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Peony would have considered knocking, but the hour is late, so instead he simply reaches into his pocket for his extra key. Aside from the annoyance the noise would cause the neighbors, he shouldn’t really be seen skulking around here at night anyways, especially without a guard- and Jade would kill him for being brazen enough to let someone else into his apartment.
Well, perhaps not kill, the emperor thinks as he fiddles with the lock. One of the benefits of being a ruler is the protection it offers from even the idea of such jabs, but Jade would be incredibly upset, which, all things considered, is probably even more dangerous. After making a similar mistake nearly a decade and a half ago, Peony had learned his lesson- no surprise visitors, no matter how cute the noble girls had been.
Living quarters for the military are nice. Most of them are big enough for the officer and a small family, but Jade lives alone, so there’s a lot of extra space to go around. His preferred style of décor leaves something to be desired (the memory of when bookshelves had blocked the windows comes to mind), but since Peony had done most of the work decorating this place, he has to pat himself on the back. It still looks a bit like an office with a stove crammed in the corner, but the trinkets Peony slides onto shelves when Jade has his back turned haven’t been tossed yet. Reaching into his pocket again, he pulls out another for good measure, placing a glass dolphin on the writing desk near the lamp where it wouldn’t be missed. Jade could banish it to some out-of-the-way corner later.
Speaking of Jade, the hall light is still on. Peony makes his footsteps as loud and shuffling as possible as he meanders towards the glow.
“Are you home?” he stage-whispers into the silent home.
“It’s a bit late for visits, don’t you think?” a voice answers, echoing slightly off tiled walls.
“Maybe for normal people, but you’re up, aren’t you?” Peony grins. He slides into the open door of the bathroom, only for his smile to falter. “What the hell are you doing?”
Jade shrugs. “Working.”
Peony crosses his arms. The question had been a formality anyways. “I thought we said no more of this.”
“Trying times, Your Majesty.”
The emperor rolls his eyes. “I need a drink.”
“You know where to look,” Jade responds, returning to his business as Peony turns on his heel and marches towards the pantry at the other end of the hall. It’s mostly empty, probably because the Colonel has only just returned to the city today , but there’s at least one bottle of alcohol on the shelf, which is all he needs. It’s lethal stuff. Good. Peony hates watching people commit acts of heresy and treason while sober.
“Bring me a glass,” Jade calls.
Like clockwork, Peony grabs two.
The bathroom is quiet when he returns, and Jade doesn’t look up as Peony sets the bottle and cups on the edge of the sink. Now that he’s closer, he can see the details of what his friend is doing as he draws the marker along the bare skin of his leg with an unshaking hand. Forbidden artes, carefully planned and placed. As Peony takes a seat on the countertop, he can make out the shapes of towels and antiseptics piled carefully inside of the bathtub that Jade straddles as he works.
“You forgot bandages.”
“They’re in the cupboard. I don’t need them yet.”
Peony frowns, watching Jade complete the outer edge of a circular glyph that loops around the side of his thigh. “You know, they execute people in Daath for crimes far softer than this.”
“I am very lucky that this is not Daath then, Your Majesty.”
Peony leans back, feeling his head thud against the dusty mirror. Jade doesn’t have a housekeeper- there are too many secrets in this apartment for that. “It’s illegal here too, you know.”
Jade looks up at that, the edges of his glasses peering over the top of his knee as he pauses his contorted work. From this angle, he looks like a cat cleaning itself.
“It's this or nothing. The Fon Slot Seal is taking too long,” he drawls, speaking as if he’s about to buy the wrong kind of potatoes at the market rather than commit a federal crime. “It’s not a permanent solution. I just need a little bit of a boost.”
“The others were pretty permanent.”
Jade shrugs. Peony catches a glimpse of ‘the others’ through the open collar of his shirt; there’s a reason why no one’s ever seen the Necromancer’s skin below the neck. Some of the trainees say it's because he’s actually a skeleton masquerading as a man. The truth is entirely more horrifying.
“How many more of these can you do before it becomes dangerous, again?”
Jade hums, putting aside the marker as he double-checks his work. His fingers are covered in black ink, and they leave smears on the thick rim of the bathtub that he perches on.
“A few more, though I doubt I’ll need to.”
