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Dichot had been trying not to cry.
His arms ached, pulled behind his back; his wrists stung raw where the ropes dug into them; his legs numb and sore where he sat on the ground, back pressed uncomfortably against the pole behind him. It had been hours. He didn't know if he would even be able to stand, when he was found — if he was found.
He didn't know if he was more afraid of dying like this, or of being discovered.
It was pathetic: he was old enough to know better, to understand that crying did nothing at all to help. This was what was always done, to changelings and demons and sorcerers. He was lucky he hadn't been killed straight away.
He hadn't meant to use magic. He didn't know how to use magic; he had no idea how it had even happened. All had been as it usually was, an unusually wet and miserable few weeks, work endless and repetitive and tiresome. Dichot worked in the baron's stables, and had already for months; he was thirteen, old enough to be apprenticed, to be separated from his family. The baron's seneschal had ridden down to the village, said they needed a new stableboy – he had never found out what happened to the last one – and when nobody had answered, they had taken several of the boys and questioned them, and said that Dichot was his father's third son, he could be spared, he was of no importance. Only a serf, of course. But so was almost everyone he'd ever met.
He ought to be grateful. That was what the seneschal said angrily, when he'd hesitated to obey, what everybody else surely thought, anyway. His mother had said it was better work than farming. But they worked him just as hard there as his father ever had, cold straw in the hayloft was no more comfortable than cold straw at home, and he missed his family. A stableboy would eat better than a poor serf farmer, if a harsh winter came – it was not winter yet, though, only a grey, rainy autumn that made Dichot sick with guilt over not being allowed to help his family with the harvest.
Still, he had tried to be brave, to be obedient. He wasn't supposed to cry about it. The stablemaster had smacked him and told him he'd give him something to actually cry about, when he found Dichot sniffling, the first day.
That was what he should do now. Be brave, do as he was told, be grateful they hadn't done worse to him, don't cry.
But it was beginning to get dark, and he was already shivering, and who knew how long he would be here? There were wolves in the woods, everybody knew that — did they dare to come so close to the wizard's tower, or were wild animals just as scared of it as humans? Would it be by freezing or by teeth that he would end? He didn't want either. But – oh, god – he didn't want the wizard to get him either.
He hadn't meant to. He didn't understand how it happened. It had all been so sudden: the cart, slipping in the mud on its way up the hill; Dichot and the other household serfs running to help, knowing they wouldn't be fast enough; a horse's shriek as it fell; the awful splintering as something broke and began to slip away toward the little playing peasant girls, little more than toddlers, behind it. Dichot hadn't known what was doing, tripping over his legs on the slick cobblestones, in the rain: he had thrown a hand out, instinctive, unthinking, and everything had just… stopped.
Not everything. Not the people. But all around them, the cart, the drafthorses, the slick mud, the pouring rain, had all simply frozen in place, like the painted murals that covered the walls of the village church. Nobody had moved for a moment, shocked — but the other two serfs, Perrin and Guillamet, had skidded forward under the momentum of their running from before, and known they had still be able to move. They had shot blanched, terrified looks to Dichot, but Perrin still barely hesitated to run and pull the children out of the way, too scared that soon the world would burst into motion again to stop. Dichot hadn't moved: there had been some strange, ethereal pressure in the air, like a great wind or a tide, and he had sensed somehow that if he were to lower his hand, time would begin. The pressure against him had built and built, rushing in his ears like a mighty storm, until as Guillamet managed tremulously, disbelieving, to unbuckle the horses from their bridles, suddenly he couldn't hold it anymore.
The moment he'd dropped his hand and slumped down to the ground, everything had sprung into motion again. The cart crashing down the hill to smash at the bottom, the rain splashing around them, the horses' panicked whinnies and snorts.
He had collapsed boneless to the floor, as though he had run a great distance or pushed a great weight, like he had had to tend the farm alone all day. He didn't hear what Perrin and Guillamet had whispered between themselves, frantic and alarmed, nor what the girls had said save for that one had been crying and the other shouting; he had been too busy gasping for breath.
And then the two older serfs had pulled him up to his feet while the children ran home, had held him while they argued frantically what to do, had called him changeling over and over in terms of increasing disgust and suspicion, ignoring Dichot while he insisted over and over, less and less sure, I'm not, I'm not, it was an accident, please. They were the ones who had dragged him out here – through the baron's lands, through the edge of the woods, to the clearing with the tower, work-roughened hands clamped tight around his skinny arms – and tied him up to the old hitching-post at the threshold wall outside to die. The free men of the manor knew nothing about it, and the serfs wouldn't have told them, not until they had to.
