The Light On Your Face For The First Time

Tides of black greasy rats plagued Lotusfoil's nightmares; swarming her feet, chewing off her fingers, clawing up the back of her neck with wretched squeaks in her ear. Her skin crawled at every scrape of noise peripheral to her awareness. In the first few minutes of sleep, she hallucinated their rancid sewer odor and felt their tiny nails pulling at her clothes. When a hand shook her shoulder, she gasped awake and stared, boggled, at the shadow looming over her.

"Come with me," growled Redmaw.

Thick in the fog of sleep, Lotusfoil obediently swung her feet out of bed, following the Knive Superior. It didn't occur to her what was happening until she'd left the rest quarters and was walking behind him through the showering hall, then suddenly she was in his room with the door locked, and Redmaw was glaring down at her from behind his scarlet-jawed mask illuminated by candlelight.

Lotusfoil froze, awake enough now to realize the danger she was in.

"Why did you shield me from the rebels' arrows?"

Hardly the question she expected. Lotusfoil kept her bare hands firmly at the sides of her black sleeping pants, unmoving for fear that the slightest slack in her body would yield disapproval. "It's my duty as a Knive to protect my teammates."

"It's your duty to protect the Nobles. Do not mistake who you serve."

Somehow she still displeased him. "I apologize, Knive Superior."

His silence put her on edge. Truthfully, she had leaped to his rescue after imbibing the energy of the null shards, knowing that without their invigorating boost she would have been useless in the fight. The rats proved that much. She absorbed the null shards, then with power came confidence, and Lotusfoil's hyper-motivation became to rescue Redmaw, like he had by plucking her from the rats trying to eat her alive. Had that been a mistake?

The encroaching fear of failure pushed her to break the silence. "Are your wounds manageable?"

Redmaw tilted his head. He prolonged his silence a moment longer, worsening her panic before finally grunting, "They have been managed."

The pauses between his dialogue scrambled her. Lotusfoil spent years studying body language and behaviour as a pillar of forensic investigation—she was desperate to read him, but his mask hid what his face would have betrayed, and his body was rigid as a stone, so she floundered. He brought her here in the middle of the night for a reason. Yet so far, all Lotusfoil discerned was that same quiet judgment as if he were watching her from afar.

Then suddenly his hand moved. She tracked the flexes in his fingers as he pulled up his thick black cotton shirt, revealing a sacred field of olive skin and dark hair spanning his abdomen. Lotusfoil's chest rang like her heart was a bell, gawking in disbelief until she realized that was where he'd been pierced by the arrow. There was no wound. Redmaw quickly lowered his shirt again, leaving Lotusfoil with forbidden knowledge of the Knive Superior's inner substance.

"How?" she dared.

"I cannot afford wounds."

Lotusfoil wracked her brain for explanation. Beocraft had walked the halls of the Sanctum after his murder. She watched Wrytangle return after they'd been slain by rebels. The only answer was that Redmaw willingly coordinated his own resurrection. Meanwhile, her body still stung from the attack, throbbing uncomfortably with the threat of infection. The Court nurses assured her she'd be fine.

"Lotusfoil," he beckoned her focus back.

She swallowed.

"You obey your Knive Superior, but you do not serve him. The choice is yours if you are faced with a threat to his life. I do not expect you to put his life before your objective."