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Coen didn't want to think of when he'd last stopped to bathe.
Now that every moment had become one in which he needed to be moving, the idea of halting for simple necessities and maintenance had begun to feel pointless. Selfish and unimportant.
Except he'd have a few hours to wait before his blade would be finished at the smiths. It needed to be sharper, and judging by the wide and terrified eyes of the innkeeper he had too great an amount of blood on his leathers and face to talk to people, so perhaps he needed to be sharper too.
With a return to Svatrau his next destination he had considered he ought to do something about that. It wouldn't be so discreet, walking into the city walls looking like a butcher. Especially now that he was one.
So, for the first time in more days than he could remember, he'd paid for some privacy and some simple things to bathe with.
Coen took stock of the small room, an uncomfortable looking bed he didn't need, a rat scuttling from beneath it and scurrying across the floor before darting under the door, and sighed.
“Not all bad,” Ambrus piped up in his skull, “at least they provided a complimentary meal?”
“Very funny,” Coen replied idly as he moved over to the bed to sit, and placed down the bowl of warm water and cloths beside him.
He felt something like a ripple in his mind, which was a strange sensation, accompanied by a small whistle of an inhale - and understood instinctively that Ambrus was surprised.
Yes, paid for as much privacy as he could get with a vrakhir in his mind, that was.
“What?” Coen asked, as he started unlacing his boot.
“You replied,” Ambrus said, the surprise still evident in his tone, and made a sound as if he'd cleared his throat, “you don't usually.”
Coen tilted his head from side to side as he considered his boot - the trawl through the marshes hadn't done much to help his state - these needed repairing too.
“Well I'm usually focusing on trying not to die. Besides, if I started responding to your contributions around others I would look a lunatic,” he replied, “being as I'm the only one who can hear you.”
Not to mention that admitting to another that he had someone's soul stowing away in his body would be beyond his own understanding to explain - let alone that it was the soul of a Boyar, no less - and he wasn't altogether sure how he felt about admitting it to himself, either.
I let him in because he asked for my mercy. I didn't even really know what that meant. What any of it means.
I'm not sure I'm ready to understand it either.
Ambrus had gone quiet again, so Coen resumed the process of removing his sodden boots and unfastening his undershirt, all the while trying really quite hard not to think about the fact that there was now a man in his head who could see everything he saw whilst he undressed.
After a moment the voice spoke again.
“Thank you,” Ambrus said.
Coen paused.
Something about how he'd said that was different. A little like the way that sometimes he'd say his name to caution him from danger, tinged with something unexpected - serious and sincere.
Heaven knows he had every right to ignore him; he'd done more for Ambrus than he owed him, which was less than nothing. Besides, Ambrus's cautions were just as much about saving himself, well, what was left of him, as they were about being helpful to Coen.
Still, just a dawn or so ago he'd found himself dropping down into a courtyard filled with monsters in a situation he didn't understand and had frozen for a moment, some primal, human fear still in him that his new nature hadn’t quite killed yet.
It had been exactly this voice that had spoken up - invoking his name - telling him to be careful and not to let himself get killed - that had made his feet move again.
He'd not replied then either.
“For answering?” Coen asked.
I'm talking to an empty room.
“Yes,” Ambrus said, his tone picking up its more usual haughty bravado again as he continued, “not that I care if you don't, even if I am being very helpful. It's only that - when you do - it…”
He hesitated.
“It feels like I still exist.”
Coen felt a pit in his stomach, which he didn't welcome. Now wasn't the time for pitying him.
Wasn't that how they'd ended up in this situation in the first place? Him and the wretched, damned soul he'd offered sanctuary even though he didn't deserve it, because he'd asked for help?
As much as he hated to admit it, some part of him did, though.
Every day that he cut down scores of men with claws and teeth and drank the blood of others, the less he'd be able to look across Ambrus's monstrosities and claim himself cut from a different cloth. His hands may have been riddled with blood, but mine are not clean.
“Oh, you do,” Coen replied dryly, pushing past that feeling, “you keep reminding me. You're not particularly easy to ignore.”
“I never have been,” Ambrus said, sounding rather proud, and Coen kind of hated that he could picture his face exactly as he did. A very unfair image for his brain to conjure when it wasn't something he could punch this time.
Coen had put off the rest of this process as long as he could, but there was also no getting around it either.
“I'm going to bathe now,” he said, “please don't be witty about it.”
“What’s to be witty about? It's well time you did,” Ambrus supplied.
Coen exhaled, frustrated.
“Silence would be better,” he said.
“Right. Quiet as a convent,” Ambrus replied, in a tone that didn't make Coen want to punch him any less.
I shouldn't have replied, Coen lamented as he set about peeling off his britches, now he's really never going to shut up.
Still.
What he'd said lingered a bit as Coen did his best to bathe with this meager cloth and water, scrubbing mud and blood from his skin and focusing on the sensations of scraping clean. His mind flitted with images of forgotten vrakhir abominations caked in just the same in the mire as he'd ended their misery.
It feels like I still exist.
Like I still exist.