Dichot doubted the stablemaster even would have noticed before eveningtime; he would be striding across the yard about now, scowling, thinking Dichot was late about his chores, snapping as he often did, where is that useless boy. Not a kind man, not at all, always ready with a sharp slap or a cuff around the ear, always threatening the lash, but he would be angry with the others, Dichot was sure, for throwing away a life so carelessly. The useless fucking boy is not yours to kill, he imagined the man thundering, great fists balled up tight, he's the property of the demesne — but Perrin and Guillamet and the rest would stand fast, heads bowed, saying firmly, we didn't kill him, sir, we gave him to the mage. As though that was any different. Maybe they'd get a whipping tomorrow, for bringing him to the wizard and not the baron, but no one would think they'd done anything wrong. They'd be praised for being merciful, even, for not beating the changeling into a pulp first, as most would have done.
It wasn't mercy, not really. They all hated and feared the wizard: they knew what happened to the children given up to him. What happened to them in the end, anyway.
But he wasn't a changeling, he was sure he wasn't.
…Unless it was possible to be a changeling without knowing? In the stories, they always knew, they were always tricking the mortals maliciously. But what if some changelings were just as confused as their hosts?
There were no memories of the forest in his head. His father had always ordered him to keep away, and so he had. There was nothing odd in his head at all. He had been born in the same wattle-and-daub hut as all his family, learned to walk clinging to his sisters' skirts across the rushes there, learned to say his prayers kneeling with everybody else at the back of the little village church. Ordinary, commonplace things. The closest he had ever come to the fae was that… well, he supposed he had sort of known the girl given up to the wizard three or four winters ago. They were about the same age, and they had met, a few times, played as little children while their parents were at the mill or the well. But whispers had gone round for months, years, that she was a witch or a faerie before they were proven true. Strange, eerie coincidences had dogged her every step. Dichot wasn't like that; he had never done anything remarkable in his life but be surrendered like a sacrifice, first to the stables, and then to the mage.
Perrin and Guillamet hadn't listened to him or given him a chance to plead his case. Don't leave me here, please, please, I'm not…. Perrin had looked panicked, opened his mouth and begun to stammer, I'm sorry, kid - but then Guillamet had hissed don't fucking speak to it! and both of them had been gone.
And now here he was, slumped on the ground in the mud, in the cold, wrists tight behind him, arms pulled painfully behind his back, waiting to find out whatever the mage would do to him.
The same as whatever he'd done to that girl, like as not. Maybe the saints were punishing Dichot for making no effort to protect her, in his turn, though there was little he could have done.
He sniffled miserably, tried and failed to adjust his shoulders into a less painful position. The sun had long since gone down behind the trees, leaving the tower before him nothing more than a terrible, sinister shadow, jutting up from the clearing like an outstretched hand.
Children from the village went missing, sometimes. Every few years. People would say it was wolves, or outlaws, or some wicked servant of the baron. But more than anything, they said it was the wizard. And then sometimes, even more rarely, they would find a body: mangled, mutilated, twisted by unnatural enchantments. Though they might want to, though there were rebellious whispers in the tavern or the outer fields, there was nothing the serfs could actually do about it; there no more fighting against the wizard than there was against the baron, and so the village could do nothing but live in helpless fear of him.
There had been no more children gone since the wizard took that girl, though, a few years back. Maybe that was how long it had taken him to kill her. Maybe that was how long Dichot would live. He shuddered, and finally lost the battle against the lump in his throat, the burning at his eyes; ashamed, he ducked his head, tried to hide the tears as best he could against he-didn't-know-what.
But then, as though summoned by the sound — a noise.
There was a whirl of ice-cold wind, a terrible, acrid smell, a plume of black, sourceless smoke in the air before him. Dichot cowered back, choking back sobs into pertrified silence. And then all of a sudden there was a presence, somewhere in the mass of blackness: a set of yellow, staring eyes, hovering unnaturally in the air amid the roiling shadows, looking straight at him.
There was nowhere he could escape to. Still, Dichot pressed back, hose and tunic scraping uncomfortably against the ground, back pressed up hard against the post, trying to get as far away as possible. He couldn't breathe. If he inhaled some of that black smoke, what then? What would happen to him?
"Strange. came a voice from within the darkness, low and resonant and dangerous. "What is such a scrawny thing doing out here all alone?"
