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Maybe Warrington hadn’t been listening, but Virgil meant what he said. He wasn’t a fighter. The staff was just for show. He’d wrapped the grip in such a way a careful observer might think was for holding it in the right places to brain someone over the head, just as he’d practiced his bluster and bravado until it made him sick. The skin of men he knew in another life fit ill over his own, cold, clammy, and a little too familiar. If only he could shake them both off.
He missed Joachim. But the Elder evidently thought he could handle this own his own.
So he could.
He could handle keeping one woman alive. He could, he found, kill for her. It was for the Panarii. (It was for Joachim.) He could turn a blind eye while she stole everything that caught her eye. He could even handle Nasrudin-bloody-reborn dragging them to the worst taverns in Tarant so she could drink and chat up strangers like she “came here to do.” No, the prophecy said something very different about that!
When her latest target starting talking about the wonders of modern technology with a sarcastic turn in his voice, Virgil perked up his ears and put down his drink. (Water. One of them had to stay sober, and it certainly wasn’t going to be their prophesied savior, was it?)
He could barely see them reflected in the grime-streaked mirror behind the bar. Warrington caught his eye, tightened her lips. Turning away, she leaned in and said, “Mm, everyone does have an opinion these days. I’m more partial to the traditional arts, myself. But, do go on.”
The man did, and at enough length that Virgil’s heart stopped pounding quite so insistently. Virgil scratched at a dried spot of unidentifiable something on the table with his fingernail. He drank his water and eyed the bottles lined behind the bar.
“Take… eh, flight,” the man said. “Uh huh, flying machines. We’re supposed to think it’s as safe as teleporting, but you if you heard about that…
Virgil stood. His staff leaned against the wall, waiting. He grabbed it.
“…crash. The Zephyr or something, right? Nasty bit of business, that.”
Her silence was a beat too long. “Oh, I wouldn’t know, sir.”
“Don’t you?”
Virgil bit back on the exasperated sound rising out of his chest and inserted himself between them. “Excuse me, sir. I don’t like the tone you’re taking with my friend.”
“Your friend, huh?” The man’s attention was on him, now. That was good. He grinned, close enough to see the spit shining on his teeth.
If worst came to worst, Virgil would die first. Maybe that’d give her a chance to escape. “Yes, sir. I’d advise you to step back. You wouldn’t want to start something you can’t finish.” His own voice rang through his head.
“Virgil…” Something touched his arm. He flinched away before he could place it. Warrington’s hand.
The man’s grin grew wider. “Awfully jumpy, aren’t you?” He touched the knife on his belt. “This is between me and the girl. Just walk away.”
“I won’t be doing that.” Even though he wanted to. That was the thing about being alive: it didn’t matter what he wanted. Virgil was an animal. He wanted to crawl back into his den and let it be his grave. His hands found the grips on his staff.
“Fair enough.” The man drew his knife. Virgil wrenched his staff up to block and caught it across his knuckles. An inhuman hiss escaped him, and then the pain hit, bright and sharp. It took all he had to not drop the staff while he frantically healed it. He ignored the urge to flex his fingers to convince himself they were all still attached. So long as he could still hold his weapon…
The light of the spell reflected in his attackers eyes. It caught him off guard. His attention was a mixed blessing. It gave Virgil a moment to catch his breath. On the flipside, everybody knew you beat a healer bloody and they got back up.
When you got your chance, you had to take the final blow. And you had damn well be sure you did it right. Double check, cut their head off if you can or stick a knife in their eye, or they’ll do yours when you stand to walk away. That was also the kind of injury that could block a resurrection spell, not that anyone in a gutter like this could expect magic like that wasted on him.
Virgil was distantly aware of the sound of a woman screaming somewhere to his left. It wasn’t Warrington, so he ignored it.
Then there was more light, red light, and Virgil scrambled back from it, holding his staff out to keep every inch of ground he gained. The man took a step and then fell, lifeless. Bloodless.
