Chapter Text
Returning to the Tevinter party scene felt like slipping on an old pair of boots; the way they moulded to his form, the worn-down edge where his feet slipped into old habits of leaning to one side, the thinned spots on the soles where he always tread, never thinking anything of it until he could feel the rugged gravel beneath his heels. Although he had isolated himself from it in a kind of rebellious despair, those learned habits—his walk, his voice, his seneschal affectation—came creeping back like callouses.
Octavian split his attention into parts, which brought a level of difficulty to the usual socialite rituals that he might've been missing before his self-administered seclusion. Maybe if he'd had to babysit a socially-awkward tag-along four years ago, he'd never have stopped attending senate parties. The ever-present stress of working the crowds, keeping Lucanis nearby, keeping the xenophobes in check and their appearances at their utmost—God, it was a rush. It made his mind work faster, made his hands itch, made his body feel alive again, even temporarily—and then, he was reaching for another drink, or slipping outside to have a smoke, and he was reminded again of the risks of feeling things.
He surveyed the crowd again, sipped his brandy, worked down the mental list of who to avoid—pinched Lucanis's sleeve to usher him along as they side-stepped a flushed-faced money-lender on his way to the buffet—and slithered their path toward their next target. It was their third party that week, and they were making excellent progress.
Through a gap in the crowd, he caught sight of heraldry—a deep azure brocade and brassy fringe. Its owner, already entrenched in a spirited discussion with a pair of senators Octavian had already greeted, brushed her ringleted fringe to one side, twirled a strand, pursed her painted lips. Octavian slipped through the crowd before she could spot him.
"—By Hessarian, don't even get me started."
Octavian side-stepped himself toward another conversation, a familiar voice catching him in his stride. Nessus Nero and his sycophantic crowd of bankers were huddled around one corner of the dancefloor, his voice carrying over the music, eliciting obedient chuckles at every quip. Octavian drifted through the crowd, meandering toward the nearest wall as if to get a vantage point of the floor; all the while, he listened to the discussion taking place.
"Childeric is a fat-faced lunatic, if you ask me. It's a wonder his wife has anything to do with him," said Nero; a chorus of chortles soon followed. "And he's a tight-lipped miser; I don't know which is worse."
"At least lunatics know where to put their coin," said one of his lackeys; a gaunt man swimming in green silks. A few polite giggles followed.
"Instead of sitting on it," Nero agreed. "At least we know why there's no heirs. Too busy being spent by the roll of silver up his ass." Cackling, too loud to be genuine, drowned out the next snide comment to cross his grinning lips.
Octavian's attention was robbed from their quarry by a shift in Lucanis's posture. He had gone ramrod straight, hands flexing into fists, eyes wide and darting across the floor. Octavian gave a subtle glance—displeased with their lack of privacy—and whispered in his ear, "Go find somewhere quiet and collect yourself." Lucanis squeezed his eyes shut, nodded, and hurried to the nearest door. Just as Octavian began scheming their recovery, he heard his name called—
"I never thought I'd see the day!" Nero had pushed through his gaggle of supporters and now approached with his arms held open wide. "When I heard you'd gone away to the country, I all but wept."
"I'm sure." Octavian plastered on placid look. "Have you been enjoying the party so far?" He drummed his finger on the edge of his glass.
Nero made quick work of scanning him head to toe. Then, it was back to cordiality. "Hardly; I've been hearing so many rumours about this new liegeman of yours, but I see he's nowhere to be found."
Octavian shrugged. "The night's still young, and I'm sure he'll return soon."
"He'd better." Nero wiggled his index finger. "I'm eager to get a look. Once I catch a scent, I simply cannot let it go."
"You've been spending too much time with the hounds," Octavian teased, baring the white of his teeth just long enough to sip his prop wine. "It explains the gout." Nero's easy-going smile twitched.
As if some other, less pleasant, part of himself roused at the sound of Octavian's mockery, Nero stood a little straighter, his breath hitching—then he leapt right back to his easy affectation again, eyes burning with something less than kindness. "I hear you came by a new inheritance," said Nero, his tone needling, searching for the quickest reprisal.
"Which one is that?" Octavian refused to do the legwork of setting himself up on a spit for Nero to roast; if he was so intent to make a fool of him—as his barely-concealed glower suggested—he'd need to drag out every inch of purchase from Octavian's greedy little talons.
Nero forced a smile. He looked to his gaggle of cronies for support: a haughty laugh, an eye-roll, a disbelieving scoff. "You've forgotten the name of it already? I'm sure Magister Evicar's family—rest his soul—would be mortified. Some have suggested you weaseled it out from under his heir in a… less-than-courteous transaction." Stiff chuckles followed. The next time Nero glanced back, his audience-members were all looking askance, pretending to sip their drinks, avoiding the implication of foul play.