Dichot twisted his hands in their bonds, but it was no use, all he did was scrape his wrists, there was no getting away, nothing he could do to protect himself from what the creature would do to him…
But though the darkness drifted toward him, it made no move to attack him. Instead it twisted, warped, and coalesced into the shape of a man. Or — no, not a man. The very image of the devil on the church walls: a man with long ram's horns and long terrible claws, horrid yellow eyes, a sharply handsome face and long, elegant ringlets, dressed in strange, antique clothes, a low robe open almost to the navel despite the frosty air.
It crouched low before him, tilting its head like a curious dog or a hungry wolf. Dichot froze, terrified suddenly that it would leap at him if he moved, as though it really was a wolf. Yet it only watched him, coolly fascinated.
"Not here by choice," it mused, glancing at the bonds, raising its eyebrows. Dichot shook his head slowly, tremulously, unsure — he wasn't here by choice, but what should it matter, why would the wizard – and this creature, the wizard's…. servant? – care at all about that?
"She'll know what to do," it seemed to tell itself, and then clicked its fingers casually — and Dichot gasped in relief as he felt the ropes fall away, blood returning to his numb fingers with a sharp pins-and-needles sting. He slumped onto his side, trying to sit up, got even more mud on his tunic than before — and before he could even try to catch himself, there was suddenly a great lifting, rising sensation, strong arms around him. Not the rough handling he'd had from the other serfs, nor even the sensation of being hugged, but a certain feeling that he weighed nothing more than an apple to the creature who picked him up, that the motion was quite effortless.
The world span, shrank, with a terrible stomach-dropping vertigo, such that Dichot had only ever felt at slipping and nearly falling from the upper branches of a tree. He cried out, quite helplessly, unable to see anything but the arms of the creature, wrapped around him.
And then he was being set down gently on his feet, somewhere strange — somewhere very, very, very high.
He couldn't think about it. He couldn't do anything but crumple to the floor, gagging, trying not to throw up. Oh, god. Don't cry, don't vomit, don't beg; be brave, be obedient, be grateful, or find out how they punish wilfulness here. On the demense lazy or disobedient serfs were whipped, and those who tried to run away were hanged. Dichot wasn't stupid enough to run, though. He didn't know anyone who was. It was useless: they were bound to the land, they belonged to it just as surely as the crops that grew in it. The wizard's tower was on the land. Belonging to him was no different than belonging to the stables, not really. He knew his place.
"Hm," said the creature who had carried him there, thoughtful, and then strode away, bare clawed feet and well-muscled bronze calves marching out of Dichot's field of view. "O Great Mage!" it called, sing-song, mocking. "The village has left you a gift!"
Dichot choked on a sob, terrified to hear what he had always known made so explicit. A gift, a thing to be made use of.
A voice called out in return, distant enough that Dichot couldn't discern the words; an unusually high, light voice, perhaps, for a powerful wizard, but then, what did Dichot know of powerful wizards? All he knew was the tales of the mangled bodies found when the mage was done with them, and what men with even an tiny fraction of that power had done or threatened to do to him. Useless boy. Too afraid to move, he screwed his eyes shut, tried to ignore the aches in his body, waited for the horror, whatever it might be, to begin.
But nothing came, until he was forced to exhale the breath he had unthinkingly caught and held.
Stupid, he realised, useless to cower. It only made him look disobedient. He should get up. He should try to show deference.
He could not quite make his muscles move, but he managed at least to open his eyes, where he saw nothing but the thick, decadent sheepskin rug he had evidently landed on.
Still no footsteps came.
Alone for a moment, shaking, he folded himself up onto his knees as though he was in mass and forced himself to look around, to try and understand his surroundings. Not a cold stone chamber, as he had always imagined, glancing up at the wizard's tower in the distance: the flagstones beneath him were carpeted thick with blankets, each and every wall draped in tapestries so fine and detailed that a hundred women must have worked themselves blind to weave, and all around him was fine carved furniture, as ornate as the church lecturn. Not so here was the order and reverence that Dichot expected from such a place, though; instead everywhere were signs of life, books – books! and so many of them, such as he had never imagined even the richest monasteries to possess – laying half-open, still-threaded needles jammed into pin-cushions to rest, an ewer of something herbal steaming gently by the hearth. Most shocking of all was the bed, with its great heavy hanging canopies and feather-stuffed mattress. It would be soft, and gloriously warm, and worth probably far more than all the land that Dichot's family had ever worked. Dichot stared, open-mouthed, for a moment, forgetting even to be scared.
