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Alhaitham's arms have been bound tight behind his back. He's being dragged through the Akademiya by blank-eyed guards with glowing-green Akasha terminals. The halls they're traversing now aren't familiar to him—he thinks they're maybe somewhere in one of the older Spantamad wings, but that's only a theory. He can't be sure just yet.
Wherever he is, he imagines that this area has lately been made off-limits to all but the most deeply-entrenched of the conspirators. That's the reason why his eyes are greedily devouring the fleeting glimpses he gets into the rooms he's hauled past—the piled-up papers and books, the half-constructed devices, the spots where unknown machinery used to be. It's just his curiosity getting the better of him, seeking knowledge that had been barred from him, as usual. When this was merely another hallway among a forest of other hallways, he never would have cared so much to know what lay within.
It isn't like he has anything better to do than sate his curiosity. Any important intelligence he could gather would only be useful if he were to escape. And he knows there's not a chance of that.
The doors into the chamber he's pretty sure will be his tomb don't look any different from the doors on any of the other rooms in this wing. They open outward just the same. That makes it easy to see the bloody scratch marks in the wood—very clearly made by human fingernails—as he's hauled bodily inside.
He wonders, idly, if the ropes that bind him are there to prevent him from doing the same thing, or if he's going to be freed soon just so that they can watch him make a similarly fruitless attempt to get away.
The guards toss him to the ground just inside the threshold, his knees striking pale white marble. He only lets the pain rule him for a moment—his body curling forward as he swallows down the noise he might have made—before he straightens his back and lifts his chin so that he can look his death defiantly in the eye.
The Balladeer isn't looking in his direction, though. The dark-haired boy is perched on a utilitarian metal table at the far end of the room, facing away from the new arrivals. He looks… smaller, sitting there, than Alhaitham had imagined. His feet are dangling bare, and his toes aren't even close to brushing the ground.
He looks too unassuming to be the evil god they'd all been fighting to stop. Too vulnerable. Too… pitiable. After all, he looks like someone's staged him there just so—to better display the bundle of tubes and wires blooming out of his back.
Those conduits hang limp over the table's edge to tangle in heaped coils on the floor before spiraling off in every direction like the radials of a spider's web. The other ends all plug into the glowing and humming machinery that line the walls of the room.
Maybe, Alhaitham thinks—with a cynical humor and sore, bloodless wrists—the Balladeer is just as trapped here as he.
Then, like waking from a dream, the Balladeer stirs.
Bare feet touch down soundlessly on the stone floor as the Harbinger alights. The wires pull and twist with his motion, but the tethers that bind him to those machines don't restrict him as much as Alhaitham had hoped. Without any apparent trouble, the Balladeer circles around to the left end of the table. Only then does he turn his head to meet Alhaitham's gaze.
"You must be the scribe I've heard so much about," the Balladeer hums, a viper's smile on his lips. He steps forward, metal fasteners scraping against the stone floor as the tubes are dragged along behind him, until he comes to a halt a scant three paces away from Alhaitham's kneeling form, looking down at his captive with a pretend-cordial air. "What a pleasure to finally meet you," he says.
Alhaitham swallows. "Why am I here?" he asks, his voice as even as he can make it. "What do you want from me?"
"What do I want? Why, Alhaitham, you so admirably performed the task that was assigned to you," the Balladeer answers. "All I want is to give you your reward."
The fine hairs on the back of Alhaitham's neck feel like they're standing on end. "Task? What task?" he demands.
The raised eyebrows and slightly widened eyes on the Balladeer's face seem as fake as the rest of him—a false idol propped up by traitors and fools. "Getting close to the Traveler, of course," he says.
Alhaitham stiffens. The terms of the sages' assignment to him flash across his mind. "I may have been told to investigate the Traveler, but I never had any intention of reporting anything back. Torture me if you want, but I know absolutely nothing about their current whereabouts or plans, so there's no—"
In a flash, the Balladeer is leaning down, his face mere inches from Alhaitham's own. He's clamped one small hand like a vice over Alhaitham's mouth. "Shh," he says, unnecessarily. "I don't care about any of that. I only needed you to get pulled into that Traveler's orbit for a while."
He loosens his grip a little, but doesn't pull his hand back. Instead, he angles Alhaitham's face an inch to the side and studies it for a long moment, dark eyes raking him from crown to chin.
In a musing voice, he says, "I've been following the Traveler's exploits for some time now… They always seem to gravitate towards the pretty ones." The Balladeer's smirk sends a chill racing down Alhaitham's spine. He'd have called it lascivious, if there'd been an ounce of heat in the Harbinger's flinty eyes.
The Balladeer's hand loosens again, only to drag a cold, dry thumb over Alhaitham's bottom lip. "The eccentric ones, too," he continues. "The ones who stand out from the crowd. From the first moment I heard of you, I knew you'd be perfect for the job."
Alhaitham can only bare his teeth and growl, "What job? I already told you, I don't know anything, and I wouldn't tell you even if I did."
The Balladeer's smile doesn't even waver. "Modesty doesn't suit you, Alhaitham," he says. "You know more than enough for my needs. And I'll extract it from you soon enough." He lifts a finger and then points off to the side of the room.
There's a rack of familiar-looking devices nestled there, next to an empty, dormant knowledge capsule.
Alhaitham stares, and then wrests his gaze away again to look back at the Balladeer. He doesn't understand. "I'm not one of those scholars who spent their life chasing after Irminsul," he says.
"No," the Balladeer agrees. "We've got plenty enough of those." The hand cupping Alhaitham's chin moves up to stroke his cheek, the touch soft but not tender. "I've been craving something a little more… interesting."
The Balladeer's tongue flicks out to wet his lips. There's an unnerving gleam in his eyes. "I want a taste of what that Traveler has," he says. "You were promised divine knowledge, and I'm going to give it to you. To be known by the divine, isn't that what all mortals strive for?"
And then he leans in and captures Alhaitham's mouth.
For a moment, Alhaitham goes blank. He can't breathe or think past the lips pressed hard against his own. His face goes cold, and then hot. It's probably anger, a detached part of him concludes. That same part of Alhaitham is what stirs him to action while the rest of him falters, impelling him to bite down hard on the intrusion probing greedily into his mouth. The taste of iron floods it now instead.
The Balladeer pulls back with a hiss, tugging hard on the hair at the back of Alhaitham's head. His tongue works inside his jaw for a long moment, and then he spits a glob of blood on the ground. Alhaitham watches it land. It's as red as any mortal's blood. Some god.
The expression on the Balladeer's face when he turns back to Alhaitham promises immediate and severe violence. Alhaitham doesn't flinch from it. But the Balladeer doesn't strike.
Instead, he throws back his head and laughs with an uncheerful mirth, the sound ringing and bouncing chaotically off the walls and inside Alhaitham's ears. Alhaitham wishes his hands were unbound, just so he could attempt to block it out.
"Oh, I'm going to enjoy consuming you," the Balladeer says, once his laughter has died back down to harsh little chuckles. His hands move to bracket Alhaitham's skull, squeezing tight enough to hurt.
Alhaitham tries to pull away, rocking back on his knees, but he can't budge an inch. He can only clamp his eyes shut and lock his jaw and bear it as long as he can.
And in the darkness behind his eyelids, he hears the Balladeer murmur, "That's right…" Lips press to Alhaitham's forehead. He can only tell by the breath that comes with it, hot against his skin. "I'll wring every last drop of defiant wisdom out of this pretty little head of yours," the Balladeer says, "until you're nothing but a beautiful shell."