Virgil counted his shaking fingers: four and a thumb. A shiny swollen line of pink stood out under the blood. It pulled at his skin when he held his hand flat, but he could still make a fist.
The tavern’s hired muscle took that moment to appear. He was an orc and had at least a hundred pounds of muscle on the two of them combined. With that backing up his words, he didn’t need many. “Get out.”
In a better part of town, he would have called for the guards. He still could. A dead body was trouble anywhere. Maybe he hadn’t noticed he wasn’t just knocked cold, yet.
“O-Of course, sir, we’ll just be leaving. Sorry for the… the trouble.”
Behind the orc, Warrington was checking the lining of the dead man’s coat for more pockets. She slipped her hand out when he turned.
“Both of you. Out.”
The night was not cold enough to account for the way Virgil’s shoulders shook. He stuck his scarred hand in the pocket of his robe and with the other gripped his staff. He used it like the walking stick he liked to think of it as.
By silent accord, they walked back towards the city center. They’d taken rooms at an inn there the day before. A warm bed was waiting for him, and a few hours of oblivion, if he was lucky.
“You didn’t need to do that,” Warrington said.
“Oh, I—I didn’t need to—you’d rather I let you take a knife to the face?”
“He wasn’t sure who I was until you stepped in. I had it under control.”
He bit down on the inside of his cheek. Picking his way through the flaming debris of the airship, he hadn’t really expected to find a survivor, but to the extent he had… well, he’d imagined Nasrudin. A figure from the tales. (He’d imagined Joachim, but younger. And an elf.) Someone worth a little deference.
“I told you, Madam, I know that type. He knew very well who you were.” Virgil ran his hand through his hair, realizing too late he was smearing it with half-dried flakes of blood. He sighed. “He… he was playing with you, you understand?”
“Virgil, my good man.” She clicked her tongue like a disapproving tutor. “Maybe I was playing with him.”
Virgil sucked air through his teeth and blew it back out. Calm. He would stay calm. “Then, please, consider finding better men than assassins to play with in the future.”
She laughed. “Oh! He had a good bit of coin on him. Take half?” Her palming needed work. She handed him much less than half.
He took it with a smile.
Smoke and tar clogged the air in Tarant worse than it did when he was a child. The bitter, cloying taste still stuck in the back of his throat. He planted his walking stick in the path and took another step. It was nice, being able to look back over his shoulder and see the city grow smaller and smaller each time.
They seemed to have shaken the trail of the assassins for a time. Warrington still refused to approach their situation as directly as he thought she should, but it was easier to bear under an open blue sky. For strange, brief moments, he felt almost content.
Just because the assassins were leaving them be didn’t mean all trouble was so polite.
They fought well together. Virgil could look intimidating when he tried—the scars didn't hurt. And Warrington, innocent as she pretended to be, could kill a man before he even realized her spells were touching him. Even when they noticed, they blamed Virgil and fought him all the harder in their desperation to save themselves.
Virgil’s magic kept him standing. Even if he wasn’t quite good enough yet to leave his body unmarred, he kept himself in one piece.
And Warrington, too, on the rare occasions it came down to that.
“Assassins,” Warrington breathed. She held up three fingers, and then gestured out a triangle: there and there, near the mouth of the cave, and, deeper in, there.
Warrington nodded in answer to his unvoiced question. Virgil led the way back the way she scouted, pushing gently through the grass as silently as he could.
The first of the assassins fell to Warrington’s necromancy spell before he got on his feet. Virgil knew by now she’d turn her attention next to the one farthest away.
That left the closest for Virgil. He dove on him, grabbed him, wrenched him back—pressed his staff across the top of his throat. The man struggled before finally falling limp. Virgil held on longer, counting in his head. His arms burned.