This must be where the wizard slept then, or perhaps the …creature? …servant? who had brought him here, or… both, maybe, if the creature slept across the threshold or by the hearth like a manservant might. But then why would they allow Dichot here, a grimy little serf accustomed only to a one-room farmers hut and then the hayloft with Perrin and Guillamet?
"-don't understand why you need me to see it," someone was huffing, coming nearby, the footsteps suddenly far closer than Dichot had expected; he didn't have enough time to stand, and maybe it was better to be kneeling, anyway; he bowed his head as the wizard entered, screwed his eyes shut, wished he wasn't so pathetic and dirty, feeling his back wrench with soreness and the rope-marks at his wrists burn again.
The mage made no sound but the sharp hiss of an indrawn breath. One, two, three seconds of silence, until Dichot could feel cold sweat begin to bead at his brow; they must be waiting for him to speak, he realised, panicked at the realisation, and just about managed to stammer in greeting,
"G-Great mage, good master -"
"What are you doing here?" blurted the high voice again, a girl's voice, clear this time, childishly surprised. Dichot glanced up through his mop of hair, shocked, and caught a glimpse of a maiden of only around his age, dressed in a fine silk robe, a drop spindle in her hands, long hair uncovered and loose around her shoulders and feet bare like his sisters readying for bed.
"Ah, you know the gift?" asked the creature cheerfully.
But the creature was not the wizard, and neither could be the maiden, surely? He recognised her, impossible as it felt, thinking of the little village girl he had known in ordinary peasant braids and shapeless smocks, the one who disappeared. He could not recall her name, humiliating as it was to admit, but he knew her, they had played together, worked at the harvest together. This was the girl that had been taken, as… a sacrifice, or a servant, or… surely not a lover? She was so young, it couldn't be. But then, here they were, with a feather bed and every sign that a powerful mage lived here. His servant, his ward, his hostage, his apprentice?
The girl stared back at him, just as he stared at her. And then, glancing down at the filth across his legs, she made a tiny dismissive gesture with her hands, and suddenly he felt himself clean and warm. Stunned, Dichot raised his hands, found that even the long-ingrained grains of dirt at his palms were gone.
But that was magic. That meant that -
"You're the wizard?"
The girl – A-something, he thought, desperately scouring his mind for the name: Amalia or Agnes or Amelot – blinked, and then suddenly scowled at him, misunderstanding.
"Well, it's not him!" she burst, motioning to the creature, who stood at her shoulder, still smiling, its monstrous spaded tail curling up curiously like that of a cat. "He's just a demon."
Dichot recoiled as though she had said he's just a rabid dog, heart lurching.
Unbothered, the creature – the demon, an actual demon – grinned wide enough to show sharp fangs and bowed mockingly low to him.
He found abruptly that he did remember her name, just as he opened his mouth to say it.
"Alis?" he croaked, feeling near enough to fainting. "You summoned a…?"
"I didn't summon him, the old mage did," the girl, the mage, Alis, grumbled as the creature gave a booming sort of cackle, folding its great stone-carved arms over its chest.
She came and sat down delicately on the desk before him, legs folded like a noblewoman riding side-saddle, entirely unafraid.
"Why are you kneeling?"
"It - he - flew with me," Dichot mumbled, tripping over his words, face hot with embarrassment, trying to explain without explaining which made me feel so sick and scared I couldn't get my feet to work.
It was strange to see Alis so comfortable, so richly dressed. Unnatural, for a serf girl to rise so high, against the great ladder of things, god's will as to the order of being. But what did he know about it, why was he so convinced he had a right to judge a powerful mage? He knew how to mask his face before power. Alis was in power now. That meant he should do as she said, show her deference, lest she have to punish him. Strange as it might feel, that was how the world worked.
She waved for him to get up, muttered, sit, sit. With no where else nearby, he hesitantly perched on the very edge of the bed, startled at how it sank beneath his weight, all the while trying to fix that careful blankness onto his face. Though she had magically cleaned him, he felt as though he must be dirtying the mattress with his very presence. But he knew better than to question his orders.
"I don't remember your name," she admitted, freckled nose scrunched up. "You were shy, you had so many brothers…"
"H-Henrichart, mage," he tried, even though no one but the priest at the baptismal font had ever called him that – and then, shrinking beneath her sceptical look, gave in and said, "…But everybody calls me Dichot."