"Some, yes." Nero snapped his attention right back to Octavian, whose easy smile hadn't erred an inch. "But not you," said Octavian, "naturally."
"No, of course not." Nero parroted, the lie transparent to them both, but compulsory nonetheless. Despite the faltering of his appearances, Nero continued. "I only worry that it'll never sell—you… weren't intending to keep it, I presume?" When Octavian said nothing—only continued to sip his drink, knowing his participation in the dialogue was optional at best—Nero carried on in his monologue. "No man of decent repute would risk spurning his honour for an acreage that small."
When Nero went quiet, hoping for another fingerhold to drag by, Octavian took a breath, kept his smile pleasant and placid, and nodded. "Quite," he said.
Nero squinted at him, impatience swelling with each second's passage, a prolonged silence drawing itself out—he expected satisfaction, explanation; some foolish assumption he could parade around, some flaw to denigrate him over. But Octavian just stood there. Waiting. Refusing to tiptoe the fine line of his wrath, allowing them to bathe in the stagnation, Nero's last words still echoing, painting him like a dictatorial fool. His audience fidgeted, trying to separate themselves from the tone they'd set, fouling the air of the party all around them and drawing ired looks.
Before Nero could cook up some accusation to grill him with, Octavian finally spoke. "That you can't conceive of any uses for land beyond their being financial assets, Nessus, is not my failing." Nero straightened up, face flashing in ugly disdain; his lips parted to voice protest, but Octavian interjected, "—I'm not finished, thank you. People need to eat, and the land provides. Someone will always buy."
Stunned to silence, Nero exhaled a chuckle. One of the bankers at his arm sank their white-gloved fingers into his embroidered sleeve, urging him to step back—Nero shook them off without a glance. He took a half-stride closer, pride bristling ever further at Octavian's judgemental once-over and the upturn of his nose.
Unspoken insults compressed under Nero's next words, tightening their every syllable into a sharp whisper—"You would split apart an ancient birthright and shill it to those titleless country bumpkins?" He spread his arms wide, gesturing to the room surrounding them. "Have you no self-preservation? No understanding of our magisterial responsibility?" Octavian's unaffected looks only made Nero step closer, his voice lower further, his hands fix into fists; they itched to grab Octavian by the ear and drag him into the next room like a misbehaving disciple. "You would be inviting these half-breeds to flood the senate seats! They have no idea what it takes to be one of us—they cannot even begin to understand!"
"Then I suggest you lodge your complaints with the Archon." Octavian dipped his head in a grave-looking nod—he didn't dare smile, but the lightness of his posture was close enough to mockery as it was. "Perhaps you would find more comfort in the stability of your station if you invested less importance in the superiority of your birth, and more effort in bringing something of substance to the court. You're an intelligent man, and far more fortunate than I in riches and friendships; I'm sure you'll think something up."
Octavian side-stepped, skimming Nero's look of utter hatred, his brewing silence, his shaking hands. Then, Octavian dipped into a brief and casual bow. "If you'll excuse me, I should collect my liegeman. Until next time, my lord." He straightened back up, held his head high, and looked down his nose. "I wish you more fitting quarry for the remainder of the evening."
Lucanis sped down an isolated hallway, vision narrowed to a pin-prick, his breathing rapid, constrained by his knit-shut lips. His soles struck the marble floors more loudly than he preferred—it announced his presence, then his harried departure, past dwindling crowds of partygoers and groups of twos and threes that had eloped from the festivities to carry out their own entertainment in alcoves and private rooms. The place was sprawling: each time he span around, looking for signage, he accidentally locked eyes with someone and had to nod, flash a flinching smile, and scurry away.
Eventually—after a lifetime of searching—he came upon a wide-open lavatory entrance, abandoned except for a pair of women tidying their hair in the polished reflections of a silver-plated column. Lucanis avoided looking their way, walked a straight line to the remotest corner, and planted himself at the edge of a decorative, stone-lined pool, where lillies and magelight candles bobbed on the water's surface. He buried his head in his hands, his knees brought up to his elbows, his eyes squeezed shut.
Bleary visions kept repeating themselves in his mind, a mix of reignited terror and Spite's feverish insistences—see? He was one of them; they should grab the nearest thing and split his skull open! Lucanis shook his head, hoping those urges would be shaken out too. He recalled Nero's face through the bars of his cell, the sound of his baritone interceding on Zara's, their calculated descriptions, the scrawl of a pen on parchment while Lucanis lay incapacitated but still blinking, breathing, aware. Back in the lavatory again, Lucanis shook his arms out, reassuring himself that it was only a memory, and that his body was once more his to control.
His throat felt too thick from nausea and fear for him to swallow; it was as if his heart had leapt up into it, thundering away, cowering from the sudden reminder that Nero's reappearance had given him. He had trained for months—why wasn't he ready to face it? Lucanis should've been out there, in the fray, plotting his revenge; not here, cowering by the toilets, trying to steady his breath. Was this a new spell the Venatori had put him under?
