply directs an unflinching stare at Essek’s face and speaks, and Essek finds that his voice fails in the face of it.  “You died.  You were dead for days.  I watched your skin grow cold.  I helped Fjord move your body.  I had your—your blood, all over my hands.  And that was the only plan we could think of, because when Jester called to you, you lied to her, and by the time Beauregard found out, she barely had time to get me, Jester, and Fjord to Rosohna before you were executed.”

Essek bows his head, and Caleb lets out a huge, shuddering sigh, and leans forward to rest his head on Essek’s knees.  Essek’s hand slides into Caleb’s hair, the red strands falling out of their tie at the nape of his neck.

“It was a good plan,” Essek says.  “It worked.”

“It was one of our better plans, really,” Caleb says into Essek’s lap.  “And if that does not make you tremble for the fate of the world, nothing will.”

“I am sorry,” Essek whispers.  “I meant—I only meant to protect you.”

“We would—I would rather be in danger with my family, than safe without them,” Caleb says.  Something damp is slowly seeping into the fabric of Essek’s pants.  It may be the water still on Caleb’s hands, or it may not.  They sit there in the quiet for a long time, until Essek’s back aches from balancing on the edge of the tub and he knows that Caleb’s knees must hurt from kneeling on the tile.

“I am…so tired,” Essek finally admits.

“Ah,” Caleb says, and stirs.  “Of course.  I am reliably informed that death is very taxing.  We have hours before dinner—do you want to lie down?”

“Yes,” Essek says, with more fervor than he expected, and Caleb flickers a smile at him as he pulls them both to their feet.  Essek strips off the prisoner’s uniform gratefully and pulls on a shirt at random from the clothes laid on the bed—soft, deep red, a little too long in the sleeves in a way that suggests that it might be one of Caleb’s—and then all-but collapses into the blessedly soft mattress.  Caleb strips down to his own shirt after wiping the rest of the blood away, and moves the remaining clothes onto a chair so that he can lie down facing Essek.

Essek’s eyes close almost at once, although he isn’t asleep.  He knows Caleb knows, because after a moment Caleb’s fingers land on his ear, running a gentle touch over the empty piercings there.  All of Essek’s jewelry was taken, of course, and Caleb doesn’t ask what happened to it.  Instead, he says, “We will help you buy more.  I think you would look very fine in sapphires.”

Essek smiles without opening his eyes.  “I was considering amber, actually.”

Caleb huffs a faint laugh.  “I suppose it is cheaper.”

“By far.”

Caleb’s fingers trace a line up to the point of Essek’s ear, then back down, a steady pressure that soothes the ache in Essek’s bones and sends warmth through his blood.  He’s nearly asleep when Caleb speaks again.

“Would you have left me?  If I had come back to the Empire, and they had called me a traitor for what I did—what we did, taking down my teacher.  Would you have left me here, if I told you to?”

Essek does open his eyes at that.  He knows an obvious trap when one is laid out before him, helpfully labeled.

“No,” he admits quietly.  “I would have been—furious with you, I think.”

“Mm,” Caleb says, and closes his eyes without another word.