"What were you doing out there, Dichot?" she asked, gentling her voice a little — but looking at him with eyes so sharp and cunning that he remembered, all of a sudden, why the whole village had spent years calling her a witch. Too clever, his mother had said after she disappeared, disapproving. Far too clever, that girl. "What happened?"
He hesitated, glancing between her and the watching, yellow-eyed creature. Her enforcer, he supposed, or her bodyguard, since she was clearly entirely capable of using magic on her own. It was enormous, and so strong, with such terrible claws and teeth; a beating from that thing would hurt — if she even needed it to beat him, if she couldn't do worse just with a flick of her finger, curse him.
He'd better not lie. If he was caught, what then? But he couldn't tell the truth, either, too shameful, too dangerous. If she knew he had performed an act of spellcraft – if he had; he still wasn't sure – she might want to visit whatever torments upon him as the old mage had inflicted on all those village children found twisted and bent and dead.
The creature frowned at him, tilting its head, and he felt his breath catch in his throat. He'd been silent too long.
"The baron's man took me from the village to work at the stables," he began hesitantly. "Th-they said, I was the fourth son, so -"
Alis pulled a face, a sympathetic grimace. She would have known what the baron's men were like. Desperate, he tried to catch hold of that sympathy, to use it.
"I can be useful, mage," he begged without begging. "I'm good with animals, I can take care of your horses, or, or, or whatever you -"
"You don't have to do that," she cut in immediately, earnestly. "And I don't have horses."
He blinked at her: the wizard had been seen these past few years riding around on a great big black draught, everybody knew that. He hadn't seen one outside the tower, sure, but if the demon could spell him up here, then it certainly could do the same for a horse.
"Birhartura," she said casually, and the creature snorted like a stallion and stamped a single, suddenly black, hoofed, foot in illustration. Dichot flinched back, stunned, as it transformed back into an ordinary human foot before his eyes. The demon was a shapeshifter, then — so it could be anywhere, at any time, watching him, and he wouldn't know — oh, god — don't cry, be grateful, be good —
"Do you have to give out my name so freely?" bickered the demon, casually. She turned to scowl at it, thankfully paying Dichot no heed as they argued.
"I gave him mine."
"It's different."
"No it's not."
He probably had sounded above his station, Dichot thought, stomach twisting in panic. Offering to do skilled work like a free man, instead of asking the mage what need she had of him; it wasn't his place. He wasn't that good with the horses – useless boy, after all – and he was always getting slapped for spending too much time petting or braiding them and not enough time mucking or sweeping. She probably would only want him for drudge work, things too lowly for her to bother with by magic; he could do drudge work, he didn't mind. He had only hoped not to be used for whatever the old mage had needed children for, for whatever he must have tried to do to Alis.
"A demon's name is the root of summoning, binding, and I have no desire at all to be summoned once we are done with our business, so I would thank you not to -"
"Oh, shut up."
She turned back to look at Dichot, and though her words had been harsh, the look on her face was bright, amused, soft enough that he found it in him to croak out,
"I'm sorry."
For getting above himself. She only clicked in her throat, though, disagreeing.
"For overhearing this one's name? It's no matter."
He hadn't actually heard the demon’s name, in any case — Bernhardt, was it? – but tried to bow his head and accept the forgiveness, too nervous to point out his actual mistake, to risk her irritation. Still, he saw the demon frown at him from behind her, like a dark lurking shadow, a guilty conscience.
"But what happened, Dichot? How did you get from the stables to here?"
"Tied up to a post, outside in the mud," murmured the demon (Bern?) darkly, disapprovingly. Dichot didn't dare to hope that it thought he ought to be treated any better; he hoped he had not broken some law by trespassing on the tower without permission, even unwillingly.
"I… I didn't mean to," he heard himself say weakly. "There was… there was a cart, slipping in the mud, in the rain, and I… I stopped it."
"Stopped it?" The demon raised its eyebrows at him, showing even more of its awful yellow wolf-eyes. "With your puny adolescent strength, which they thought must be magic? Yes?"
"I stopped it without touching it," Dichot confessed in a whisper. "I just…"
He raised a trembling hand, splayed his fingers, just as he had earlier. Time did not stop, on this occasion; nothing happened at all. He lowered it hastily, ashamed both of the seeming-magic and the raw red ropeburn around his wrist where it poked out from his tunic sleeve. Alis and the demon Bernhardt exchanged a meaningful look.
"But I'm not, a-a-a, a changeling," he burst, pushing down the part of him that had begun to wonder if maybe, just maybe, he was.