“That’s what you said last time,” Peony reminds, looking to the ceiling as he pretends to reminisce. “And the time before that, and the time before that…”
Jade turns around, his back to Peony as he switches which leg rests inside of the bathtub. He leans over, scooping up the towels and supplies before moving to place them on the floor. He stops when he comes face to face with Peony’s shoe, firmly in the way.
“Give that stuff to me. The floor is dirty.”
He hesitates before handing up the supplies. “You should probably at least not be in the room when I’m committing heresy,” he says, arching a brow. “Plausible deniability.”
“And you should probably be doing this in front of a medical professional- or at least a seventh fonist.”
Jade shakes him off with a roll of the eyes. “This isn’t dangerous, especially not for me.”
“Bold words for a man turning himself into a lightning rod.”
“That’s not how fonons work.”
“Still,” Peony remarks, brushing hair from his vision as Jade stares at him, face frozen in a deadpan blank. “How many times over the legal limit are you now? They say taking in triple the average amount of fonons is already rather dangerous.”
“Well then, it’s a good thing that I’m scarcely capable of that level at the moment, then.” Jade frowns. “The Fon Slot Seal sent me back decades . You know, I managed to pry it open enough to cast Turbulence the other day.” His frown deepens as his glasses reflect the white light of the lamp on the wall. “ Turbulence . That’s it .”
“You’re still doing better than me,” Peony responds. “And better than many of your contemporaries. Most of my advisors never made it past learning Energy Blast.”
Jade turns away from Peony, forgoing a response in favor of putting a hairband in his mouth as he clears his field of vision. The Emperor takes advantage of the moment of silence, continuing to ramble.
“You’ll break it eventually, and then what? You’ll be… how many times over the limit?”
Jade finishes with his hair. Now that it's tied up, Peony can see more glyphs poking out from the back of his shirt- older, messier attempts from back at the academy. He couldn’t have reached back there on his own. Saphir must have been coerced into helping.
“With these additions…” he responds, thinking. “Somewhere around forty. Maybe slightly under.”
Peony blinks. Jade smiles innocently.
“You…” the Emperor starts, squinting in disbelief, “You see the problem here, don’t you?”
Again Jade shrugs, rolling up the sleeves of his loose white shirt with calloused hands. Again, symbols and sigils reveal themselves. Some are old, carved with preciseness and lined with ink. Some are new- new enough that Peony hasn’t seen them before- and those are deeper, burned in harshly and quickly rather than drawn. Danger aside, Peony would forbid the arte for the visual effect alone, but Jade isn’t to be dissuaded by something as trivial as law or horrible damage to the epidermis . As he’d always insisted while in the academy, better he do it than someone who could hurt themselves.
“Are you going to sit there slack-jawed, or are you going to hand me things?”
Peony shakes himself out of his reverie as Jade reaches his hand out, opening and closing it twice for emphasis.
“Sorry- what did you want?”
“Towel.”
Peony hands one down. All the towels in this apartment are an unusual dark brown color- better to hide stains with, he supposes. “What else?”
Jade thinks for a second, eyes darting between the items on the counter.
“Alcohol.”
“Surely you’d rather drink after ?”
Shaking his head, Jade reaches for the half-empty glass Peony hands him. It’s lukewarm and probably a bit dusty, but the man doesn’t seem to care as he knocks it back cleanly, setting the empty tumbler aside. “It takes the edge off.”
Peony opens his mouth to complain, but Jade quiets him with a waved hand.
“I need to concentrate, Your Majesty.”
He sits up straight now as he plants his heel on the other side of the bathtub, ignoring Peony as he raises his hands. Even if he’s not a fonist, the Emperor can feel the pressure building in the room- the sensation of hundreds of tiny particles passing through him and gathering at Jade’s fingertips as he hovers his palms over the concentric rings crisscrossing down his thigh-
Peony wishes he could summon a surgeon to do this on Jade’s behalf, but even if a doctor could be sworn to silence, his friend wouldn’t have it. The problem with headstrong people is that they really do only trust their own hands.