He lowered the man to the ground, breathing hard. They should have just walked away. Wasn’t it enough that they were after her, and, by unfortunate extension, him? Why was she always making their situation worse? He turned towards where Warrington must be, a snarl that died on his lips when he saw her, arm reaching towards him along the ground, blood darkening her jacket. Bile rose in his throat. When had she collapsed?
He healed her. Careless. If whatever spilled her blood was still inside her, he’d have to reopen the wound.
The magic stopped with a jolt and curled up inside him, like it had nowhere to go. He swallowed and, after a moment, let the magic dissipate through his own body.
“Madam?”
She didn’t respond. He turned her over, and she stared up past him with blank eyes. Her jaw was slack, her mouth agape, her tongue rolling back into her throat. If she were still breathing, she’d choke.
Virgil did what she would have done for him. He went for her pockets. She had… a lot of money. There was a limit to how much one could carry in coin alone. He should have expected the gems and the fine jewelry of silver and gold. Even the note of credit from the Bank of Tarant he unfolded with almost steady hands. Then the number hit him like a knife in the chest.
It was more than the price of Lawrence’s life. Quite a bit more. He hated that that was the figure he weighed all money against now. Coin was worth nothing until it approached that threshold. Then it meant only one thing: this could have saved his brother. This could have saved his brother.
The worst part was he knew it wouldn’t have. He would have lost it the same as the rest.
Lawrence had died. Virgil had lived. As unjust as it was, that was what happened. Joachim taught him the only thing he could do was to accept it, and keep moving forward.
Virgil wiped at the tears leaking from his eyes and took a deep breath. Joachim was right as always. That hadn’t changed just because he hadn’t seen the man for weeks. And now he had a whole list of new things to accept! The woman Joachim sent him to protect was dead. He’d failed Joachim and the Church. Virgil had finally failed whole bloody world!
A laugh choked out of him. He hadn’t let many tears fall, but it still hurt his throat. He wanted to sob, to scream, to tear at the ground, to keep hurting. He wanted to hurt worse. So, he found his bottle of water, drank from it sip by sip, and leaned against the cool wall of the cave.
He thought some more about the money. It was far more than what he had owed. So much more, in fact, it might have been enough to save Lawrence. And not just by paying the men who threatened him.
No, it was enough for a resurrection spell. Lawrence wasn’t any kind of healer. And the whole point was that his brother, the only person left to care about him, was skint. His eye had been an unrecognizable mess, but not because someone stuck something sharp in there and stirred. Caladon was a big enough city; second chances were for sale.
Well, here he had the coin and a dead body! Great, if he weren’t a three days’ hike from civilization.
Virgil swept up the contents of her pockets along with a good handful of dirt from the ground and crammed it all into one of his own. He climbed to his feet. A sliver of yellowing grass, grown up to his knees, was barely visible outside the mouth of the cave. A breeze whistled past.
No one would know if he just walked away. Most people wouldn’t even blame him if they did. Dead was dead. Or close enough. The existence of resurrection was, to the common man, merely academic. Nothing anyone could do, would do, but look away.
Likely, Warrington hadn’t thought about it like that, with her family. But her family wasn’t there.
Virgil glanced at the bodies, then back to the exit. Somewhere, a bird gave a warbling cry.
Would Nasrudin come back again, if he just left? Or if he ran until his lungs burst, payed a master healer all his greed demanded, and still it wasn’t enough? Was the world now damned either way, or was it always saved? Did it matter what Virgil did?
These were theological questions, for all their sudden relevance, the sort Panarii scholars debated and published books on no one would ever read but other Panarii scholars. Virgil certainly never had. Joachim… ha, he probably did. Virgil wanted to ask him, but there was no need. He knew what he would say.
He had two choices. The same two he ever had. Joachim had… he’d sat with him, after. He told him he was right when all Virgil had wanted to hear was that he was wrong. There was no third option he was too blind to see. Joachim put his hand over his, then, and told him only he could decide.
Try to die or try to live. It didn't matter what he wanted. Better, he’d found, to do what he did not.
Still, he’d give the second one last shot.