"We never said you were," Alis interrupted — and maybe she was even telling the truth, because she seemed utterly calm, unworried. "I'm not, either. Birhartura said so."
"Deep magic wells up in mysterious places," intoned the creature gravely. "Sometimes even in the bodies of scrawny little mortals. But why did it matter so much that a cart not fall, anyway?"
"There were little children under it," he explained helplessly. "I couldn't just…"
"Kind," pronounced the demon confidently, loudly, so suddenly that Dichot twitched back. It wasn't a compliment to Dichot, though: its horned head snapped toward Alis, testing, its monstrous eyes scanning her expression for confirmation or agreement.
"Yes," she said automatically, without looking back. The demon Bernhardt looked very pleased with itself for identifying it, nodding in satisfaction.
"Demons do not have 'kindness'," it explained primly to Dichot. "I'm never sure what it is or is not."
Alis scoffed. "Oh, please. He has it, he just doesn't understand it."
It raised its eyebrows, but didn't disagree. Instead, it checked her face again and mused,
"To abandon a life-saving boy to die: unkind?"
"Very," she agreed, brow furrowing, turning back to Dichot.
"Alis will be kind to you," the demon interjected to him, before she could speak. "She doesn't even hex the mice away from the flour, even though I have shown her, they carry all sorts of -"
"If you care so much about pests," Alis told it casually, in the tone of an old, much-repeated argument."Then you can go get the bats out of the attic, they're roosting again."
"No," it intoned, grinning. "You do it."
"It's your job, you said you'd -"
"I will vaporise the bats," it offered, still grinning, its voice dark and resonant and unnatural enough for Dichot to shudder.
"Don't vaporise anything! Just chase them out!"
It disappeared into the air, chuckling to itself in its frightening way — and Alis huffed to herself, as though it was nothing more than a lazy fellow-serf, and not a wilful demon of god-only-knew what power. Either she caught a little of his scandalised expression, or her thoughts just went the same way, because she explained ruefully,
"I don't command him. We have a deal: he looks after me, I let him use my magic. He's free to leave, if he wants. I won't hold anyone in bondage."
Dichot curled his hands together, lowered his head, looked at his feet. Suddenly the richness of the chamber was only overwhelming, frightening.
"Even a demon?" he asked hoarsely, meaning, even me?
He had always been clear as to his purpose, his place in the world. He was a body to work. That it could change so easily felt terrifying — and so too was the idea of an unbound demon, surely a concept too terrible to think of, a phrase from apocalyptic prophecy. But the thing was here, and it hadn't hurt him, had seemed content to linger quietly behind Alis, like a servant or a brother.
Perhaps Dichot could do the same.
Alis only nodded seriously.
"We killed the old wizard," she whispered, white-faced beneath her freckles, grave. "He hurt me; he was going to kill me and feed me to the demon he summoned. But the demon and I conspired, and we chose another way."
He stared back at her for a few seconds, trying to understand, to make any of this make sense with the world he had known his entire life.
"S-So," he tried, found his throat too dry to speak, swallowed with a click and tried again. "So, I would not serve you?"
She shook her head.
"Not as a servant. Not bound to me, as Birhartura is not bound to me, nor I to the baron. Not anymore."
It was impossible, to imagine her free, to imagine himself free. But, then…
…A year and a day, said a rebellious little voice in Dichot's mind, usually quickly quashed, for even whispering the phrase was a good way to get yourself beaten. But that was the law, his older brothers had told him in secret: if you escaped, if you ran away to a city and lived away from the barony for a year and a day, you would be free. None of them were stupid enough to actually try – and be hanged for it, if they were caught – but they believed it to be the law, and they wondered sometimes, when somebody disappeared, if it wasn't the wizard, or the wolves, if maybe that person would make it a year and a day. Alis had been away from the baron's service for far longer than that — still on his land, but out of his power. She was free.
He could be, too, if he stayed. If she let him.
He opened his mouth to find some question to ask, to understand what deal the demon could possibly have made with her – and then, with a puff of smoke that startled Dichot nearly off his seat, the demon in question reappeared, announcing self-satisfiedly,
"I scared out all the bats, and five lost pigeons, and even also found time to make a place for the boy to sleep. All hail my ingenuity!"
Alis turned to frown at it.
"A place for-"
"He needs to sleep, yes?" countered the thing, the unbound, free demon, a monster that could have consumed them in the blink of an eye. "We have discussed this. All humans need rest. And food, and entertainment, and water, and oxygen, and nitrates, and companionship, and sunlight, and exercise, and-"
"Alright," sighed Alis, cutting it off. It tutted disapprovingly, took a small step toward Dichot and ignored him shrinking back.