Lucanis scooped up a handful of the water to splash his face with. He slid his hand over his mouth, jaw hanging slack, breaths finally slowing once he allowed himself to satisfy that urge to heave and gasp—even if only in silence. His heart still raced, but it had tucked itself, neatly, back inside his ribcage where it belonged; he could swallow again, unimpeded.
Spite still simmered in his discontent. Up, the demon insisted, find him! As if Nero stood any chance of getting away from him, in this life or the next. No, he was not ready yet—but he would be. For the time being, Lucanis would regather his composure, find Octavian, and tell him what had happened.
"You." Lucanis thought it was Spite who had spoken aloud at first; the word struck his ears with the same demonic rasp. Then, he looked up—saw the man standing there, one of his jacket sleeves pinned to compensate for a missing hand—and felt the itchy twinge of magic as he motioned his other, blocking off the lavatory entrance.
Lucanis rose to his feet. He recognized the Venatori pin on the man's chest. As did Spite. "You know me?" he asked, casing the room, and his opponent, for threats.
"The Demon of Vyrantium," said the man, eyes glowing with an otherworldly yellow tinge. "But you haven't been that for a long time, have you?" He stepped closer, ignoring Lucanis's careful side-steps and forging a steady path straight toward him. "Spite."
"Who are you?" Lucanis was still stalling. He hadn't been permitted to bring daggers; he'd need to make do.
"We were a guard, once." Another step closer. "Now, we are Fear."
"You were at the Ossuary?" Lucanis asked. From a column hook, he picked up a metal lantern, its core burning bright with heatless flame.
Fear didn't answer—he kept striding closer. "You ruined everything." He withdrew a knife from a sheath within the folds of his jacket. "Zara's favourite toy. She'll be missing you."
Spite flooded forth, taking them out of their defensive stance; he readied the lantern in one hand and closed the distance, letting Fear attempt a slash just to close his hand inside the lantern's door. Tearing off the metal cage left both demons—in their wearied bodies—without weapons.
"Where. Is. She?" Spite barked, voice melding with Lucanis's, flickering in and out of control.
"You'll soon find out." There was no flickering in Fear; his control was absolute, directing his borrowed form with the clunky, inhuman movements of a puppet.
Spite bore their teeth; he lunged for the other demon with the intent to catch it in his jaw and shake it until its neck snapped. Lucanis resisted, fighting to ask more questions, to go along with capture if it meant getting closer to their ultimate target. But the demon wouldn't listen. Spite split the skin of their knuckles against the tile, missing their opponent's head by a hair, smearing blood all over—Lucanis peered through just long enough to eke out another sentence—"Why me?"—while Spite lurched him out of the way of a brick swinging for his head.
"You were—" Fear growled— "Stronger than the rest!" Fistfuls of little glass bottles smashed on the floor; when they clashed again, falling back to the tile, Spite cut the skin of their knees on the broken shards. Lucanis's muscle memory won out over the stranger's stronger—unpracticed—body when they struggled to surmount one another on the slippery floor. Spite managed to gain the upper hand—to straddle a chest—and spread the sticky crimson of their knuckles all across Fear's gaunt cheeks, jamming its head sideways, dozens of glass chips embedding into the fragile skin of its face.
Fear forced them off, Lucanis's shoulders striking the tile with a bruising slam! and his head stopping—by Spite's intervention—only a hair's breadth from the same. They rolled onto their side, head spinning, rolling away from another thrown brick before Lucanis could gain his senses. "Why not kill me?" He demanded, voice ragged—he would've rather died than be this; he had expected to die; a better Crow would have—
He grasped for a bucket and washcloth tucked in behind a potted palm. Fear rushed up behind him, scrambling on hands and knees—"I don't know!" It hissed back—the bucket connected with its jaw, sending it sideways, and its body followed, laying out against the floor. In the flurry, the bucket went rolling; in Fear's grasp, it flew for Lucanis's head, only to be blocked by his curled-up arm. Fear hounded him again, shoving Lucanis back against the floor littered in broken glass, slicing small ribbons out of his dress-jacket. Lucanis struggled, smacking, elbowing, kneeing, jabbing, wrestling with the forearm pinned against his throat, every lashing movement over-exaggerated by the demon pulling on his limbs, wedging glass deeper into his scalp and shoulders.
As Lucanis grew faint from lack of air, his control slackened, and Spite forced Fear away again. The demons gnashed their teeth at one another, both their bodies bloodied and weak. When Fear lunged again, Lucanis took over long enough—sucking down one great gasp of air—to crack it in the head with a brick. Its body fell still against the tile, but caution kept him going; Lucanis brought the brick down again, two, then three times, using its sharp edge to break through bone until the demon's possessed form was crowned with little more than unrecognizable gore.