The arte smells like burning meat. Peony flinches in Jade’s place as the first line of blood peels its way down the side of the Necromancer’s leg before dribbling into the basin of the tub, staining the porcelain. The muscle in Jade’s jaw tightens, but other than that, he remains still as he traces the outline of the glyph with a precise finger. The arte is thin- thinner than the point of a fine needle, but flesh has weight, and as it peels apart Peony can see how deep the cuts are- deep enough that the wound seems purple instead of red in the sterile white light of the room. He wants to say something- to be the voice of concern and reason, but it's too late now. He has to let Jade finish, otherwise he might make a mistake, and then all of this damage will have been for nothing.
It’s a long minute before he’s done. The cuts are so deep that Peony half expects his muscle and skin to simply slough off his bones, but even if as the circles continue to bleed, Jade doesn’t seem bothered. In fact, he looks as if he doesn’t feel it at all- aside from a few sweaty hairs falling out of place, one would barely be able to tell he’s injured.
“The bandages, Your Majesty?”
Peony reaches across the counter, shuffling through the cabinet as he hands off the antiseptic. “Did you do it right?”
“I always do it right.”
“I don’t know,” Peony shrugs, handing over the bandages before reaching for the empty glass still sitting next to him. “Some of those look rather roughly done.”
Jade smiles as he pats the fresh glyph down with a rapidly staining towel, flinching nearly imperceptibly at the burn of ethanol against raw flesh. “Being on the run has its downsides. Sometimes, the only tools I have are my own two hands. It’s nice to be home- I’ve missed ruining my own bathroom instead of an inn’s.”
“It couldn’t wait?”
“Cracking the seal takes time- time often occupied by more immediate problems that need to be solved,” Jade explains as he begins to unwind the roll of bandages. The thinness of the carvings would hopefully mean they would heal quickly, as long as they remain bound by gauze. “Pass me another drink, would you?”
Peony does so, grimacing as Jade hands back the glass now covered in bloodied fingerprints. He hops down from the counter just in time to grab his friend by the elbow as he maneuvers his way out of the tub, bound leg dragging like that of a lame horse.
“Helping an old man get out of the bath? So kind of you, Your Majesty,” Jade teases, reaching out to use the edge of the sink for support. His pants sit folded on the edge, but he doesn’t bother with them- the upcoming need to constantly change bandages making them not worth the effort.
“We-” Peony starts, making sure his friend is settled before peering into the bloody tub one last time, “-are the same age, so that one won’t work on me.”
“I’m practicing. The others will ask when I show up with a cane tomorrow.”
“They’re not that stupid. You’ll have to think of a better excuse than your old bones.”
Jade shakes his head, turning on the axis of his shoulder and slowly stumbling his way out into the hall. Peony follows just a few steps behind, still holding the bottle and the glasses and most of the remaining clean towels. He frowns as Jade walks past the lightless bedroom and back into the sitting area, dragging his leg across the carpet towards the single couch stuck against the wall.
“Shouldn’t you rest up? It’s been a long day…”
“Not yet-” the other man mumbles, all but collapsing onto one of the cushions. It’s hard to track the effects of blood loss on Jade Curtiss. He’s already too pale for his own good. “It’s been too long since we’ve had the chance to talk. I have a new idea for an arte I want to tell you about.”
With a wave of his hand, the Fon lamps in the room all light up at the same time. Jade smiles. “Already working. That’s good.”
“Don’t push it,” Peony warns, falling into the space next to Jade with a cough. The couch is still dusty. Everything is dusty. “Want another?”
Jade closes his eyes as he removes his glasses, brushing a hand through his bangs. “Please.”
The drink is gone moments after it's poured, but Peony elects to savor his own glass as he sinks further into the furniture, kicking his sandals off.
“So, now that you’ve sufficiently stressed me out for the evening- what’s this new arte you’re thinking about? I assume it’s something the board of ethics will want to take a look at.”
“It’s a long way off, just a concept for now,” Jade starts, sitting up slightly as he opens his eyes. “I need to work on the seal a lot more before I could even think to attempt it, but…” he grins, and it's somewhere between his dangerous smile and a genuine one, “I’ve been thinking a lot about Thunder Blade recently- there’s definitely a way to refine it into something stronger…”
Peony listens to Jade ramble for a while longer, not even poking fun as his friend’s tired sentences begin to twist into phrases and concepts that don’t make a lick of sense. He’s not a fonist, nor is he a scientist. He’s got nothing to add to Jade’s conversation but a listening ear.
He just wishes the reverse could be true more often.
He thinks of the bathroom, and wishes he could call a maid.