"Isn't she cruel, little stableboy? Forgetting to find you a bed, even after she magicked up such a fine one for herself."
"We were going to talk about his future here, if he wants it," she objected, eyes flicking back over to Dichot's face, trying to catch any hints on his thoughts on the matter. But he had none but exhausted confusion and shock, and the demon would not hear of it.
"Later, Alis. In the morning maybe. For now, I think, rest, the more of it the better."
He was exhausted, far too much so to make any decision at all, if that truly was what Alis was asking of him. The demon stretched out a hand to him, motioning that he should get up, showing its terrible claws — and then, perhaps anticipating somehow that Dichot's trembling as he obediently stood had something to do with those claws, it changed. Still in the form of a man, with much the same face and build as it had worn before, but absent its horns, its tail, its fangs and claws and yellow wolf eyes. For all that he knew it was stupid – the devil lies, after all – and that the creature still lingered underneath the normality, the sight eased some of the tension in his shoulders, let him breathe easier.
"Come."
He did manage to step toward the demon, this time, to control his fear — but hesitated, turned back long enough to say to Alis gently, meaning it,
"Thank you."
And the furrow between her brows smoothed out a little, enough for her to smile back.
"'Course. G’night, then, Dichot. Henrichart."
Daring, he let himself meet her joke with his own.
"Goodnight, Alissende."
She snorted, and sensing that he had done well, he let the demon lead him up through a tight, winding little staircase, advising him with a scoff,
"Don't look out the windows when we come to one, stableboy. Not unless you're feeling brave."
He had no desire to do so. Even without looking, Dichot could tell that they were high in the air and climbing ever-higher, higher than he had been before. The stone was still firm beneath him, time-worn smooth in the centre of each step, and he tried to cling to that: it had held firm all these years, like as not it would hold firm now, it would not collapse and send him tumbling into the darkening sky. Surely not.
The demon Bernhardt walked before him, rather than merely flying or apparating, and he tried to be grateful for that, for whatever consideration that spoke to. And perhaps – since it so evidently could fly – if he were somehow to fall, it would catch him. He has kindness, he just doesn't understand it, Alis had said.
Still likely best not to test it.
He had tried to tell himself he would humbly bow his head and be appreciative of whatever the wizard and her demon had chosen to give him, even if it was only more cold straw — even though he'd suspected, knowing Alis, that they would be a little more generous than that. Seeing the room the demon swung open with a casual flick of its wrist, though -
"I can't sleep here!" he squeaked.
It peered at him, confused.
"Why? Is it too small?"
Dichot boggled, struck dumb by the utter incongruity of the question. It was a small, cozy space, laid thick with tapestries just as the room downstairs had been, with a little brazier for warmth and an enormous feather bed the same size as Alis's, surely large enough to fit an entire family.
"It's too big," he managed finally, embarrassed to be forced to state something so obvious aloud. "I don't deserve -"
The demon Bernhardt motioned dismissively for silence.
"Nonsense: too big is not a problem. You will not fall out this way."
Was this where Bernhardt slept, too? Would they be expected to share, as servants often were? He could not help a sudden wariness at the thought: this was a stranger, a grown man, and everybody knew that demons were seducers. He was a boy without the protection of a family, he wasn't stupid. The stablemaster has warned him, terrified him, had said that if any of the other stableboys or grooms tried anything then Dichot should tell him and he'd cut their cocks off – but that there was nothing that any of them could do to the baron or his men, if it came to it, so Dichot should watch himself. Watch was all he could do, now, though — the demon was far stronger than him, and he didn't know what it wanted.
"Mammals," it informed him impatiently, entirely out of nowhere. Dichot glanced up to stare at it again, confused.
"…Good master?"
"Mammals have sex." it clarified. "The kind of sex you’re thinking of, anyway. Humans: mammals. I am not a mammal. I may take the appearance of one, if I like, but I have no desire to do any of that. It's disgusting."
Having seen farm animals at it, Dichot wholeheartedly agreed. Still, shrinking back, he tried timidly,
"T-The priests say that demons are tempters."
The demon Bernhardt wrinkled its nose.
"No. Maybe only to eat whoever falls for it? If they're the lazy sort? But no. We take no pleasures of the flesh. Especially not I, when Alis would so object."