Still gasping for air, Lucanis pushed himself away, crawling until he could prop himself up against a column and get some semblance of control over himself. Fear no longer moved—but in the long, drawn-out silence, busied by the drumming of his heart, Lucanis could not convince himself he was safe.
His mind was a rush of panic, his thoughts and Spite's blending together in one thick sludge of anger, grief, confusion, impatience, hatred. Lucanis pressed his head back into the column, feeling the blood pool against it, seeping from the scratches hidden under his hair. "He could have brought us to Zara," he whispered, frustration a knot in his throat. Six-and-a-half years' worth of terror, of anticipation, washed over him. Tears bit at his eyes.
Lucanis scooped a handful of water from the pool again, flinching when his bloodied hands left clouds of pink. Then, he returned them to the water again, washing his split knuckles, scraping the dried-down flecks of blood with his nails.
"Looks like I missed the festivities." A woman's voice made him freeze. He glanced up at her past his brow, hoping that such bloodshed would not get him tossed out—he prepared some excuse in the back of his mind as she approached, her layers of blue-and-brass robes sweeping the floor, the bejewelled tips of her slippers appearing at every stride and sending Spite into a fit. She stepped over the body before him, tracking no blood along the tile despite leaving a footprint in the puddle.
She stopped short of where Lucanis sat. "You must be the Antivan." He remembered to fix his expression into something less distrusting after the fact. "Your master and I have a history."
"He is not my master," he said, speaking at a murmur.
She let out a humourless laugh. "Sentimental nonsense. You go where he goes. You do what he says. He may not rule your body or your mind, but your time is his to command. And what is a life, if not time?"
Lucanis leaned his head back against the column again, eyes maintaining their open state for the time being—but only barely. They fluttered, protesting the exhaustion cast over him like a sheet. "What do you want?" he asked, finished with the niceties Octavian would've expected of him.
Following a fabric shuffle, a bundle fell onto his lap. Then, his eyes itched—only for a moment—and the blue glow of a spellcast raced across his skin, startling him into sitting up. The raw gashes on his knuckles sealed themselves shut.
"A piece of advice for you, from one outsider to another," she said, "there are many here who will not suffer anything less than complete fealty. Respect is their currency. Refuse the wrong magister, and you and your master will wash up on the southern shores." She nudged the bundle of fabric in his lap. "Up, up. You've been away too long. People have begun to notice."
Whatever the intent of her healing spell, and however he—or Spite—felt about the intervention, he climbed to his feet with fewer aches than he'd had in weeks. He unfurled the bundle and cast it over himself, covering the mess of his finery with fine silk. She looked him over, re-did the latch on the jacket for him, and picked a piece of lint off his shoulder.
"What do you want from me?" he repeated—now, on the topic of repayment.
"I don't know yet," she said, content enough with the way he looked to go striding on her silent, slippered feet back to the exit of the lavatory. "I'll let you know when I decide."
Lucanis flinched again, a hiss pinched between his teeth; whether he brushed a lingering bruise or healthy skin, Lucanis reacted the same. His body was a mass of raw nerves, sensitive to every contact, fleeing every touch even through both his finery and Octavian's gloves. The room was silent; Octavian had said all he needed to in the carriage ride home.
When Lucanis had come upon him in the hallway outside the lavatory, he thought Octavian's blanched look originated from the ruined state of his party clothes. It was only once Lucanis tried to explain the fight he'd gotten into—which Octavian cut off—that he understood.
"Why are you wearing Magister Theodoric's robe?" Octavian had insisted, speaking in a rushed whisper, ushering Lucanis to the nearest private space before an answer could even form. Upon an—apparently inadequate—explanation, Octavian dissolved into impatient fidgeting and fashioned an escape plan to get them out of the party through the kitchens without being seen. The remainder of their swift exit was a blur, muddied by exhaustion and the rebound of Lucanis's aches and pains.
What Octavian had said to him in the carriage still stuck with him; it spun around in his head, repeating over and over, while he stood there, the back lacing of his shredded finery being picked apart, caked with dried blood. "You know as well as I—" Octavian's expression had been grave, "—Magisters never offer help without expecting payment in kind."
Another tug on the lacing made Lucanis suck down a breath and hold it tight, in the hopes it'd keep some small distance between his spine and the work of Octavian's hands. A seed had been planted in the back of his mind which, in the small space of an hour, had blossomed into all-out paranoia. What was the string attached to Octavian's help? Of course—Lucanis had had plenty of suspicions, most of which he'd buried in the name of cooperation, but to have heard Octavian say it aloud—
Once the laces fell free, Lucanis finally relaxed. He stepped away, quick to wriggle out of his outermost layer. He didn't spare Octavian another glance; the man lingered in place for a moment longer, then, finding his work concluded, left Lucanis to the silence.