Dichot hesitantly took a step forward, let his fingers brush over the sheepskin on the edge of the – absurd, enormous – bed. It was soft, dense. It would be very warm. His body still ached from being bound to the post outside, desperate for rest. But -
"Except eating sacrifices?" he whispered, reckless.
"Well, certainly, but not the flesh," it objected casually – and then, seeing that he didn't understand, "Magic. We consume the magical essence: it's just that the meat is what contains the magic. The blood, usually."
Dichot frowned, thinking of what he knew of witchcraft and necromancy, the things the wizard had always been said to do.
"Don't people sacrifice goats and chickens?"
"Why do humans assume they're the only beings with magic?" it demanded, seemingly of the air. "Are you all so very dim?"
Dichot had the sense that he was being called stupid; he felt his face flush.
"And don't call me good master." added the demon, pulling its face into a grimace — showing, now, blessedly ordinary, blunt teeth. "You may call me - what is it that you think my name is? Bertrand?"
"…Bernhardt?"
Was it not Bernhardt? The demon shrugged easily.
"Yes, Bernhardt. Good enough. I'm no master of anything, believe you me."
"If you and Alis are not to be masters, though," Dichot blurted, overwhelmed by it all, ashamed of how little he could make sense of it. "What do you want me here for, if not for work or blood or bedsport, or -"
It tutted, stepped closer to him so that it crowded him fully into the room, words dying warily on his lips.
"Alis wishes only to be kind," it says. "I know her mind, child, trust me in this. As for me, my interests are a little different — but amenable to hers, I think. And not frightening for you."
It smiled; not predatory, but small and mischevious, like Dichot's cousin trying to make him laugh in matins. So strange to think of now that he almost giggled.
"I will not say as much to Alis, for humans do not quite unlearn their silly prejudices and superstitions so quickly," it whispered, "But they weren't entirely wrong, you know, to call you changeling."
His stomach lurched, and he opened his mouth to plead for it to be otherwise, horrified — but the demon kept going despite it, crouching down to below his height.
"Not your fault, and not exactly a changeling, obviously. Too few teeth, too many internal organs. You're too solid to be proper fae. But an ancestor, someone… great, great-great, great-great-great, on your mother's side. Someone down that line bargained successfully with a faerie, once upon a time." It tutted, half-disapproving, half-impressed. "Not a wise thing to do, as a rule. But if it turns out well, once in a while, miracles may happen. Do you understand?"
"Miracles like… stopping time around a runaway cart?" Dichot asked hesitantly, unsure if that was the answer that it wanted.
"Precisely," it hissed. "It's not like what Alis can do. It's… more fickle, than that. Which is a very interesting thing indeed for me to witness."
It crooked a finger downward, where she must have been tucked into bed — and though it didn’t seem to mean it, the flame in the brazier flickered with its every little gesture.
"She is one of the most naturally-gifted mages this silly little planet has ever seen. And you are a normal little boy with a fae bargain somewhere in his blood. Magic is magic, and such powers will out eventually, if you wait around her."
Dichot still did not quite understand. But the demon maybe-Bernhardt stood up satisfiedly, brushing off its knees.
"She wishes to be very good and responsible and kind, and I have promised I will help her, and so I will, and you can too, if you want. And you should rest and be well; there is no point in treating you badly. There will be peace. But there will be a little bit of chaos, too, from your faerie magic." It smirked even wider. "This will be very amusing."
There were worse things he could be than an amusement, he supposed. And… well, if it meant that they would only be curious or pleased at acts of magic, rather than appalled…
Abruptly he wished desperately to go home – really home, his father's house, not the stables that had taken him. This morning he would have said it was an impossibility, but maybe if he was pleasing to her, Alis could find a way to help him, to let him see his family again without being shunned as a runaway or a faerie or both. A year and a day, he told himself, trying once again – as ever – to be grateful, to be good, not to cry. If he stayed here with this wizard-maiden and this shape-changing beast and their strange kindness a year and a day, he could be free. It didn't feel as hard to imagine now as it did earlier.
If he was being grateful, he ought to say it aloud.
"Th-Thank you," he managed, with a little clumsy nod of a bow, polite as he could. When he looked up, the demon was giving him one of those uncomfortably-sharp stares again, like it was looking into his very soul, like it somehow knew his thoughts.
"Not used to wanting things, are you?" it noted, unceremonious as anything, quite ignoring the way Dichot froze in response.
It pulled back the bed coverings with a casual flick of one finger, turned to leave.
"Ah, well. Rest up, stableboy. There's time to learn."